History in Charts

The 5 Most Important Federalist Papers

Important Federalist Papers

The beginning of the United States is littered with influential documents that have stood for centuries. One of the most important among them are the Federalist Papers. Just what are the Federalist Papers and what was their purpose?

Following the American Revolution the new American nation set forth under a new government. The new government operated under the Articles of Confederation after its ratification by all 13 states during the revolution.

It quickly became apparent that the Articles of Confederation drastically limited the power of the federal government. The federal government could not raise an army or navy, raise taxes, nor regulate interstate or foreign trade.

In all these cases, the federal government had to rely on the states, an arrangement that left the United States weak. There was no better example of this than the inability of the United States to pressure the British to vacate their forts on the frontier as promised in the 1783 Treaty of Paris (it was not until Jay’s Treaty of 1794 that the British finally left).

In addition, Shays’ Rebellion also highlighted the weakness of the Articles, when the federal government was powerless to put down an uprising of rural Massachusetts citizens.

This crisis led to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 where delegates proposed the new Constitution of the United States. Before it could go into effect, nine of the thirteen states needed to ratify the document.

This was not to be an easy task. Many states had reservations over the new Constitution, including one of the biggest at the time: New York.

In order to help defend the new Constitution a few of the greatest minds of the day combined forces to convince citizens of the document’s purpose. The result was the Federalist Papers.

What are the Federalist Papers?

The federalist papers writers, the legacy of the federalist papers, summary of federalist no. 10, summary of federalist no. 39, summary of federalist no. 51, summary of federalist no. 68, summary of federalist no. 78.

The Federalist Papers were a series of essays written and published to defend the new Constitution and convince its detractors to ratify it.

The new Constitution had many opponents, known as Anti-Federalists. This faction generally thought this new form of government would give the federal government too much power. Some argued the powers given were greater than even Britain had over the colonies.

Such concentrated power concerned individuals that their freedoms could be in jeopardy. In addition, states’ rights would be severely diminished. Without assurances for individual freedoms through a Bill of Rights, large states such as New York and Virginia refused to ratify the Constitution.

Immediately after the proposal of the Constitution, opponents began to attack the document via essays in newspapers. Prominent Anti-Federalists wrote these essays under pseudonyms such as “Brutus” and “Cato.” 

Three influential supporters of the Constitution, known as Federalists, responded by writing 85 essays over the course of several months declaring their support of the Constitution and explaining in great detail why it was the best form of government for the new nation.

The Federalist Papers

They too wrote under a pseudonym, “Publius,” named after the Roman Publius Valerius Publicola who was reportedly instrumental in the founding of the Roman Republic .

The series of essays were originally compiled and simply named The Federalist . It was not until years later that the essays became known as The Federalist Papers .

New York newspapers published the essays with the express purpose of convincing New York legislators to ratify the Constitution. The Federalist Papers were extremely popular, so much so that newspapers ultimately reprinted them throughout other states.

The arguments were so convincing that Federalists in other states utilized them as a blueprint to argue the Constitution’s merits.

The three influential writers of the Federalist Papers were Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.

Alexander Hamilton first had the idea for the series of essays. Hamilton knew he had to respond to the Constitution’s detractors. In his home state of New York, support for ratification was low and even the two other New York delegates to the Constitutional Convention did not wish to ratify the document.

To help with the monumental task he recruited John Jay, an influential lawyer and diplomat, and James Madison, now known as “The Father of the Constitution,” to help write the essays.

He also asked Gouverneur Morris and William Duer to help. Morris declined the offer and Duer wrote three essays, though Hamilton disliked his work and did not have them published.

Of the 85 essays, Hamilton would go on to write the majority of them. John Jay only wrote five essays given his ill health at the time. James Madison would write 29 essays, including some of the most influential ones remembered to this day.

John Jay Federalist Papers

These include Federalist 10, which is a defense of how the Constitution would protect against dominant factions, and Federalist 51, which explains the checks and balances of the government.

Alexander Hamilton wrote the remaining 51 essays. It was a monumental feat writing such lengthy and convincing arguments in such a short period of time.

It is interesting to note that Hamilton and Madison teamed up in their defense of the Constitution. As history has shown, Hamilton and Madison’s partnership did not last long as the two shortly afterwards found themselves on opposite sides constantly clashing in their ideologies.

In some ways the writings of Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist Papers were in sync. In fact, the similarities are such that the authorship of twelve essays are in dispute as historians cannot discern with certainty whether it was actually Hamilton or Madison who wrote the papers. 1

Other aspects show that it is painfully obvious who wrote which essays. Hamilton’s belief for a strong centralized federal government shows in his writings.

On the other hand, Madison’s beliefs are apparent that although he believed a stronger federal government than the Articles of Confederation allowed was necessary, there needed to be strict checks and balances on its power and states’ rights should take precedence.

The Federalist Papers have left a lasting legacy even centuries after they were first written. The essays served the important purpose of helping to explain the meaning behind and intentions of the new Constitution.

Interestingly enough, the Federalist Papers failed in their original goal. Despite the persuasiveness of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, New York delegates refused to ratify the Constitution until the addition of a Bill of Rights.

Despite the failure, the collections of essays are still highly-regarded by historians to this day. They serve as a gateway into the minds of the founding fathers in terms of what they intended for the new Constitution and nation as a whole.

The uniqueness of the American system cannot be understated. There was no other document or system of government like it in history.

The Federalist Papers Writers and Authors chart

The concept of federalism, where power is shared between national and state governments, was also new and unique to the Constitution. The founders hoped that this system would avoid the pitfalls of a wholly nation system (like the British monarchy) or a wholly confederate system (like the Articles of Confederation).

The founding fathers could not have possibly anticipated everything that would occur under the new system, nor the challenges the new nation would face.

In theory, the Constitution was very clear: the federal government is authorized with very specific listed powers and the rest of the powers are reserved for the states.

In practice the Constitution proved difficult to interpret, and the struggle between what powers it intended for the national government and what powers were for the state governments continue to this day.

While all 85 essays have stood the test of time, there are several that are more relevant in today’s era than the rest. The 5 most important Federalist Papers are generally considered to be Federalist 10, 39, 51, 68, and 78.

Of all the Federalist Papers, essay No. 10 is one of the most famous. In Federalist No. 10 James Madison delivered a well-reasoned argument as to why the Constitution was uniquely capable of preventing the United States’ domination by factions and special interest groups.

Madison reasoned that it is simple human nature to separate into factions. There inevitably will be different opinions concerning government, religion, liberty, etc that arise and that citizens will form factions over.

Madison was not concerned with the potential of small factions ruling the nation (perhaps underestimating the power and influence of the small faction of the wealthy).

Instead, he was concerned about majority factions that could “sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” Madison greatly feared the “tyranny of the majority.”

James Madison Federalist Papers

Madison reasoned the new Constitution would be able to help prevent “tyranny of the majority.” The new government would be a republic with power shared between states and the national government. The varying levels of government, shared power, direct, and indirect elections would prove to be a buffer against such a threat.

In addition, Madison predicted the republic of the United States would grow to be even larger. A large republic would thus have an even wider array of geographic, religious, social, and economic interests, making it even less likely for a true majority faction to dominate.

While there is no true safeguard against the power of factions or special interest groups, Madison argued the Constitution was uniquely capable of safeguarding American liberties from the majority factions.

In Federalist No. 39, James Madison penned a defense of the republican form of government, first describing what qualified as a republic, then pronouncing the Constitution as a federal rather than national form of government.

Madison firmly rejected the idea that the new Constitution was not republican in nature. He first defined what makes a government republican, noting two main points:

  • A government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people
  • Administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior

He also lambasted the aristocratic classes of wealthy elite members of society who sought to bend government to their favor:

After noting how the new Constitution checks the boxes of how it forms a republican government, Madison next addressed the idea that the individual states would give up their identity’s as part of the new government.

Anti-Federalists argued that the new Constitution would be a national form of government, rather than a federal government. This was a major concern as under a national government, states became subordinate to the central government and over time a consolidation of state would occur.

Madison rejected this idea, arguing that each state would maintain its own sovereignty and the states would unanimously consent of their own volition to give the central government power.

He ultimately deduced that the new Constitution was unique in that it was “neither wholly national nor wholly federal,” which best suited the United States.

Federalist No. 51 is also one of the more-well known essays of the collections. James Madison wrote this essay and dove into the system of “checks and balances” within the new government.

The Constitution splits the United States’ government into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. A single person rules the executive, the President, who is elected via the Electoral College.

The legislative branch consists of two bodies: the Senate and the House of Representatives. State legislatures were to elect members of the Senate and each state received two Senators regardless of state size. Instead, the House of Representatives members were to be elected via direct democracy and states were assigned members proportional to size.

The President reserved the power to nominate members of the judicial branch, though the nominations needed confirmation by the Senate. Judiciary members received life terms so that the President who appointed them had less influence over their actions, as well as the Senators that confirmed them.

Federalist 51 went on to describe how the system of checks and balances would preserve liberty in the United States. By giving express powers to the different branches, it served to act as a “check” on the other branches’ power.

