F. Thornton Miller's Juries and Judges Versus the Law: Virginia's
Provincial Legal Perspective, 1783-1828 (UVA 1994) also offers an
interesting take on the clash between John Marshall's nationalist views
and Spencer Roane's 'old republican' positions.
jk

> I certainly don't possess the background and expertise in
> legal/constitutional history
> that Paul (and probably assorted others on this list) can claim, but I
> think some
> additional caveats are in order. A good book challenging the simple
> propositions that
> the Antifederalists "lost" and then "simply disappeared" is Saul Cornell's
> The Other
> Founders.
>
> Though they were certainly a diverse collection of political thinkers and
> practitioners, the Antifederalists did succeed in forcing the issue of a
> bill of
> rights for the new Constitution onto the agenda of the first federal
> Congress. It is
> interesting to speculate about what might have happened, and when, if
> these
> Antifederalist demands had not been heeded.
>
> Cornell also explains the many ways in which Antifederal thinking and
> energies
> (suspicion of centralized government, localist vision of politics,
> commitment to
> emerging "public sphere" for political discourse) fed into the
> Democratic-Republican
> side of the first party system that took shape in the 1790s. With the
> election of
> 1800, those ideas and energies were no longer limited to a "loyal
> opposition" but were
> reflected frequently, if not consistently, in the policies and leanings of
> the young
> federal government itself. Since then, according to Cornell, much of the
> "spirit," if
> not the structures of American politics, can be traced back to
> Antifederalist roots. I
> believe he quotes Martin Van Buren as having said something like this
> (don't have his
> book in front of me).
>
> In short, it may make sense to term the Antifeds "losers" (as shorthand),
> but only if
> we also acknowledge the far-reaching impact they had on American political
> values and
> the Constitution.
>
> Doug Deal
> History/SUNY Oswego
>
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>


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