Federalists and antifederalists both claimed to represent the true spirit of the american revolution. which of these competing visions of national identity do you think was right? why?

The answer is the anti-federalists. Antifederalists mostly embodied the aims of the Revolution because they continued to be wary of centralized control and the predisposition of governments to turn out to be dictatorial and governed by rich men, championed a declaration of individual rights, and dreaded that smaller state governments would lose power in a large centralized system.