Federalism in the United States

Based on Wikipedia: Federalism in the United States

In 1786, a group of angry farmers in western Massachusetts picked up their muskets and marched on the federal arsenal in Springfield. They were broke, their farms were being seized for debt, and the government seemed powerless to help. What they didn't know was that their rebellion would help birth an entirely new form of government—one that would reshape how power flows between Washington and the states for the next two and a half centuries.

This is the story of American federalism: the ongoing negotiation over who gets to make which decisions in a country that has never quite made up its mind about whether it wants to be one nation or fifty.

The Problem with Being Too United

Before the Constitution, the United States wasn't really united at all. The Articles of Confederation, the country's first governing document, created something more like a loose alliance of independent countries that happened to share a continent. Congress could declare war, but it couldn't raise taxes to pay for an army. It could sign treaties, but it couldn't force states to honor them. Every major decision required unanimous agreement from all thirteen states—a recipe for paralysis.

The result was predictable chaos.

States erected trade barriers against each other like feuding neighbors building spite fences. The economy sputtered. War debts from the Revolutionary War went unpaid. And when Daniel Shays led those Massachusetts farmers against the Springfield arsenal, the federal government could do nothing but watch. Massachusetts had to raise its own militia to put down the rebellion.

The embarrassment was profound. Here was a nation that had just defeated the world's greatest military power, now unable to handle a few hundred disgruntled farmers. Something had to change.

A Convention That Went Rogue

The initial fix was supposed to be modest. In 1786, twelve delegates from five states met in Annapolis, Maryland, ostensibly to discuss trade barriers. Four more states had appointed commissioners who never showed up. Four others hadn't bothered to appoint anyone at all. It was not an auspicious beginning.

But the delegates who did attend saw the bigger picture. They called for a broader convention the following year in Philadelphia to examine "areas broader than simply commercial trade." That was diplomatic language for what they really meant: let's start over.

On May 15, 1787, fifty-five delegates gathered in the Philadelphia State House. They were supposed to revise the Articles of Confederation. Instead, they threw out the entire document and began writing something new. This was technically illegal—they had no authority to scrap the existing government—but they did it anyway.

James Madison arrived with a plan and a philosophy. In a memo circulated before the convention, he argued that state legislatures could never be trusted to take "enlightened views on national affairs." The country needed a stronger central government. But Madison wasn't proposing a monarchy or a unitary state. His vision was something different: a system where power would be divided between national and state governments, each operating in its own sphere, each checking the other's excesses.

The Philosophy Behind the Split

Madison laid out his thinking in what became Federalist Number Ten, one of the most influential pieces of political writing in American history. His argument was counterintuitive: bigger government could actually protect liberty better than smaller government.

Here's how he reasoned it out. In a small territory, it's easy for a majority to gang up on a minority. A handful of powerful interests can coordinate, seize control, and oppress everyone else. But extend the sphere of government to cover a vast territory with millions of people, and you get a cacophony of competing interests. Farmers against merchants. Northerners against Southerners. Coastal elites against frontier settlers. No single faction can easily dominate when there are so many factions jostling for position.

This was federalism's promise: not efficiency, but balance. Not unity, but productive tension.

Federalists Versus Anti-Federalists

The proposed Constitution sparked one of America's first great political debates. On one side stood the Federalists—Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay—who wanted a stronger national government. They published eighty-five anonymous essays in New York newspapers, now known as the Federalist Papers, making their case with a sophistication that still impresses political scientists today.

On the other side stood the Anti-Federalists, a loose coalition of farmers, planters, and local politicians who feared exactly what Madison championed. A strong national government, they argued, would be distant and unresponsive. It would absorb the functions that properly belonged to the states. It would become a new tyranny, just as oppressive as the British Crown they had just overthrown.

The Anti-Federalists had a devastating critique: where was the bill of rights? The proposed Constitution said plenty about the structure of government but almost nothing about protecting individual liberties. Madison initially thought a bill of rights was unnecessary—the Constitution already limited federal power, so why list things the government couldn't do? But he eventually realized that without one, the Constitution might never be ratified.

