Quotes from Michael J. Klarman

Many Antifederalists additionally favored prohibiting Congress from disarming the people, warning that once the national government monopolized military force, it would rule supreme and the states would be destroyed

when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views.

Mason also objected that permitting the president to grant pardons even in cases of treason was dangerous because he might pardon crimes "which were advised by himself.

leading Massachusetts Antifederalist Elbridge Gerry, who had also been an important dissenting delegate at the Philadelphia convention, noted that "however respectable the members may be who signed the Constitution, it must be admitted that a free people are the proper guardians of their rights and liberties—that the greatest men may err—and that their errors are sometimes of the greatest magnitude

Preachers delivered sermons on the Constitution, pro and con.