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I've been reading What hath God Wrought (Oxford History of the US from 1815-1848) and one thing I'm finding quite confusing is the animosity towards the Federalist Party in most of the country? What did this party stand for, and why did it become so hated outside of New England?
It’s easy to forget with how much the revolutionary era has been romanticized, but John Adams (the only Federalist president) was seen as an authoritarian during his presidency. The Sedition Act almost neutered the first amendment in the crib.
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My memory is that the Federalists were very pro-national banking (and pro centralization more loosely), which led to pro-international finance and trade links, which at the time in America was a big, big deal and created a lot of dissent, not only between the “rural” vs “urban” areas but led to some foreign policy disagreements. Some New Englanders almost became pro-British, not super popular between Revolutionary aftermath and the later war of 1812. But more of it was the original rural-urban split, and Federalists were seen a bit as elitist. Doubly so when some states started expanding suffrage to non land owners. Circling back to “money” of course - at this time there was no centralized currency, and attempts to do so were seen as promoting corruption and stiffing farmers. After all if you’re a farmer at the time, how can you tell you’re not getting ripped off by exchange rates and early financial instruments? So Federalists being hated doesn’t surprise me at all. These banking issues by the way would persist as very potent forces in elections for at least another 50 years. And understandably so! You needed a catalyst like the Civil War to fully get on the nationalized paper money train, and even then gold and silver standard stuff would persist as issues.
Fun fact: I read yesterday that from the start to the end of the civil war, the federal budget went from 60 million a year to 1.3 billion per year. Not to mention the debt load created by the war and pension plans. But before that, it’s a totally different era.
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The Federalist Party's primary achievement (at least arguably, as the party itself didn't officially exist until after the Bill of Rights was adopted) was the replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution. If anything, the Federalists would have preferred an even stronger Constitution. They were the faction of wealthy Northern elites who wanted the nation to function in stable concert, at least militarily and economically (and under their leadership, naturally). They were broadly abolitionist and accommodated slavery within the Constitution substantially under the view that by doing so they could be instrumental in bringing about its end; consequently, they were not friends of "states rights." They were also much more interested than their opponents in healing the rift with England, to the point where some New England Federalists began to advocate for secession during the War of 1812 (although it might sound a bit like California or Texas "threatening" to secede today, depending on who is in the White House, the War of Independence was still in living memory). Siding with the enemy during a war is a good way to accrue a lot of populist hatred really fast.
Texas does not threaten to secede. The far right in Texas threatens to secede regardless of who is in the white house and gets some measure of popular support when the white house has a democrat in it.
And that is, functionally, what Texas nationalists are- it's just the native far right. Some are russiaboos and some are white nationalists but all of them are goldbugs. Some are ruralists; none of them believe in global warming. Lots of them have conspiracy theories about pedophile rings controlling the federal government; none of them will countersignal those theories. Some are balanced budget hawks, most are christian nationalists, all of them think all gun control except maybe you can't bring a gun physically into a prison ground is unconstitutional. There's a lot of hyper-red tribe signaling about meat and pickup trucks and indie country and open carry. But the common threads in the movement are red tribe cultural supremacy(and this is, in their view, an explicitly assimilatory identity, Hispanics should learn American football and blacks should learn country music but they don't have to change their skin color), hyper-Austrian economics(this does not necessarily imply libertarianism), and extreme skepticism of the federal(not necessarily state) government. Lots of similarities to Ron Paul, but few if any of them would eg point to marijuana prohibition as government overreach. It's just a far-right movement and for much of it secession should be taken seriously but not literally. They really do have strong grievances on cultural, economic, or anti-federal overreach grounds. Daniel Miller really does believe these mean Texas needs to be an independent country, but his rank and file may not; lots of them are just there for the grievances. It's kind of similar to explicitly pro-militia sentiment in red areas of blue states.
I'd like to thank you for posting this, and note that most of this describes the Alaskan Independence Party pretty well too.
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