Watkins sets himself two formidable tasks. The first is to rehabilitate the Articles of Confederation as a template for a constitutional order that is not “removed from the human scale” and embraces the “principles of decentralization and limited government” (3, 208). The second is to celebrate the Anti-Federalists as “men of great faith” who recognized that “republican liberty ha[s] the best chance of survival in small units in which the people participat[e] actively” (2). In his telling, the Articles and the government that they created were an unqualified success, accomplishing both of their “main objectives: the defeat of Britain and the safeguarding of state self-government” (38). The Anti-Federalists were visionaries who accurately foresaw, and condemned, the risk that the Constitution would become an engine for “consolidation,” creating a “national government” the powers of which are “broad and indeterminate” rather than “few and defined” (161).
The book is an interesting read,...