Political Parties Before the Constitution

The Revolutionary Experience legitimatized opposition. Out of this opposition arose two legislative 'parties' known as the 'localists' and the 'cosmopolitans'. As early as 1776, issues concerning funding of debts, paper money, and land prices, provided a battle ground for these early party divisions. Roll call voting greatly concerned every important issue, the author has performed a roll-call analysis of the votes in the lower houses of the various state assemblies and has correlated them to produce a model of the application of quantification in early American history.