If one branch were to become too powerful, American liberties could be in jeopardy. A balance of power between the three branches of government would help to preserve the liberties and freedoms fought for in the revolution.

In Federalist No. 68, Alexander Hamilton provided a defense for the method of electing the President of the United States: the Electoral College.

There were many differing proposals to select the member(s) of the Executive branch at the Constitutional Convention. Some proposed election by direct democracy, others by state legislatures, and still others by Congress.

In addition, there were differing plans as to just how many executives there should be, with proposals ranging from one to as many as three. Hamilton himself favored only one executive, however he believed that the executive should hold office for life instead of having terms.

These differing proposals resulted in a compromise to elect the President: the Electoral College. In Federalist No. 68 Hamilton outlined the thoughts behind the idea. He claimed that the electors would be “men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station,” which would help to ensure the President was someone worthy of the title.

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

Since the electors could not hold political office, they would be outside politics in a “detached situation” and aid in the avoidance of corruption in the election process.

In essence, the framers designed the Electoral College as an alternative to direct election by citizens. It was also considered as a compromise for slave-holding states.

Madison himself admitted direct election would have been preferable in his notes during the Constitutional Convention: “The people at large was in his opinion the fittest in itself.”

However, he later quipped:

Based on Madison’s notes, the Electoral College sprung as a compromise for the less populous southern states (since enslaved people did not count as citizens).

Given the dubious nature of the beginnings of the Electoral College, it is no wonder that many Americans believe it to be one of the more archaic and unnecessary aspects of the Constitution.

Alexander Hamilton penned Federalist No. 78 where he helped to explain the role of the judiciary branch in the new Constitution.

Hamilton described the judiciary as the weakest of the three branches. He wrote, “It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”

This weakness justifies the permanency in office of federal judges, so that they can uphold public justice and security without fear or reprisal from the other branches. He was also quick to note that federal judges cannot be removed so long as they display “good behavior.”

Chief Justice John Marshall Federalist 78

In Federalist No. 78 Hamilton argued strongly for the process of judicial review. Judicial review is the process where federal judges can determine whether or not a statute or law is in conflict with the Constitution, the “fundamental law.” He wrote:

The Constitution did not expressly give the judiciary the power of judicial review; these were merely Hamilton’s thoughts and interpretations of what the document could entail.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall affirmed the process of judicial review in perhaps the most important case in US history: Marbury v. Madison (1803).

To recap, historians generally consider the 5 most important Federalist Papers to be:

  • Federalist No. 10
  • Federalist No. 39
  • Federalist No. 51
  • Federalist No. 68
  • Federalist No. 78

Despite fierce backlash, all thirteen states eventually ratified the new Constitution. Interestingly, Article VII of the Constitution stipulated that only nine of thirteen states needed to ratify the document for it to go into effect for the participating states.

Only eleven states had ratified the Constitution by the first election in 1788 that saw George Washington chosen to lead the nation. North Carolina and Rhode Island had not ratified the Constitution yet and thus were not technically part of the new government.

The Constitution faced numerous challenges in the early days of the nation’s history. The founders could not possibly have foreseen all the challenges facing the United States, but did their best to create a flexible document that would be interpreted in various ways.

Many early court cases such as Marbury v. Madison , Fletcher v. Peck , McCulloch v. Maryland , and Gibbons v. Ogden , among others, helped to solidify constitutional law and clarify the Constitution’s intent.

To this day politicians and jurors offer differing views as to how to interpret this living document.

To learn more about US history, check out this timeline of the history of the United States .

1) Mason, Alpheus Thomas. “The Federalist–A Split Personality.” The American Historical Review , vol. 57, no. 3, 1952, pp. 625–43. JSTOR , https://doi.org/10.2307/1844351 .

2) Avalon Project

3) “Method of Appointing the Executive, [19 July] 1787,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065 .

4) Avalon Project

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Course: US history   >   Unit 3

  • The Articles of Confederation
  • What was the Articles of Confederation?
  • Shays's Rebellion
  • The Constitutional Convention
  • The US Constitution

The Federalist Papers

  • The Bill of Rights
  • Social consequences of revolutionary ideals
  • The presidency of George Washington
  • Why was George Washington the first president?
  • The presidency of John Adams
  • Regional attitudes about slavery, 1754-1800
  • Continuity and change in American society, 1754-1800
  • Creating a nation
  • The Federalist Papers was a collection of essays written by John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton in 1788.
  • The essays urged the ratification of the United States Constitution, which had been debated and drafted at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787.
  • The Federalist Papers is considered one of the most significant American contributions to the field of political philosophy and theory and is still widely considered to be the most authoritative source for determining the original intent of the framers of the US Constitution.

The Articles of Confederation and Constitutional Convention

  • In Federalist No. 10 , Madison reflects on how to prevent rule by majority faction and advocates the expansion of the United States into a large, commercial republic.
  • In Federalist No. 39 and Federalist 51 , Madison seeks to “lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which to a certain extent is admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty,” emphasizing the need for checks and balances through the separation of powers into three branches of the federal government and the division of powers between the federal government and the states. 4 ‍  
  • In Federalist No. 84 , Hamilton advances the case against the Bill of Rights, expressing the fear that explicitly enumerated rights could too easily be construed as comprising the only rights to which American citizens were entitled.

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1.6: The Federalist Papers and Constitutional Government

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Authors of the Federalist Papers Illustaration

What is Federalism?

Federalism is the system of government in which sovereignty (the authority and power to govern over a group of people) is constitutionally divided between a central, or national government, and individual regional political units generally referred to as states. It is based upon democratic rules and institutions in which the power to govern is shared between national and state governments, creating a federation.

Debating a Federal System: The Federalist Papers

The most forceful defense of the new Constitution was The Federalist Papers , a compilation of 85 anonymous essays published in New York City to convince the people of the state to vote for ratification. These articles were written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. They examined the benefits of the new Constitution and analyzed the political theory and function behind the various articles of the Constitution. Those opposed to the new Constitution became known as the Anti-Federalists. They generally were local rather than cosmopolitan in perspective, oriented to plantations and farms rather than commerce or finance, and wanted strong state governments and a weak national government. The Anti-Federalists believed that the Legislative Branch had too much power, and that they were unchecked. Also, the Executive Branch had too much power, they believed that there was no check on the President. The final belief was that a Bill of Rights should be coupled with the Constitution to prevent a dictator from exploiting citizens. The Federalists argued that it was impossible to list all the rights and those that were not listed could be easily overlooked because they were not in the official Bill of Rights.

What Were The Federalist Papers and Why are They Important?

The Federalist Papers were a series of essays by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison written for the Federalist newspaper.

The convention in Virginia began its debate before nine states had approved the Constitution, but the contest was so close and bitterly fought that it lasted past the point when the technical number needed to ratify had been reached. Nevertheless, Virginia's decision was crucial to the nation. Who can imagine the early history of the United States if Virginia had not joined the union? What if leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison had not been allowed to hold national political office? In the end Virginia approved the Constitution, with recommended amendments, in an especially close vote (89-79). Only one major state remained; the Constitution was close to getting the broad support that it needed to be effective.

Perhaps no state was as deeply divided as New York. The nationalist-urban artisan alliance could strongly carry New York City and the surrounding region while more rural upstate areas were strongly Anti-Federalist. The opponents of the Constitution had a strong majority when the convention began and set a tough challenge for Alexander Hamilton, the leading New York Federalist. Hamilton managed a brilliant campaign that narrowly won the issue (30-27) by combining threat and accommodation. On the one hand, he warned that commercial down state areas might separate from upstate New York if it didn't ratify. On the other hand, he accepted the conciliatory path suggested by Massachusetts; amendments would be acceptable after ratification.

The debate in New York produced perhaps the most famous exploration of American political philosophy, now called The Federalist Papers . Originally they were a series of 85 anonymous letters to newspapers that were co-written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Together, they tried to assure the public of the two key points of the Federalist agenda. First, they explained that a strong government was needed for a variety of reasons, but especially if the United States was to be able to act effectively in foreign affairs. Second, they tried to convince readers that because of the "separation" of powers in the central government, there was little chance of the national government evolving into a tyrannical power. Instead of growing ever stronger, the separate branches would provide a "check and balance" against each other, so that none could rise to complete dominance.

The influence of these newspaper letters in the New York debate is not entirely known, but their status as a classic of American political thought is beyond doubt. Although Hamilton wrote the majority of the letters, James Madison authored the ones that are most celebrated today, especially Federalist No. 10.

Here Madison argued that a larger republic would not lead to greater abuse of power (as had traditionally been thought), but actually could work to make a large national republic a defense against tyranny. Madison explained that the large scope of the national republic would prevent local interests from rising to dominance and therefore the larger scale itself limited the potential for abuse of power. By including a diversity of interests (he identified agriculture, manufacturing, merchants, and creditors, as the key ones), the different groups in a larger republic would cancel each other out and prevent a corrupt interest from controlling all the others.

Madison was one of the first political theorists to offer a profoundly modern vision of self-interest as an aspect of human nature that could be employed to make government better, rather than more corrupt. In this, he represents a key figure in the transition from a traditional Republican vision of America, to a modern Liberal one where self-interest has a necessary role to play in public life.

