Though they lost the fight over the Constitution, the Anti-Federalists saw its most dangerous defects

Time for a respectful reassessment, writes Christopher Jon Sprigman

Patrick Henry speaking at a meeting of the Anti-Federalists.

To the extent that Americans are aware of them at all, the Anti-Federalists are remembered as a band of vaguely disreputable second-raters who failed to prevent the 1788 ratification of the US Constitution—a document that for many Americans has become, over the past two centuries, something app…