George Washington's prestige tipped the scales. He supported the Constitution, and his support mattered enormously. One by one, the states ratified. The new government took power on March 4, 1789.

The Bill of Rights and the Tenth Amendment

True to his word, Madison introduced amendments to the new Congress. Twelve were sent to the states; ten were ratified on December 15, 1791, becoming the Bill of Rights.

The Tenth Amendment became the constitutional foundation for federalism. It states, simply, that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or to the people. This sounds clear enough, but it has generated over two centuries of legal battles over what exactly those reserved powers include.

Here's the fundamental tension: the Constitution gives the federal government certain enumerated powers—the authority to regulate interstate commerce, coin money, declare war, and so forth. But the boundaries of those powers have always been fuzzy. Does regulating interstate commerce include regulating manufacturing that produces goods for interstate sale? Does it include regulating labor conditions in factories? Does it include prohibiting child labor? Reasonable people have disagreed violently about these questions.

The Federalist Party: Same Name, Different Movement

It's important to distinguish between the federalist movement that promoted the Constitution and the Federalist Party that emerged afterward. They shared a name and some personnel, but their aims were different.

The Federalist Party, led by Alexander Hamilton, wanted more than just a workable national government. Hamilton envisioned an industrial economy, a national bank, protective tariffs, and close ties with Britain. His opponents, led by Thomas Jefferson and eventually Madison himself, favored an agricultural economy, strict limits on federal power, and sympathy with revolutionary France.

The political alignments were complicated. Many who had supported the Constitution in 1788 joined the Federalist Party. But some, like Madison, drifted toward Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans. Conversely, some Anti-Federalists who had opposed the Constitution ended up supporting the Federalist Party. Patrick Henry, who had thundered against the Constitution, eventually became a Federalist supporter.

The Federalist Party peaked with John Adams's election as president in 1796. It collapsed after the disastrous Hartford Convention of 1814, when New England Federalists met secretly to discuss constitutional amendments protecting their regional interests—and possibly secession. When news of the convention leaked just as the War of 1812 ended in American victory at New Orleans, the Federalists were branded as disloyal defeatists. The party never recovered.

John Marshall Draws the Lines

The early Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Marshall, did more than anyone to define the practical meaning of federalism. The Constitution's text left many questions unanswered. Marshall answered them.

In McCulloch versus Maryland, the Court ruled unanimously that states could not tax federal institutions. Maryland had tried to tax the Bank of the United States, a federally chartered bank. Marshall said no: the power to tax is the power to destroy, and states cannot destroy federal institutions. This was a major victory for national power.

In Gibbons versus Ogden, Marshall established that Congress's power over interstate commerce was broad and exclusive. States could not interfere with commerce that crossed their borders. This seemingly technical ruling had enormous practical implications: it meant the national government could regulate the emerging railroad and industrial economy.

In Marbury versus Madison, Marshall asserted the Supreme Court's power to strike down laws that violated the Constitution. This power of judicial review isn't mentioned in the Constitution itself—Marshall essentially invented it. But it became the foundation for everything the Court has done since.

Yet Marshall also respected limits. In Barron versus Baltimore, he ruled that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government, not to the states. If Maryland wanted to seize your property without compensation, the Fifth Amendment couldn't stop them. This principle held until after the Civil War.

Dual Federalism: Separate Spheres

After Marshall came Chief Justice Roger Taney, and with him a different philosophy. Where Marshall had consistently expanded federal power, Taney believed in what scholars call dual federalism: the idea that federal and state governments each have their own distinct spheres, and neither should intrude on the other.

Think of it like two parallel lanes on a highway. The federal government stays in its lane—coining money, conducting foreign policy, regulating interstate commerce. The states stay in their lane—policing, education, family law, most criminal justice. The lanes don't overlap.

This sounds tidy, but it created serious problems. The most explosive was slavery. Under dual federalism, slavery was a state matter. The federal government couldn't interfere with it. This was the logic behind Taney's infamous ruling in Dred Scott versus Sanford, which held that enslaved people were property, not citizens, and that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The decision inflamed tensions that soon erupted into civil war.