A Closer Look at the Federalist Papers

Let’s closely examine just three of these important documents.

Federalist #10: In this, the most famous of the Federalist Papers , James Madison begins by stating that one of the strongest arguments in favor of the Constitution is the establishment of a government capable of controlling the violence and damage caused by factions which Madison defines as groups of people who gather together to protect and promote their special economic interests and political opinions (basically political parties and special interests today). Although these factions are at odds with each other, they frequently work against the public interest and infringe upon the rights of others.

Both sides of the Constitutional debate (federalists AND anti-federalists alike) have been concerned with the political instability that these rival factions may cause. Under the Articles of Confederation, the state governments have not succeeded in solving this problem. As a matter of fact, the situation has become such a problem that people have become disillusioned with all politicians and blame the government for their problems (sound familiar?). Consequently, a form of popular government that can deal successfully with this problem has a great deal to recommend it.

Federalist #39: This essay was written to explain and defend the new form of Republican government which the Founding Fathers envisioned to be different than any other “Republic” in Europe. In the mind of Madison and the other founders, no other form of government is suited to the particular genius of the American people; only a Republican form of government can carry forward the principles fought for in the Revolution or demonstrate that self-government is both possible and practical.

Madison sees a Republican form of government as one which derives its powers either directly or indirectly from the people (which distinguishes this new form of republicanism from others that had been used in Europe). This form is administered by people who hold elected public office for a limited period of time or during good behavior. He goes on to say that no government can be called Republican that derives its power from a few people or from a favored and wealthy class (as many governments in Europe did). The Constitution conforms to these Republican principles by ensuring that the people will directly elect the House of Representatives. Additionally, the people indirectly select the senators and the president. Even the judges will reflect the choice of the people since the president appoints them, and the Senate confirms their appointment. The president, senators, and representatives hold office for a specified and limited term. Judges are appointed for life ­but subject to good behavior. The constitutional prohibition against granting titles of nobility and the guarantee to the states that they shall enjoy a republican form of government is further proof that the new government is Republican in nature.

These facts do not satisfy all people. Some people claim that the new Constitution destroyed the federal aspect of the government by taking away too much power from the states. Opponents (anti-federalists) believed that the framers established a national (unitary) form of government where the citizens' are directly acted upon by a central government as citizens of the nation rather than as citizens of the states. But the proposed government (a federal republic) would contain both national and federal characteristics and would allow for a sharing and careful balance of powers between the national government and the states. The principle of federalism (a division of power between the states and the national government) is integrated into the new Constitution and reflected in the suggested method of ratification. The delegates to the ratifying conventions would directly participate (through voting) as citizens of their states, not as citizens of the nation. Madison also points out that this new form of federal republic is also reflected in the structure of the Senate in which the states are equally represented. Since the states would retain certain exclusive and important powers, this is to be considered further proof of the federal nature of the proposed government.

Madison goes on to concede that the new Constitution does exhibit national (central government) features. Madison finishes by reaching the conclusion that the government would be BOTH national and federal. In the operation of its powers, it is a nation; in the extent of its power, it is federal.

Federalist # 51: In this essay, James Madison explains and defends the checks and balances system which would prove to be one of the most important protections and limits included in the Constitution. Each branch of government would be constructed so that its power would have checks over the power of the other two branches. Also, each branch of government is to be subject to the authority of the people who are the legitimate source of authority for the United States government and its new Constitution.

Madison also goes on to discuss the way a republican government can serve as a check on the power of factions, and the tyranny of the majority which would limit the ability of the majority from imposing their will on the minority unjustly (like a tyrant or despot imposing his will over his subjects).

Madison’s conclusion is that all of the Constitution’s checks and balances would serve to preserve liberty by ensuring justice. Madison explained, “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.” Madison’s political theory is based on Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws on the Founders .

The Impact of the Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers had an immediate impact on the ratification debate in New York and in the other states. The demand for reprints was so great that one New York newspaper publisher printed the essays together in two volumes entitled The Federalist, A Collection of Essays Written in Favor of the New Constitution, By a Citizen of New York . By this time, the identity of "Publius," never a well-kept secret, was pretty well known. The Federalist , also called The Federalist Papers , has served two very different purposes in American history. The 85 essays succeeded in persuading doubtful New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution. Today, The Federalist Papers help us to more clearly understand what the writers of the Constitution had in mind when they drafted that amazing document over 200 years ago.

From these essays, Americans have received a gift from our Founding Fathers. Whenever we, as a nation, need to consider what the original intent and meaning of the Constitution was more than 200 years ago, we simply can go back to these documents and remind ourselves exactly what our founders were thinking and what was intended without any question as to meaning or design.

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Study/Discussion Questions

For each of the following terms, write a sentence which uses or describes the term in your own words.

1. Why has federalism been such a major source of conflict throughout the history of the United States?

2. Why are the Federalist Papers important to our Constitutional system?

3. Compare the views of the Federalists with those of the Anti-Federalists.

4. How do Federalist Papers 10, 39 and 51 contribute to our understanding of the Constitution and the issue of federalism?

5. How would you describe the impact of the Federalist Papers on American government today? What do you think our governmental system would be like without them?

The American Founding

Introduction to the Federalist Papers

the federalist papers most important

Origin of the Federalist

The 85 essays appeared in one or more of the following four New York newspapers: 1)  The New York Journal , edited by Thomas Greenleaf, 2)  Independent Journal , edited by John McLean, 3)  New York Advertiser , edited by Samuel and John Loudon, and 4)  Daily Advertiser , edited by Francis Childs. This site uses the 1818 Gideon edition. Initially, they were intended to be a 20-essay response to the  Antifederalist  attacks on the  Constitution  that were flooding the New York newspapers right after the  Constitution  had been signed in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. The Cato letters started to appear on September 27,  George Mason ‘s objections were in circulation and the Brutus Essays were launched on October 18. The number of essays in  The Federalist  was extended in response to the relentless, and effective,  Antifederalist  criticism of the proposed  Constitution .

McLean bundled the first 36 essays together—they appeared in the newspapers between October 27, 1787 and January 8, 1788—and published them as Volume 1 on March 22, 1788. Essays 37 through 77 of  The Federalist  appeared between January 11 and April 2, 1788. On May 28, McLean took  Federalist  37-77 as well as the yet to be published  Federalist  78-85 and issued them all as Volume 2 of  The Federalist . Between June 14 and August 16, these eight remaining essays— Federalist  78-85—appeared in the  Independent Journal  and  New York Packet .

THE STATUS OF  THE FEDERALIST

One of the persistent questions concerning the status of  The Federalist  is this: is it a propaganda tract written to secure ratification of the  Constitution  and thus of no enduring relevance or is it the authoritative expositor of the meaning of the  Constitution  having a privileged position in constitutional interpretation? It is tempting to adopt the former position because 1) the essays originated in the rough and tumble of the ratification struggle. It is also tempting to 2) see  The Federalist  as incoherent; didn’t  Hamilton  and  Madison  disagree with each other within five years of co-authoring the essays? Surely the seeds of their disagreement are sown in the very essays! 3) The essays sometimes appeared at a rate of about three per week and, according to  Madison , there were occasions when the last part of an essay was being written as the first part was being typed.

the federalist papers most important

  • One should not confuse self-serving propaganda with advocating a political position in a persuasive manner. After all, rhetorical skills are a vital part of the democratic electoral process and something a free people have to handle. These are op-ed pieces of the highest quality addressing the most pressing issues of the day.
  • Moreover, because  Hamilton  and  Madison  parted ways doesn’t mean that they weren’t in fundamental agreement in 1787-1788 about the need for a more energetic form of government. And just because they were written with a certain haste, doesn’t mean that they were unreflective and not well written.  Federalist  10 , the most famous of all the essays, is actually the final draft of an essay that originated in  Madison ‘s  Vices  in 1787, matured at the  Constitutional Convention  in June 1787, and was refined in a letter to Jefferson in October 1787. All of  Jay ‘s essays focus on foreign policy, the heart of the Madisonian essays are  Federalist  37-51 on the great difficulty of founding, and  Hamilton  tends to focus on the institutional features of federalism and the separation of powers.

I suggest, furthermore, that the moment these essays were available in book form, they acquired a status that went beyond the more narrowly conceived objective of trying to influence the ratification of the  Constitution .  The Federalist  now acquired a “timeless” and higher purpose, a sort of icon status equal to the very  Constitution  that it was defending and interpreting. And we can see this switch in tone in  Federalist  37  when  Madison  invites his readers to contemplate the great difficulty of founding.  Federalist  38 , echoing  Federalist  1 , points to the uniqueness of the America Founding: never before had a nation been founded by the reflection and choice of multiple founders who sat down and deliberated over creating the best form of government consistent with the genius of the American people. Thomas Jefferson referred to the  Constitution  as the work of “demigods,” and  The Federalist  “the best commentary on the principles of government, which ever was written.” There is a coherent teaching on the constitutional aspects of a new republicanism and a new federalism in  The Federalist  that makes the essays attractive to readers of every generation.

