Anti-Federalists

Why did Alexander Hamilton and James Madison take up the cause of the very thing that revolutionaries had vehemently opposed?

Anti-federalist Luther Martin's agenda failed at the Constitutional Convention, but his criticisms of the Founders may still resonate with us today.

On the continued revolutionary rhetoric and ideology that persisted in America even after the American Revolution.

Weariness of strong government is a key American tradition. But equally important is the revolutionary idea that national governance should come from the states.

A new history of the early republic explores the origins of originalism.

Using maps to visualize the first five U.S. Congressional elections.

Elbridge Gerry was a powerful voice in the founding of the nation, but today he's best known for the political practice with an amphibious origin.

Mercy Otis Warren used her wit to agitate for independence.

Too often, we look to history not to understand it, but to seek out confirmation for our preexisting beliefs. That’s a problem.

Historian Brian Murphy explains the Manhattan Company; a bank disguised as a municipal water corporation that helped to transform Early Republican politics.

Writing under ancient veneers allowed partisans to politicize and weaponize ancient history during the turbulent start of the Federal Republic.

A new book seeks to explain why many Americans, especially but not exclusively in the South, have understood freedom as an entitlement for white people.

On "Power and Liberty," a condensed version of Gordon Wood's entire sweep of scholarship about constitutionalism.

Maybe the United States was doomed from the start. And Jean-Jacques Rousseau can explain why.

An annotated collection of resources from the Bunk archive that help explain the shifting sands of American politics.

Many people celebrate the U.S. as a nation of immigrants, but nativism has infused its politics from the outset.

In his new book, The Crooked Path to Abolition, James Oakes argues that the Constitution was an antislavery document.

Born 14 years after the nation's founding, the tenth commander-in-chief still has one living grandson.

The story of the democratic movements that the framers of the U.S. Constitution feared and sought to suppress.

The shameful career of Roger Sherman, mild-mannered Yankee.