This was, indeed, in a way the first great national question that could cause such a division.

There had been, to be sure, Whigs and Tories in America, reproducing British parties, but when the trouble with the mother country began, the successive congresses of delegates were recognized and attended only by the so-called American Whigs, and after the Declaration of Independence the name of Tory, became a reproach, so that with the end of the war the Tory party disappeared.

After the Revolution there were local parties in the various States, divided on one and another question, such as that of hard and soft money, and these issues had coincided in different States; but they were in no sense national parties with organizations, platforms, and leaders; they were purely local, and the followers of one or the other would have denied that they were anything else than Whigs.
But a new issue was now raised.

The Whig party split in two, new leaders appeared, and the elements gathered in two main divisions--the Federalists advocating, and the Anti-Federalists opposing, the adoption of the new Constitution.
There were differences of opinion over all the questions which had led to the calling of the Federal Convention and the framing of the Constitution and so there was inevitably a division upon the result of the Convention's work.

There were those who wanted national authority for the suppression of disorder and of what threatened to be anarchy throughout the Union; and on the other hand there were those who opposed a strongly organized government through fear of its destroying liberty.
Especially debtors and creditors took opposite sides, and most of the people in the United States could have been brought under one or the other category.