In the early United States, there was constant debate on whether the state governments or the federal government should have more power. Individuals who believed that the state governments should have more power were called anti-federalist. People who believed that the federal government should have more power were called federalists. The federalists believed that a weak federal government would result in a significant amount of problems like no sense of national unity and no ability to raise an army. Both of these problems were displayed when the US used the Articles of Confederation for almost a decade.