AUTHORSHIP OF  THE FEDERALIST

A second question about  The Federalist  is how many essays did each person write? James Madison —at the time a resident of New York since he was a Virginia delegate to the Confederation Congress that met in New York— John Jay , and  Alexander Hamilton —both of New York— wrote these essays under the pseudonym, “Publius.” So one answer to the question is that it doesn’t matter since everyone signed off under the same pseudonym, “Publius.” But given the icon status of  The Federalist , there has been an enduring curiosity about the authorship of the essays. Although it is virtually agreed that  Jay  wrote only five essays, there have been several disputes over the decades concerning the distribution of the essays between  Hamilton  and  Madison . Suffice it to note, that  Madison ‘s last contribution was  Federalist  63 , leaving  Hamilton  as the exclusive author of the nineteen Executive and Judiciary essays.  Madison  left New York in order to comply with the residence law in Virginia concerning eligibility for the  Virginia ratifying convention . There is also widespread agreement that  Madison  wrote the first 13 essays on the great difficulty of founding. There is still dispute over the authorship of  Federalist  50-58, but these have persuasively been resolved in favor of  Madison .

OUTLINE OF  THE FEDERALIST

A third question concerns how to “outline” the essays into its component parts. We get some natural help from the authors themselves.  Federalist  1  outlines the six topics to be discussed in the essays without providing an exact table of contents. The authors didn’t know in October 1787 how many essays would be devoted to each topic. Nevertheless, if one sticks with the “formal division of the subject” outlined in the first essay, it is possible to work out the actual division of essays into the six topic areas or “points” after the fact so to speak.

the federalist papers most important

Martin Diamond was one of the earliest scholars to break  The Federalist  into its component parts. He identified Union as the subject matter of the first 36  Federalist  essays and Republicanism as the subject matter of the last 49 essays. There is certain neatness to this breakdown, and accuracy to the Union essays. The fist three topics outlined in  Federalist  1  are:

  • The utility of the union
  • The insufficiency of the present confederation under the  Articles of Confederation
  • The need for a government at least as energetic as the one proposed.

The opening paragraph of  Federalist  15  summarizes the previous 14 essays and says: “in pursuance of the plan which I have laid down for the pursuance of the subject, the point next in order to be examined is the ‘insufficiency of the present confederation.’” So we can say with confidence that  Federalist  1-14 is devoted to the utility of the union. Similarly,  Federalist  23  opens with the following observation: “the necessity of a Constitution, at least equally energetic as the one proposed…is the point at the examination of the examination at which we are arrived.” Thus  Federalist  15-22 covered the second point dealing with union or federalism. Finally,  Federalist  37  makes it clear that coverage of the third point has come to an end and new beginning has arrived. And since McLean bundled the first 36 essays into Volume 1, we have confidence in declaring a conclusion to the coverage of the first three points all having to do with union and federalism.

The difficulty with the Diamond project is that it becomes messy with respect to topics 4, 5, and 6 listed in  Federalist  1 : 4) the  Constitution  conforms to the  true principles of republicanism , 5) the analogy of the  Constitution  to state governments, and 6) the added benefits from adopting the  Constitution . Let’s work our way backward. In  Federalist  85 , we learn that “according to the formal division of the subject of these papers announced in my first number, there would appear still to remain for discussion two points,” namely, the fifth and sixth points. That leaves, “republicanism,” the fourth point, as the topic for  Federalist  37-84, or virtually the entire Part II of  The Federalist .

I propose that we substitute the word  Constitutionalism  for  Republicanism  as the subject matter for essays 37-51, reserving the appellation  Republicanism  for essays 52-84. This substitution is similar to the “Merits of the  Constitution ” designation offered by Charles Kesler in his new introduction to the Rossiter edition; the advantage of this Constitutional approach is that it helps explain why issues other than Republicanism strictly speaking are covered in  Federalist  37-46. Kesler carries the Constitutional designation through to the end; I suggest we return to Republicanism with  Federalist  52 .

Finally, to assist the reader in following the argument of  The Federalist , I have broken the argument down into seven major parts. This breakdown follows the open ended one provided in  Federalist  1 . This can be used in conjunction with the  Essay-by-Essay Summary  and the actual text of  The Federalist .

Note:  The text of  The Federalist  used on this site is from the edition reviewed by James Madison and published by Jacob Gideon in 1818. There may be slight variations in language from the essays as originally published.

James Madison

State:  Virginia

Age at Convention:  36

Date of Birth:  March 16, 1751

Date of Death:  June 28, 1836

Schooling:  College of New Jersey (Princeton) 1771

Occupation:  Politician

Prior Political Experience:  Lower House of Virginia 1776, 1783-1786, Upper House of Virginia 1778, Virginia State Constitutional Convention 1776, Confederation Congress 1781- 1783, 1786-1788, Virginia House of Delegates 1784-1786, Annapolis Convention Signer 1786

Committee Assignments:  Third Committee of Representation, Committee of Slave Trade, Committee of Leftovers, Committee of Style

Convention Contributions:  Arrived May 25 and was present through the signing of the Constitution. He is best known for writing the Virginia Plan and defending the attempt to build a stronger central government. He kept copious notes of the proceedings of the Convention which were made available to the general public upon his death in 1836. William Pierce stated that “Mr. Madison is a character who has long been in public life; and what is very remarkable every Person seems to acknowledge his greatness. He blends together the profound politician, with the Scholar. … The affairs of the United States, he perhaps, has the most correct knowledge of, of any Man in the Union.”

New Government Participation:  Attended the ratification convention of Virginia and supported the ratification of the Constitution. He also coauthored the Federalist Papers. Served as Virginia’s U.S. Representative (1789-1797) where he drafted and debated the First Twelve Amendments to the Constitution; ten of which became the Bill of Rights; author of the Virginia Resolutions which argued that the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were unconstitutional. Served as Secretary of State (1801-1809) Elected President of the United States of America (1809-1817).

Biography from the National Archives:  The oldest of 10 children and a scion of the planter aristocracy, Madison was born in 1751 at Port Conway, King George County, VA, while his mother was visiting her parents. In a few weeks she journeyed back with her newborn son to Montpelier estate, in Orange County, which became his lifelong home. He received his early education from his mother, from tutors, and at a private school. An excellent scholar though frail and sickly in his youth, in 1771 he graduated from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), where he demonstrated special interest in government and the law. But, considering the ministry for a career, he stayed on for a year of postgraduate study in theology.

Back at Montpelier, still undecided on a profession, Madison soon embraced the patriot cause, and state and local politics absorbed much of his time. In 1775 he served on the Orange County committee of safety; the next year at the Virginia convention, which, besides advocating various Revolutionary steps, framed the Virginia constitution; in 1776-77 in the House of Delegates; and in 1778-80 in the Council of State. His ill health precluded any military service.

In 1780 Madison was chosen to represent Virginia in the Continental Congress (1780-83 and 1786-88). Although originally the youngest delegate, he played a major role in the deliberations of that body. Meantime, in the years 1784-86, he had again sat in the Virginia House of Delegates. He was a guiding force behind the Mount Vernon Conference (1785), attended the Annapolis Convention (1786), and was otherwise highly instrumental in the convening of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He had also written extensively about deficiencies in the Articles of Confederation.

Madison was clearly the preeminent figure at the convention. Some of the delegates favored an authoritarian central government; others, retention of state sovereignty; and most occupied positions in the middle of the two extremes. Madison, who was rarely absent and whose Virginia Plan was in large part the basis of the Constitution, tirelessly advocated a strong government, though many of his proposals were rejected. Despite his poor speaking capabilities, he took the floor more than 150 times, third only after Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson. Madison was also a member of numerous committees, the most important of which were those on postponed matters and style. His journal of the convention is the best single record of the event. He also played a key part in guiding the Constitution through the Continental Congress.

Playing a lead in the ratification process in Virginia, too, Madison defended the document against such powerful opponents as Patrick Henry, George Mason, and Richard Henry Lee. In New York, where Madison was serving in the Continental Congress, he collaborated with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in a series of essays that in 1787-88 appeared in the newspapers and were soon published in book form as The Federalist (1788). This set of essays is a classic of political theory and a lucid exposition of the republican principles that dominated the framing of the Constitution.

In the U.S. House of Representatives (1789-97), Madison helped frame and ensure passage of the Bill of Rights. He also assisted in organizing the executive department and creating a system of federal taxation. As leaders of the opposition to Hamilton’s policies, he and Jefferson founded the Democratic-Republican Party.

In 1794 Madison married a vivacious widow who was 16 years his junior, Dolley Payne Todd, who had a son; they were to raise no children of their own. Madison spent the period 1797-1801 in semiretirement, but in 1798 he wrote the Virginia Resolutions, which attacked the Alien and Sedition Acts. While he served as Secretary of State (1801-9), his wife often served as President Jefferson’s hostess.

In 1809 Madison succeeded Jefferson. Like the first three Presidents, Madison was enmeshed in the ramifications of European wars. Diplomacy had failed to prevent the seizure of U.S. ships, goods, and men on the high seas, and a depression wracked the country. Madison continued to apply diplomatic techniques and economic sanctions, eventually effective to some degree against France. But continued British interference with shipping, as well as other grievances, led to the War of 1812.

