Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An opponent of the ratification of the US Constitution.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Alternative spelling of
anti-federalist .
Etymologies
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Examples
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Monroe was an antifederalist and then a states rights Republican, only to become the first president to embrace the broad view of the spending power question.
The Volokh Conspiracy » James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan 2010
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[The members of the anti-New Deal "old right"] were in some ways a new antifederalist movement, as are modern libertarians.
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Watlington, Partisan Spirit, 150, suggests that the opponents of the Constitution, who were members of a “court party” in Kentucky politics, “abandoned the idea of instructions once a majority of antifederalist delegates was elected” in the district.
Ratification Pauline Maier 2010
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Her “warmth was natural” and her “words emphatical”: “‘Are you an antifederalist she began’—I laughed—‘yes you are’—and she reasoned against me most beautifully—it was fun indeed.”
Ratification Pauline Maier 2010
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Her “warmth was natural” and her “words emphatical”: “‘Are you an antifederalist she began’—I laughed—‘yes you are’—and she reasoned against me most beautifully—it was fun indeed.”
Ratification Pauline Maier 2010
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The opprobrium Federalists associated with the term “antifederalist” itself signaled that the day of a loyal opposition and so of modern party conflict, in which each side accepts the legitimacy of the other, had not yet arrived.
Ratification Pauline Maier 2010
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Watlington, Partisan Spirit, 150, suggests that the opponents of the Constitution, who were members of a “court party” in Kentucky politics, “abandoned the idea of instructions once a majority of antifederalist delegates was elected” in the district.
Ratification Pauline Maier 2010
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Whether in a newspaper essay or the mouth of Betsy King, “antifederalist” was a term of opprobrium.
Ratification Pauline Maier 2010
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The opprobrium Federalists associated with the term “antifederalist” itself signaled that the day of a loyal opposition and so of modern party conflict, in which each side accepts the legitimacy of the other, had not yet arrived.
Ratification Pauline Maier 2010
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Local writers who defended the Constitution were pretty much the only ones who used the term “antifederalist” for those who criticized it, and nobody was organizing a movement under that banner.
Ratification Pauline Maier 2010
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