Country, Court, and Constitution

Antifederalism and the Historians

Bibliographic Data

ID3389277
AuthorsJ Hutson (0000-0002-0578-6052, corresponding author), James H Hutson
Year1981
Volume38
Issue3
Pages337
Publication date1981-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1921952
OpenAlexW2316829568
LanguageEN
Citations received11

HE historiography of Revolutionary America's two most conspicuous groups of losers-the loyalists and the Antifederalists-has been similar. Historians writing between the beginning of the present century and World War II, the so-called Progressive historians, confidently differentiated both groups from their opponents: loyalists were aristocratic, often monarchical, elitists, at war with liberal egalitarians; Antifederalists were rustic, democratic levelers opposed by aristocratic merchant-capitalists (some of whom had been loyalists). The contestants were cast in sharp relief. They could not be confused. In the years after World War II the thrust of historical writing changed in the direction of minimizing the differences between the loyalists and Antifederalists and their opponents. Loyalists were seen as sharing with their enemies a common dedication to whig principles and as being represented, like their opponents, at all socio-economic levels.1 So, too, the Antifederalists. Far from being simple, shirt-sleeved democrats, they were described as holding political ideas similar to those of their Federalist antagonists. Instead of being debt-ridden, subsistence farmers, they were found to contain among their ranks speculators in the capital markets sophisticated and unscrupulous enough to match the Federalists at their best and worst. The homogenizing of adversaries that occurred in post-World War II historical writing and replaced the Progressive historians' emphasis on differentiation and conflict was termed consensus history,2 a label that pleased few of its alleged practitioners but retained its currency because it identified a significant historiographical trend. Obituaries are now being written for consensus history by those who claim that its contradictions

Constitution · Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Law

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