The war, for which the young nation was ill prepared, ended in stalemate in December 1814 when the inconclusive Treaty of Ghent which nearly restored prewar conditions, was signed. But, thanks mainly to Andrew Jackson’s spectacular victory at the Battle of New Orleans (Chalmette) in January 1815, most Americans believed they had won. Twice tested, independence had survived, and an ebullient nationalism marked Madison’s last years in office, during which period the Democratic-Republicans held virtually uncontested sway.

In retirement after his second term, Madison managed Montpelier but continued to be active in public affairs. He devoted long hours to editing his journal of the Constitutional Convention, which the government was to publish 4 years after his death. He served as co-chairman of the Virginia constitutional convention of 1829-30 and as rector of the University of Virginia during the period 1826-36. Writing newspaper articles defending the administration of Monroe, he also acted as his foreign policy adviser.

Madison spoke out, too, against the emerging sectional controversy that threatened the existence of the Union. Although a slaveholder all his life, he was active during his later years in the American Colonization Society, whose mission was the resettlement of slaves in Africa.

Madison died at the age of 85 in 1836, survived by his wife and stepson.

Age at Convention:  62

Date of Birth:  December 11,1725

Date of Death:  October 7, 1792

Schooling:  Personal tutors

Occupation:  Planter and Slave Holder, Lending and Investments, Real Estate Land Speculation, Public Security Investments, Land owner

Prior Political Experience:  Author of Virginia Bill of Rights, State Lower House of Virginia 1776-1780, 1786-1787, Virginia State Constitutional Convention 1776

Committee Assignments:  First Committee of Representation, Committee of Assumption of State Debts, Committee of Trade, Chairman Committee of Economy, Frugality, and Manufactures

Convention Contributions:  Arrived May 25 and was present through the signing of the Constitution, however he did not sign the Constitution. Initially Mason advocated a stronger central government but withdrew his support toward the end of the deliberations. He argued that the Constitution inadequately represented the interests of the people and the States and that the new government will “produce a monarchy, or a corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy.” William Pierce stated that “he is able and convincing in debate, steady and firm in his principles, and undoubtedly one of the best politicians in America.” He kept notes of the debates at the Convention.

New Government Participation:  He attended the ratification convention of Virginia where he opposed the ratification of the Constitution. Did not serve in the new Federal Government.

Biography from the National Archives:  In 1725 George Mason was born to George and Ann Thomson Mason. When the boy was 10 years old his father died, and young George’s upbringing was left in the care of his uncle, John Mercer. The future jurist’s education was profoundly shaped by the contents of his uncle’s 1500-volume library, one-third of which concerned the law.

Mason established himself as an important figure in his community. As owner of Gunston Hall he was one of the richest planters in Virginia. In 1750 he married Anne Eilbeck, and in 23 years of marriage they had five sons and four daughters. In 1752 he acquired an interest in the Ohio Company, an organization that speculated in western lands. When the crown revoked the company’s rights in 1773, Mason, the company’s treasurer, wrote his first major state paper, Extracts from the Virginia Charters, with Some Remarks upon Them.

During these years Mason also pursued his political interests. He was a justice of the Fairfax County court, and between 1754 and 1779 Mason was a trustee of the city of Alexandria. In 1759 he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses. When the Stamp Act of 1765 aroused outrage in the colonies, George Mason wrote an open letter explaining the colonists’ position to a committee of London merchants to enlist their support.

In 1774 Mason again was in the forefront of political events when he assisted in drawing up the Fairfax Resolves, a document that outlined the colonists’ constitutional grounds for their objections to the Boston Port Act. Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, framed by Mason in 1776, was widely copied in other colonies, served as a model for Jefferson in the first part of the Declaration of Independence, and was the basis for the federal Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

The years between 1776 and 1780 were filled with great legislative activity. The establishment of a government independent of Great Britain required the abilities of persons such as George Mason. He supported the disestablishment of the church and was active in the organization of military affairs, especially in the West. The influence of his early work, Extracts from the Virginia Charters, is seen in the 1783 peace treaty with Great Britain, which fixed the Anglo-American boundary at the Great Lakes instead of the Ohio River. After independence, Mason drew up the plan for Virginia’s cession of its western lands to the United States.

By the early 1780s, however, Mason grew disgusted with the conduct of public affairs and retired. He married his second wife, Sarah Brent, in 1780. In 1785 he attended the Mount Vernon meeting that was a prelude to the Annapolis convention of 1786, but, though appointed, he did not go to Annapolis.

At Philadelphia in 1787 Mason was one of the five most frequent speakers at the Constitutional Convention. He exerted great influence, but during the last two weeks of the convention he decided not to sign the document.

Mason’s refusal prompts some surprise, especially since his name is so closely linked with constitutionalism. He explained his reasons at length, citing the absence of a declaration of rights as his primary concern. He then discussed the provisions of the Constitution point by point, beginning with the House of Representatives. The House he criticized as not truly representative of the nation, the Senate as too powerful. He also claimed that the power of the federal judiciary would destroy the state judiciaries, render justice unattainable, and enable the rich to oppress and ruin the poor. These fears led Mason to conclude that the new government was destined to either become a monarchy or fall into the hands of a corrupt, oppressive aristocracy.

Two of Mason’s greatest concerns were incorporated into the Constitution. The Bill of Rights answered his primary objection, and the 11th amendment addressed his call for strictures on the judiciary.

Throughout his career Mason was guided by his belief in the rule of reason and in the centrality of the natural rights of man. He approached problems coolly, rationally, and impersonally. In recognition of his accomplishments and dedication to the principles of the Age of Reason, Mason has been called the American manifestation of the Enlightenment. Mason died on October 7, 1792, and was buried on the grounds of Gunston Hall.

Alexander Hamilton

State:  New York (Born in British West Indies, immigrated 1772)

Age at Convention:  30

Date of Birth:  January 11, 1757

Date of Death:  July 12, 1804

Schooling:  Attended Kings College (Columbia)

Occupation:  Lawyer, Public Security Interests, Real Estate, Land Speculation, Soldier

Prior Political Experience:  Confederation Congress 1782-1783, Represented New York at Annapolis Convention 1786, Lower State Legislature of New York 1787

Committee Assignments:  Committee of Rules, Committee of Style

Convention Contributions:  Arrived May 25, departed June 30, and except for one day, August 13, he was absent until September 6. Upon his return he remained present through the signing of the Constitution. His most important contribution was the introduction and defense of the Hamilton plan on June 18, 1787, that argued neither the Virginia Plan nor the New Jersey Plan were adequate to the task at hand. William Pierce stated that “there is no skimming over the surface of a subject with him, he must sink to the bottom to see what foundation it rests on.”

New Government Participation:  Attended the New York ratifying convention and supported the ratification of the Constitution. President Washington nominated and the Senate confirmed Hamilton as the Secretary of the Treasury (1789 – 1796). He was the principle author of the Federalist Papers.

Biography from the National Archives:  Hamilton was born in 1757 on the island of Nevis, in the Leeward group, British West Indies. He was the illegitimate son of a common-law marriage between a poor itinerant Scottish merchant of aristocratic descent and an English-French Huguenot mother who was a planter’s daughter. In 1766, after the father had moved his family elsewhere in the Leewards to St. Croix in the Danish (now United States) Virgin Islands, he returned to St. Kitts while his wife and two sons remained on St. Croix.

The mother, who opened a small store to make ends meet, and a Presbyterian clergyman provided Hamilton with a basic education, and he learned to speak fluent French. About the time of his mother’s death in 1768, he became an apprentice clerk at Christiansted in a mercantile establishment, whose proprietor became one of his benefactors. Recognizing his ambition and superior intelligence, they raised a fund for his education.

In 1772, bearing letters of introduction, Hamilton traveled to New York City. Patrons he met there arranged for him to attend Barber’s Academy at Elizabethtown (present Elizabeth), NJ. During this time, he met and stayed for a while at the home of William Livingston, who would one day be a fellow signer of the Constitution. Late the next year, 1773, Hamilton entered King’s College (later Columbia College and University) in New York City, but the Revolution interrupted his studies.

Although not yet 20 years of age, in 1774-75 Hamilton wrote several widely read pro-Whig pamphlets. Right after the war broke out, he accepted an artillery captaincy and fought in the principal campaigns of 1776-77. In the latter year, winning the rank of lieutenant colonel, he joined the staff of General Washington as secretary and aide-de-camp and soon became his close confidant as well.

In 1780 Hamilton wed New Yorker Elizabeth Schuyler, whose family was rich and politically powerful; they were to have eight children. In 1781, after some disagreements with Washington, he took a command position under Lafayette in the Yorktown, VA, campaign (1781). He resigned his commission that November.

Hamilton then read law at Albany and quickly entered practice, but public service soon attracted him. He was elected to the Continental Congress in 1782-83. In the latter year, he established a law office in New York City. Because of his interest in strengthening the central government, he represented his state at the Annapolis Convention in 1786, where he urged the calling of the Constitutional Convention.

