One of my favourite Frederick Vosper quotes is; "Sworn to no party, and of no sect am I." Thomas Jefferson was asked in a letter from Francis Hopkinson whether he was a federalist or anti-federalist. Jefferson answered that where he could make his own opinions he required no creed to speak for him.

In Jefferson's letter to Hopkinson, 1789;

You say that I have been dished up to you as an anti-federalist, and ask me if it is just. My opinion was never worthy enough of notice to merit citing: but since you ask it, I will tell you. I am not a federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself.

Such an addiction, is the last degredation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Therefore I am not of the party of the federalists. But I am much farther from that of the anti-federalists. I approved, from the first moment, of the great mass of what is in the new Constitution: the consolidation of the government: the subdivision of the legislative: the happy compromise of interests between the great and little states, by the different manner of voting in the different houses: the voting by persons instead of states: the qualified negative on laws given to the executive, which, however, I should have liked better if associated with the judiciary also, as in New York: and the power of taxation.

I thought at first that the latter might have been better limited. A little reflection soon convinced me it ought not to be.

What I disapproved of from the first moment also, was the want of a bill of rights, to guard liberty against the legislative as as the executive branches of the government: that is to say, to secure freedom in religion, freedom of the press, freedom from monopolies, freedom from unlawful imprisonment, freedom from a permanent military, and a trial by jury, in all cases determinable by the laws of the land. I disproved, also, the perpetual re-eligibility of the President.

...

These, my dear friend, are my sentiments, by which you will see I was right in saying I am neither federalist or anti-federalist: that I am of neither party, nor yet a trimmer between parties. These, my opinions, I wrote within a few hours after I had read the Constitution [Jefferson was in France during this period], to one or two friends in America.

Jefferson was a wily and perceptive politician. His main pattern was to write that he was above politics and instead have others do his attacking for him, but that was later when he was involved in Executive Cabinet and Presidential politics. In this period, being in France, he was far removed from the political manouverings between the States in the drafting of the Constitution. The speed of the wind across the Atlantic was the main determinant in how up to date his news from America was.

It is interesting that he wrote about term limiting the period. The convention of a President not sitting beyond two terms remained from Washington until Franklin Roosevelt broke it. After which there was a quick constitutional amendment.

Freedom from a standing army is nice sentiment as the military can suck up a lot of a nation's capital and productivity, but in the age of increasing technical complexity and the violence that goes on between nations it proved an impossibility. Adams created his 'wooden walls' which was the US Navy and Jefferson used those wall as President in battles against pirates which were threatening US shipping. Much of the unpreparedness and sacking of Washington DC in the war of 1812 was due to the lack of a strong professional army.