Some naively assume that the citizens of this country after the War for Independence were one big happy family. This was hardly the case. They were able to unite (in a measure) against a common foe, but that did not mean that their views of government and its role in the new nation were the same. What was true of the country at large was true of the delegates to the Constitutional convention in particular. There were at least four major divisions among the delegates who gathered as representatives of their respective states in Philadelphia to work on a new Constitution:

1. The Federalists vs. the Anti-Federalists

This was the most basic and serious division that existed in the assembly. It is important to realize however that these designations were not used during the debates themselves; they were titles given to the two sides during the ratification debates that took place within the various states. In the convention itself, the terms used were federalists and nationalists.