In 1787 Hamilton served in the legislature, which appointed him as a delegate to the convention. He played a surprisingly small part in the debates, apparently because he was frequently absent on legal business, his extreme nationalism put him at odds with most of the delegates, and he was frustrated by the conservative views of his two fellow delegates from New York. He did, however, sit on the Committee of Style, and he was the only one of the three delegates from his state who signed the finished document. Hamilton’s part in New York’s ratification the next year was substantial, though he felt the Constitution was deficient in many respects. Against determined opposition, he waged a strenuous and successful campaign, including collaboration with John Jay and James Madison in writing The Federalist. In 1787 Hamilton was again elected to the Continental Congress.

When the new government got under way in 1789, Hamilton won the position of Secretary of the Treasury. He began at once to place the nation’s disorganized finances on a sound footing. In a series of reports (1790-91), he presented a program not only to stabilize national finances but also to shape the future of the country as a powerful, industrial nation. He proposed establishment of a national bank, funding of the national debt, assumption of state war debts, and the encouragement of manufacturing.

Hamilton’s policies soon brought him into conflict with Jefferson and Madison. Their disputes with him over his pro-business economic program, sympathies for Great Britain, disdain for the common man, and opposition to the principles and excesses of the French revolution contributed to the formation of the first U.S. party system. It pitted Hamilton and the Federalists against Jefferson and Madison and the Democratic-Republicans.

During most of the Washington administration, Hamilton’s views usually prevailed with the President, especially after 1793 when Jefferson left the government. In 1795 family and financial needs forced Hamilton to resign from the Treasury Department and resume his law practice in New York City. Except for a stint as inspector-general of the Army (1798-1800) during the undeclared war with France, he never again held public office.

While gaining stature in the law, Hamilton continued to exert a powerful impact on New York and national politics. Always an opponent of fellow-Federalist John Adams, he sought to prevent his election to the presidency in 1796. When that failed, he continued to use his influence secretly within Adams’ cabinet. The bitterness between the two men became public knowledge in 1800 when Hamilton denounced Adams in a letter that was published through the efforts of the Democratic-Republicans.

In 1802 Hamilton and his family moved into The Grange, a country home he had built in a rural part of Manhattan not far north of New York City. But the expenses involved and investments in northern land speculations seriously strained his finances.

Meanwhile, when Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied in Presidential electoral votes in 1800, Hamilton threw valuable support to Jefferson. In 1804, when Burr sought the governorship of New York, Hamilton again managed to defeat him. That same year, Burr, taking offense at remarks he believed to have originated with Hamilton, challenged him to a duel, which took place at present Weehawken, NJ, on July 11. Mortally wounded, Hamilton died the next day. He was in his late forties at death. He was buried in Trinity Churchyard in New York City.

State:  New York

Age at Ratifying Convention:  42

Affiliation:  Federalist

Nom de Plume:  Publius (with Madison and Hamilton)

Vote at Ratifying Convention:  Yea

Date of Birth:  December 12, 1745

Date of Death:  May 17, 1829

Schooling:  King’s College (Columbia)

Occupation:  Attorney, Judge

Prior Political Experience:  Delegate to the First Continental Congress, 1774; Delegate to the Second Continental Congress; New York Provincial Congress; Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court, 1777-1778; United States Secretary of Foreign Affairs, 1784-1790

Other Political Activities:  Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1790-1795; Governor of New York, 1795-1800

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The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers originated as a series of articles in a New York newspaper in 1787–88. Published anonymously under the pen name of “Publius,” they were written primarily for instrumental political purposes: to promote ratification of the Constitution and defend it against its critics.

Initiated by Alexander Hamilton , the series came to eighty-five articles, the majority by Hamilton himself, twenty-six by James Madison , and five by John Jay. The Federalist was the title under which Hamilton collected the papers for publication as a book.

Despite their polemical origin, the papers are widely viewed as the best work of political philosophy produced in the United States, and as the best expositions of the Constitution to be found amidst all the ratification debates. They are frequently cited for discerning the meaning of the Constitution and the intentions of the founders, although Hamilton’s papers are not always reliable as an exposition of his views: in The Federalist , Hamilton took care to avoid coming out clearly with his views on either the inadequacies of the Constitution or the potentiality for using it dynamically. Instead, he expressed himself indirectly, arguing that the only real danger would arise from the potential weaknesses of the central government under the Constitution , not from its potentialities for greater strength as charged by its opponents. Despite this, The Federalist can be and frequently has been referred to for its exposition of Hamilton’s position on executive authority, judicial review, and other institutional aspects of the Constitution.

The Federalist Papers are also admired abroad—sometimes more than in the United States. Hamilton is held in high esteem abroad: while in America his realist style is received with suspicion of undemocratic intentions, abroad it is taken as a reassurance of solidity, and it is the Jeffersonian idealist style that is received with suspicion of hidden intentions. The Federalist Papers are studied by jurists and legal scholars and cited for writing other countries’ constitutions. In this capacity they have played a significant role in the spread of federal, democratic, and constitutional governments around the world.

  • 1 MODERN FEDERATION AS EXPOUNDED BY THE FEDERALIST
  • 2 AMBIGUITIES OF COORDINATE FEDERALISM IN THE FEDERALIST
  • 3 USE AND ABUSE OF THE FEDERALIST
  • 4.1 Ira Straus

MODERN FEDERATION AS EXPOUNDED BY THE FEDERALIST

The Federalist Papers defended a new form of federalism : what it called “federation” as differentiated from “confederation.” There were precursors for this usage; The Federalist Papers solidified it. All subsequent federalism has been influenced by the example of “federation” in the United States; indeed, the success of it in the United States has led to its being known as “modern federation” in contrast to “classical confederation.” In its basic structures and principles, it has served as the model for most subsequent federal unions, as well as for the reform of older confederacies such as Switzerland.

The main distinguishing characteristics of the model of modern federation, elucidated and defended by The Federalist Papers , are as follows:

1. The federal government’s most important figures, the legislative, are elected largely by the individual citizens, rather than being primarily selected by the governments of member states as in confederation.

2. Conversely, federal law applies directly to individuals, through federal courts and agencies, rather than to member states as in confederation.

3. State citizens become also federal citizens, and naturalization criteria are established federally.

4. The federal Constitution and federal laws and treaties are the supreme law of the land, over and above state constitutions and laws.

5. Federal powers are enumerated, along with what came to be called an “Elastic Clause” (the authority to take measures “necessary and proper” for implementing its enumerated powers); the states keep the vast range of “reserved” powers, that is, the unspecified generality of other potential governmental powers. States cannot act where the federal government is assigned exclusive competence, nor where preempted by lawful federal action; they are specifically excluded from independent foreign relations, from maintaining an army or navy, from interfering with money, and from disrupting contracts or imposing tariffs.

6. Federal and state laws operate in parallel or as “coordinate” powers, each applying directly to individual citizens, rather than acting primarily through or with dependence on one another.

This “coordinate” method applies only to the “vertical” division of powers between federal and state governments, not to the “horizontal” or “functional” division of federal powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The latter “separation of powers” is made in such a form as to deliberately keep the three branches mutually dependent on one another, so that no one of them can step forth—excepting the executive in emergencies—as a full-fledged authority on its own. This mutual functional dependence within the federal level is considered an assurance of steadiness of the rule of law and lack of arbitrariness; by contrast, obstructionism was feared if there were to remain a relation of dependence upon a vertically separate level of government. Thus the turn to “coordinate” powers, with federal and state operations proceeding autonomously from one another, or what came to be called “coordinate federalism.” This terminology encapsulated the departure from the old confederalism, in which federal government operations had been heavily dependent on the states.

AMBIGUITIES OF COORDINATE FEDERALISM IN THE FEDERALIST

Despite The Federalist ’s strong preference for coordinate powers, there are important deviations from it. For example, there are “concurrent” or overlapping powers, such as taxation. This, Hamilton says in The Federalist No. 32, necessarily follows from “the division of sovereign power”: each level of government needs it in order to function with “full vigor” on its own (thus allowing the celebratory formulation for American federalism, “strong States and a strong Federal Government”). Coordinate federalism requires, it turns out, some concurrent powers, not just coordinate powers.

In practice, the deviations from the “coordinate” theory go farther still. For the militia, the state governments have the competence to appoint all the officers and to conduct the training most of the time, but the federal government is authorized to regulate the training and discipline, as well as to place the militia when needed under federal command (a provision defended by Hamilton in The Federalist No. 29). For commercial law, the states draw up the detailed codes, but the federal power to regulate interstate commerce opened the door to broad federal interference with state codes in the twentieth century. In these spheres there is state authority, but it is subordinated to federal authority—a situation close to the traditional hierarchical model, not to the matrix model sometimes used for the coordinate ideal.

