Patrick Henry led the anti-federalists in their effort to defeat ratification of the U.S. Constitution because he believed that it created a government too powerful and distant from the people and undermined the authority of the states. Yet in the spring of 1799, at the behest of George Washington, Henry came out of retirement to defend the Constitution against the radical states' rights agenda of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Henry's commitment to democratic solutions to intractable party disputes continues to speak loudly to us today.

The “founding fathers” saw political parties as a threat to self-government. Thomas Jefferson wrote (jokingly), “If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.” So why did parties form during the presidency of George Washington and in later years? Houpt argues that political parties emerged as part of a struggle to define the meaning of self-government in post-Revolutionary America.