After the war, dual federalism enabled another injustice. In Plessy versus Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld Louisiana's law requiring separate railway cars for Black and white passengers. Segregation was a state matter, the Court reasoned. The federal government couldn't impose its views on states' moral choices. "Separate but equal" became the law of the land for another half-century.

The Gilded Age Courts

Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Supreme Court remained stubbornly committed to limiting federal power. In case after case, the justices struck down congressional attempts to regulate the industrial economy.

United States versus E.C. Knight Company gutted the Sherman Antitrust Act. Congress had tried to break up a sugar monopoly that controlled ninety-eight percent of the nation's sugar refining. The Court ruled eight to one that manufacturing wasn't commerce—even manufacturing that produced goods destined for sale across state lines. Congress could regulate commerce, but not the production that preceded it.

Hammer versus Dagenhart struck down the Federal Child Labor Act. Congress had banned the interstate shipment of goods produced by child labor, reasoning that this was a regulation of commerce. The Court disagreed, five to four. Regulating child labor was a state matter, not a federal one. This ruling stood until 1941.

The philosophy underlying these decisions was laissez-faire economics dressed in constitutional clothing. The justices believed in a minimal government that let markets operate freely. They found in federalism a convenient tool for preventing the national government from interfering with business.

Building the Modern State

Despite the Court's resistance, the federal government kept growing. The National Bank Acts of 1863 and 1864 created a network of nationally chartered banks with reserve requirements set in Washington. During World War One, Congress established federal banks to aid farmers and later banks to promote homeownership. The Interstate Commerce Commission began regulating railroad rates, eventually extending to intrastate rates as well.

Most dramatically, two constitutional amendments ratified in 1913 transformed the federal government's relationship with citizens and states alike. The Sixteenth Amendment authorized a federal income tax, giving Washington a direct revenue source independent of the states. The Seventeenth Amendment required senators to be elected by popular vote rather than appointed by state legislatures, weakening the states' direct voice in the national government.

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, proved even more consequential over time. It declared that all persons born in the United States were citizens of both the nation and their state, with national citizenship coming first. It prohibited states from denying due process or equal protection of the laws. Over the following century, the Supreme Court gradually "incorporated" most of the Bill of Rights through the Fourteenth Amendment, applying those protections against state governments as well as the federal government.

This was a fundamental shift. Before the Fourteenth Amendment, the Constitution mainly limited what the federal government could do. After incorporation, it also limited what states could do. A citizen's fundamental rights were now protected against all levels of government.

The Pendulum Keeps Swinging

American federalism has never reached a stable equilibrium. The pendulum swings back and forth—sometimes toward national power, sometimes toward state autonomy.

The New Deal era after 1937 brought cooperative federalism, with the federal government working alongside states on programs from Social Security to highway construction. Federal grants came with strings attached, encouraging states to adopt national standards. The dividing lines between federal and state responsibilities blurred.

Later decades brought calls for "New Federalism"—returning power to the states through block grants and fewer federal mandates. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both championed this approach, though with mixed results.

Today, federalism remains contested terrain. States serve as "laboratories of democracy," experimenting with policies from marijuana legalization to healthcare reform that might later be adopted nationally—or might remain local exceptions. When states and the federal government disagree, the courts still struggle to draw lines that the Constitution's framers left deliberately vague.

Why This Matters Now

Understanding federalism isn't just historical curiosity. It shapes everything from pandemic response to environmental regulation to voting rights. When you hear debates about "states' rights" versus federal authority, you're hearing echoes of arguments that began before the Constitution was ratified.

The genius of American federalism—and its frustration—is that it was designed to be messy. The founders didn't want a clean, efficient system. They wanted a system that diffused power, created multiple access points for citizens, and made it hard for any single faction to dominate. That system has proved remarkably durable, even as its specific arrangements have shifted dramatically over time.

Daniel Shays and his fellow farmers couldn't have imagined what their rebellion would set in motion. They just wanted to keep their farms. Instead, they helped create a form of government that has been copied, adapted, and argued about ever since—one that still struggles, two and a half centuries later, to balance unity and diversity, national purpose and local control, the one and the many.