While the states are reserved the wider range of powers, the federal government is assigned the prime cuts among the powers. Its competences go to what are usually viewed as core areas of sovereignty—foreign relations, military, and currency—as well as to regulation of some state powers when they get too close to high politics or to interstate concerns. It already formally held most of these competences during the Confederation, but now could carry them out independently of state action. The Federalist Papers advertise this as being the main point of the Constitution: not a fearsome matter of extending the powers of the federal government into newfangled realms, but the unobjectionable matter of rendering its already agreed-upon powers effective. This effectiveness is achieved by adding the key structural characteristic of the modern sovereign state, elaborated by Hobbes in terms not dissimilar to passages in The Federalist : that of penetrating all intermediate levels and reaching down to the individual citizen to derive its authorization and, conversely, to impose its obligations.

In the early years after the Constitution, many federal powers remained dependent de facto on cooperation from the states; The Federalist ’s authors worried that the states would use this dependence to whittle away federal powers, and defended the Constitution’s provisions for federal supremacy as a protection against such whittling away. Later it was the states that became more dependent on federal cooperation. There was an undefined potential for developing the powers of the two levels of government in a cooperative or mutually dependent form; in the twentieth century, the federal government developed this into what came to be called “cooperative federalism,” wielding its superior financial resources to influence state policy in the fields of cooperation.

USE AND ABUSE OF THE FEDERALIST

The Federalist Papers have been used with increasing frequency as a guide for interpreting the Constitution. Bernard Bailyn (2003) has counted the frequency and found an almost linear progression: from occasional use by the Supreme Court in the years just after 1789 to more frequent use with every passing stage in American history. Much of this use he regards as abuse of the Papers.

The notes of Madison on the Constitutional Convention of 1787 are in principle a better source for discovering intention, but are less often used than The Federalist . They are harder to read, are harder to systematize, and have a structure of shifting counterpoint rather than consistent exposition. Moreover, they were just notes of debates where people were thinking out loud, not formal polished documents, and got off to a yawning start: they were kept secret for half a century.

The Federalist Papers , while clearer, are often subjected to questionable interpretation. Taking the Papers as gospel shorn from context, the result can be to stand the purpose of the authors on its head.

The crux of the problem is the fact that The Federalist Papers were both polemically vigorous and politically prudent. They were intended to promote ratification of a stronger central government as something that could sustain itself, sink deeper roots, and grow higher capabilities over time. In doing so, they often found it expedient to emphasize how weak the Constitution was and portray it as incapable of being stretched in the ways that opponents feared and proponents sometimes quietly wished. They cannot always be taken at face value.

To locate the original intention of the Constitution itself, the place to start would not be The Federalist Papers , but—as Madison did in The Federalist No. 40—the authorizing resolutions for the Constitutional Convention. There one finds a clear and repeated expression of purpose, namely, to create a stronger federal government, and specifically to “render the federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union” (Madison 1788). Next one would have to look at the brief statement of purpose in the preamble of the Constitution. There, the lead purpose is “in Order to form a more perfect Union,” followed by a number of more specific functional purposes understood to be bound up with a more perfect union.

The intention of the wording of the Constitution would be found by looking at the Committee on Style at the Constitutional Convention, a group dominated by centralizing federalists. It took the hard substance of the constitutional plan that had been agreed upon in the months of debate, and proceeded to rewrite it in a soft cautious language, restoring important symbolic phrases of the old confederation in order to assuage the fears of the Convention’s opponents. It helped in ratification, but at the usual cost of PR: obfuscation. Theorists of nullification and secession, such as Calhoun , would later cite the confederal language as proof that each state still retained its sovereignty unchanged.

The original purpose of The Federalist Papers is the least in doubt of the entire series of documents: it was to encourage ratification and answer the critics who argued the Constitution was a blueprint for tyranny. As such, it was prone to carry further the diplomatic disguises already introduced by the Committee on Style. The authors, particularly Hamilton, argued repeatedly that, if anything, the government proposed by the Constitution would be too weak, not too strong. They said this with a purpose, not of restraining it further—as would be done by taking their descriptions of its weaknesses as indications of original intent—but of enabling its strengths to come into play and get reinforced by bonds of habit.

Hamilton in practice opposed “strict constructionism” regarding federal enumerated powers; he generally emphasized the Elastic (“necessary and proper”) Clause in the 1790's. But in The Federalist Papers , Hamilton in No. 33 justifies the Elastic and Supremacy Clauses in cautious, defensive, polemical fashion, denying any elastic intention but only the necessity of defending against what he portrays as the main danger: that of a whittling away of federal power by the states. Madison in No. 44 is slightly more expansive, arguing the necessity of recurrence in any federal constitution to “the doctrine of construction or implication” and warning against the ruinously constrictive construction that the states would end up applying to federal powers in the absence of the Elastic Clause. The logical implication was that either one side or the other—either the federal government or the states—must dominate the process of construing the extent of federal powers, and his preference in 1787–88 was for the federal government to predominate. In The Federalist , he warned against continuing dangers of interposition by the states against federal authority; at the Convention, he had advocated a congressional “negative” on state laws, that is, a federal power of interposition against state laws, as the only way of preventing individual states from flying out of the common orbit. While a legislative negative was rejected at the Convention, a judicial negative was later achieved in practice by the establishment of judicial review under a Federalist-led Supreme Court. Hamilton in The Federalist Nos. 78 and 80 provided support for judicial review, arguing—in defensive form as ever—that it was needed for preventing state encroachments from reducing the Constitution to naught.

The Elastic Clause was a residuum at the end of the Constitutional Convention flowing from the original pre-Convention resolutions. The resolutions called for powers “adequate to the exigencies of the Union”; the Convention met and enumerated the federal powers and structures that it could specifically agree on, then invested the remainder of its mandate into the Elastic and Supremacy Clauses, in which the Constitution makes itself supreme and grants its government all powers “necessary and proper” for carrying out the functions it specifies. There is a direct historical line in this, extending afterward to Hamilton’s broad construction of the Elastic Clause in the 1790's. From beginning to end, the underlying thought is dynamic, to do all that is necessary for union and government. The static, defensive exegesis of the Elastic Clause in The Federalist Papers , and in subsequent conceptions of strict construction, is implausible.

THE FEDERALIST AND THE GLOBAL SPREAD OF MODERN FEDERATION

The success of the modern federation in the United States after 1789 made it the main norm for subsequent federalism. The Federalist Papers provided the template for federation building; Hamilton was celebrated as its greatest evangelist. Switzerland reformed its confederation in 1848 and 1870 along the lines of modern federation. The new Latin American countries also often adopted federal constitutions in this period, although their implementation of federalism, like that of democracy itself, was sketchy.

After 1865, several British emigrant colonies adopted the overall model of modern federation: first the Canadian colonies (despite using the name “confederation”), then the Australian ones (using “commonwealth”), then South Africa (using “union”; there the ideological role of Hamilton and The Federalist was enormous, and the result was almost a unitary state). After 1945, several countries emerging out of the British dependent empire, such as India and Nigeria, adopted variants of modern federation. Defeated Germany and Austria also adopted federal constitutions. Later, other European and Third World countries also federalized their formerly unitary states. The process is by no means finished. Enumerating all the countries that had developed federal elements in their governance, Daniel Elazar concluded in the 1980's that a “federal revolution” was in process.

Once modern federation was known as a solution to the limitations of confederation, there has been less tolerance for the inconsistencies of confederation. Confederalism was a compromise between the extremes of separation and a unitary centralized state, splitting the difference; modern federation is more like a synthesis that upgrades both sides. What in previous millennia could be seen in confederalism as a lesser evil and a reasonable price to pay for avoiding the extremes, after 1787 came to seem like a collection of unnecessary contradictions: and if unnecessary, then also intolerable, once compared to what was available through modern federation.

The Federalist Papers have themselves been the strongest propagators of the view that confederalism is an inherently failed system. They made their case forcefully, not as scholars but as debaters for ratifying the Constitution. Their case was one-sided but had substance. They showed that confederation, even when successful, was working on an emergency basis, or else on a basis of special fortunate circumstances or external pressures. They offered in its place a structure that could work well on an ordinary systematic basis, without incessant crises or fears of collapse or dependence on special circumstances.

In recent years, it has been argued that Swiss confederalism was an impressive success, and so in a sense it was, holding together for half a millennium. Yet half a century after modern federation was invented in the United States, the Swiss found their old confederal system a failure and replaced it with one modeled along the lines of the modern federal one. The description of the old Swiss confederation as a failure became a commonplace; it entered into the realm of patriotic Swiss conviction. The judgment looks too harsh when the length of the two historical experiences are viewed side by side, yet has carried conviction in an evolutionary sense, as the cumulative outcome of historical experience. After the Constitution and The Federalist Papers , confederalism could not remain as successful in terms of longevity as it had been previously; the historical space for it shrank, while new and larger spaces opened up for modern federation. The advance of technology worked in the same direction, increasing interdependence within national territories and making localities more intertwined.

