In the campaign to ratify the Constitution of 1787, nationalists started referring to themselves as federalists, which conveyed the meaning that they were in favor of splitting authority between their proposed strong national government and the states. The confusion in terminology may have helped win some support among citizens worried about a powerful--and potentially tyrannical--national government. Some leading nationalists of the 1780s became Federalists in the 1790s. See Antifederalists. The term also refers to a political party founded by Alexander Hamilton in the 1790s to support his economic program.