Sample Solution

The main political parties today are the Republicans and the Democrats. But red vs. blue wasn’t always the dividing line in America: shortly after gaining independence in 1783, debates about how the United States should run fell along the federalist vs. antifederalist line. The main division in their ideas boiled down to the relationship between the state governments and the federal government. Federalists believed that the United States should form a strong central government to unite the states, while antifederalists believed that the states should maintain the same level of power and authority with only a weak central government. For their part, federalists believed that the federal government’s policies and laws should take precedence over state laws. They also thought the country needed a strong executive in the form of a president along with checks and balances on each of the branches to make sure no entity (the executive, legislative, or judicial branch) had too much power. On the other hand, antifederalists believed that states needed to have more power than the central government in order to preserve rights.