Please HELP!!! Need Major Help with Government Paper.?

Just use Wikipedia girlfriend. It has the solution to all your problems.

If you follow the history of "State Rights" you would find that the issue was picked up and switched over by many parties over the years. In short: Federalists became Democrats and Anti-Federalists Republicans.

So there were two phases of Antifederalists. The first group was against the Constitution (and Federalism) and in favor of the Articles of Confederation. AFTER the Constitutional debate, this group insisted upon a bill of rights. These were people like Patrick Henry.

There are five (maybe six) politcal party eras. Each era changes with a "re-alignment" in which supporting groups switch (or create new) parties.

The second era was composed of people like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who feared federal encroactment upon state/ individual rigths. The Democrat/Republicans really got the ball rolling when they claimed President George Washington's Secretary of State, Alexander Hamiltion, was abusing state's rights with his fiscal policies (position on government finances). This led to the first party system.

During the Jackson era, the Federalist party (opposed to the antifederalist party) disolved into the Whig party (Second Party System). They stuck around until the start of the Civil War when they too fell out of grace.

Republican Party was introduced around Lincoln's time and was opposed to slavery (Democrats are mostly for slavery). The Civil War was fought and Republicans were in favor of Reconstruction while Democrats were against it (Third Party System).

Not much going on in Fourth Party system other than the fact that Republicans became "progressive" favoring anti-corruption groups, feminists,social -welfare groups....

Roosevelt's New Coalition within the Democratic party influenced much of the politics we see today with Republicans adopting a conservative "state rights" and laissez-faire economic position while Democrats favored more government intervention.

6th Party System? Political Scientists don't know about this one but the "Republican Revolution" of 1994 made it clear that the Republican party has become more socially conservative since the 1970s as a result of Liberal Democrats (cause the Democratic party leadership started to get filled by people favoring liberal issues like the right to an abortion). However, Republicans continue to stress state rights and devolution (breaking down the federal government to local levels) so we don't really know if there has actually been a re-alignment (look to what your textbook says).

Message me on Yahoo if you have any more questions.

go to the world fact book in the Central Inteligence Agency website www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook

or Google CIA

www.Janes.com might help too

A serious student would not end up on Yanswers for this. You deserve to fail so you can learn from it.