I spent some time once editing Wikipedia articles to make sure capital letters were correct so nobody would be misled into...
I spent some time once editing Wikipedia articles to make sure capital letters were correct so nobody would be misled into thinking that the Federalists were federalists (they were anti-federalists) or that the (federalist) anti-Federalists were anti-federalist. The anti-Federalists might also reasonably be called Anti-Federalists, but certainly not Anti-federalists, which would suggest they opposed federalism (which they supported) when in fact they opposed the (anti-federalist) Federalists.
is there one thing about American politics that isn’t irritating, just one
*sobbing* i-i dont-i dont-understand
So lower-case f ‘federalism’ is basically the ideology of “states rights”. Of decentralizing power away from the central government (the federal government) and investing it mostly in the regional governments (the states). Officially, federalism means the central government and the regional governments should be about equal in power, neither being superior to the other.
But in the early republic, the Federalist Party were mainly the enemy of the ‘states rights’ faction. The Federalist Party wanted a little more power in the hands of the central government vis-a-vis the states. The Anti-Federalists, which became the Democratic-Republican Party, were more in favor of federalism (states rights) than the Federalist Party.
So the Federalists were anti-federalist, and the Anti-Federalists were federalist.
If you wanna get more confused, we should also talk about the Democratic-Republicans. The Democratic-Republican Party would eventually evolve by the 1830s into what we now know as the Democratic Party. In it’s time though, it was usually referred to informally as ‘the Republicans.’ But it had nothing to do with the modern Republicans. As I said, this was the party that evolved into the Democrats. It’s enemy was first the Federalists, and then later the Whigs. The party we know as the Republican Party was started entirely independently, in the 1850s, these Republicans having no relationship to the Democrats, which were originally the Democratic-Republicans, known as Republicans for short.
Basically the Federalists were champions of the federation, against the individual states.
Lowercase federalists are champions OF a federation of individual states, as opposed to a unitary national state.