After winning the Revolutionary War and sovereign control of their home country by the English, Americans now faced a new authoritative question: Who should rule at home? In the wake of this massive authoritarian usurpation, there were two main visions for how the new American government should function. While some portion of the nation believed that a strong central government would be most beneficial to the preservation of the Union, others saw a Confederation of sovereign state governments as an option more conducive to the freedoms that Americans fought so hard for during the Revolution . Those in favor of a central government, the federalists, thought that this form of government was necessary to ensure stability, unity, and national influence on foreign perceptions. In contrast, Anti-Federalists saw this stronger form of government as potentially oppressive and eerily similar to the authoritarian tendencies of the British government they had just fought to remove. However, through the final ratification of the Constitution, new states' rights laws, and elections at the turn of the century, the anti-Federalist vision of America can be said to prevail, although some concessions have been made in an attempt to preserve the Union According to Federalists in the early stages of the American republic, a strong central government was needed to provide uniform oversight to the states, thus aiding in the preservation of the Union. This need for a more organized central government was the result of the ineffectiveness of the Article of Confederation government which lacked a unifying governing body. One component of this philosophy was the creation of an executive and other federal branches... half of the document... Opposition to alien and sedition laws." In The William and Mary Quarterly 65, no. 3. Virginia: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2008.Bradburn, Douglas. “State versus Federal.” In the Citizenship Revolution, 2009. Brutus. “Antifederalist VI.” “Antifederalist IV”. In the Antifederalist Papers. New York, 1788. “Bill of Rights”. 45." In the Federalist Papers. Virginia, 1788.Taylor, Alan. "From Fathers to Friends of the People: Political Figures in the Early Republic." In the Journal of the First Republic 11, no. 4. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. Wood, Gordon. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.