Despite the shrinkage of space for confederation within national bounds, confederation took on new force on another level. The American Union’s survival of the Civil War and consolidation afterwards gave a further impetus to discussion of modern federation, understood not only as a static technique for more sophisticated government within a given space, but also as a dynamic method of uniting people across wider spaces, in order to meet the needs of modern technological progress and the growth of interdependence. International federalist movements emerged after 1865, taking The Federalist Papers as their bible. They gained influence in the face of the world wars of the 1900's, feeding into the development of international organizations ranging from very loose and weak ones to integrative alliances and confederations such as NATO and the EU. The missionary ideology of The Federalist , used by its proponents for pummeling confederation, led on the international level to new confederations. When some (such as the League of Nations) were viewed as failures, further missionary use of The Federalist fed into the formation of still more confederations, often stronger and better conceived but confederations nonetheless, even if (as in the case of the EU) with a genetic plan of evolving into a federation. Federation seemed no less necessary but more difficult than federalist propagandists had suggested. Reflection on this situation led to an academic school of integration theory in the 1950's and 1960's, which treated functionalism and confederation as necessary historical phases in integration; in the neofunctionalist version of the theory it would lead eventually to federation, and in the version of Karl Deutsch it need not move beyond a “pluralistic security-community.” The work of Deutsch tied in with the view that confederation had been a greater success historically than was usually credited; to prove the success of the American confederation, Deutsch and his colleagues cited Merrill Jensen, an historian highly critical of The Federalist and friendly to the Anti-Federalists or Confederalists. Jensen argued that the Articles of Confederation had been a success, contrary to the American patriotic story that paralleled the Swiss one in condemning the confederalist experience. The relevance of The Federalist Papers was seen in this new literature as minimal, except at the final stages of a process that was only beginning and that the Papers themselves mystified as a matter of tactical necessity for getting a difficult decision made. Their exaggerations of the defects of confederalism were highlighted; their argument that only federation would “work” was seen as both a mistake and a diversion from the direction that progress would actually need to take in this era. It was only their normative orientation that was seen as helpful. The very success of The Federalist Papers had led to their partial eclipse. Nevertheless, their eclipse on the supranational level may not be permanent, and their influence on the level of national constitutionalism has remained enormous throughout.

Last updated: 2006

SEE ALSO: Anti-Federalists ; Federalists ; Hamilton, Alexander ; Madison, James

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The Federalist Papers

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Federalist No. 1-Federalist No. 14

Federalist No. 15-Federalist No. 22

Federalist No. 23-Federalist No. 36

Federalist No. 37-Federalist No. 51

Federalist No. 52-Federalist No. 66

Federalist No. 67-Federalist No. 77

Federalist No. 78-Federalist No. 85

Key Figures

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

The Federalist Papers is a collection of 85 essays, most of which were published as serialized articles between October 1787 and April 1788, by the American statesmen Alexander Hamilton , James Madison , and John Jay . Released under the pseudonym Publius, a common name in ancient Rome derived from the word for “the people” or “of the people,” The Federalist Papers were written to persuade the voters of New York state to ratify the US Constitution . The essays lay out the division of power between the federal government and the state governments which remains to this day, albeit in a constantly evolving form. Broadly speaking, this balance of power—in which state authority is subordinate to federal authority in matters related to foreign policy, interstate commerce, and other areas of federal jurisdiction—is known as “Federalism.”

After the 1776 Declaration of Independence and the start of the Revolutionary War, the 13 colonies united in an alliance known as the Articles of Confederation . Under the Articles, each colony remained a sovereign state largely unanswerable to federal authority except in matters of foreign policy. After the surrender of the British in 1781, however, the states stopped funding the federal government, leaving it at risk of defaulting on both its foreign and domestic debts. This debt crisis culminated in Shays’ Rebellion , a 1786-1787 armed insurrection in Massachusetts led by Daniel Shays, a deeply indebted farmer and Revolutionary War veteran who never received compensation for his service. Later that year, 55 delegates including Hamilton and Madison gathered in Philadelphia at a convention to draft a Constitution designed to save the country from anarchy and disunion.

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After a “General Introduction” from Hamilton, Federalist No. 2 through Federalist No. 14 lay out the importance of a strong federal government uniting the states and exercising absolute sovereignty in matters of federal jurisdiction. The most important role played by the federal government concerns the protection of its citizens against foreign invasion and domestic insurrection. Without a federal authority to enforce laws pertaining to interstate disputes, the authors see civil war and anarchy as inevitabilities. Moreover, the federal taxation and tariff schemes proposed under the Constitution will vastly increase revenues so that America can build a strong navy. This poses two major advantages: The first is an increase in national security on the country’s Atlantic coast, and the second is that it positions America to become a major participant in maritime commerce.

Federalist No. 15 through Federalist No. 22 concern the insufficiency of the Articles of Confederation to achieve the goals of national security and good republican governance. With no authority to enforce its laws under the Confederation, the federal government is left with no recourse when states refuse to pay taxes. Adding to its revenue woes, the federal government cannot collect excise taxes or taxes on imports. Finally, with no uniformity in how the states conduct commerce, foreign nations are loath to enter into mutually beneficial trade agreements with America.

In Federalist No. 23 through Federalist No. 36, the authors seek to justify the “energy” of the powers invested in the federal government by the Constitution. Much of these essays concern the then-controversial notion of a standing federal army during peacetime. Although both Madison and Hamilton grant that powerful militaries in times of peace may lead to tyranny and oppression, they are confident that the benefits to national security well outweigh the risks. These essays also go into greater detail about the benefits of direct federal taxes on citizens, as opposed to the current taxation scheme in which the federal government collects taxes indirectly through the states.

The largest group of essays, Federalist No. 37 through Federalist No. 83, explain and answer objections to the powers invested in the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches of the federal government under the Constitution. While the authors acknowledge the wisdom of the maxim concerning the separation of these powers into different branches, they also argue that some overlap is necessary to ensure the appropriate checks and balances on each branch. As detailed in these essays, the government under the US Constitution consists of a mixture of direct and indirect republican qualities; for example, the House of Representatives will be directly elected by the people, while Senators will be appointed by elected state legislators. The President, meanwhile, will be voted on by state electors chosen for this express purpose every four years. These essays also detail the contentious issue of how enslaved people will be counted for the purpose of apportioning House representatives. In what came to be known as the three-fifths compromise, an enslaved person will count as three-fifths of a free person when calculating each state’s population and assigning House seats accordingly.

In Federalist No. 84, Hamilton expresses his opposition to the inclusion of a bill of rights, which at the point had not yet been appended to the Constitution. In the final essay, Federalist No. 85, Hamilton openly admits that the Constitution under consideration is not perfect. Nevertheless, he believes that the Articles of Confederation have left the country teetering on the brink of insolvency and anarchy; therefore, it would be extremely impudent not to ratify the Constitution in its current form.

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Federalist Party

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 21, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

circa 1795: The 1st President of the United States, George Washington (1732 - 1799) in consultation with members of his first cabinet; Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson (seated), later the 3rd President and Secretary of the Treasury and co-author of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton.

The Federalist Party originated in opposition to the Democratic-Republican Party in America during President George Washington’s first administration. Known for their support of a strong national government, the Federalists emphasized commercial and diplomatic harmony with Britain following the signing of the 1794 Jay Treaty. The party split over negotiations with France during President John Adams’s administration, though it remained a political force until its members passed into the Democratic and the Whig parties in the 1820s. Despite its dissolution, the party made a lasting impact by laying the foundations of a national economy, creating a national judicial system and formulating principles of foreign policy.

Early Years

The Federalist Party was one of the first two political parties in the United States. It originated, as did the opposing Democratic-Republican Party, within the executive and congressional branches of government during George Washington ’s first administration (1789-1793), and it dominated the government until the defeat of President John Adams for reelection in 1800.

Thereafter, the party unsuccessfully contested the presidency through 1816 and remained a political force in some states until the 1820s. Its members then passed into both the Democratic and the Whig parties.

Federalist Party Leaders

Although Washington disdained factions and disclaimed party adherence, he is generally taken to have been, by policy and inclination, a Federalist, and thus its greatest figure.

Influential public leaders who accepted the Federalist label included John Adams, Alexander Hamilton , John Jay , Rufus King , John Marshall , Timothy Pickering and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney . All had agitated for a new and more effective constitution in 1787 and supported the publication of the influential Federalist Papers .

Yet, because many members of the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had also championed the Constitution, the Federalist Party cannot be considered the lineal descendant of the pro-Constitution, or ‘federalist,’ grouping of the 1780s. Instead, like its opposition, the party emerged in the 1790s under new conditions and around new issues.

The party drew its early support from those who—for ideological and other reasons—wished to strengthen national instead of state power. Until its defeat in the presidential election of 1800, its style was elitist, and its leaders scorned democracy, widespread suffrage, and open elections.

Its backing centered in the commercial Northeast, whose economy and public order had been threatened by the failings of the Confederation government before 1788. Although the party enjoyed considerable influence in Virginia , North Carolina and the area around Charleston, South Carolina , it failed to attract plantation owners and yeoman farmers in the South and West. Its inability to broaden its geographic and social appeal eventually did it in.

Hamilton and the Bank of the United States

Originally a coalition of like-minded men, the party became publicly well-defined only in 1795. After Washington’s inauguration in 1789, Congress and members of the president’s cabinet debated proposals of Alexander Hamilton (first secretary of the treasury) that the national government assume the debts of the states, repay the national debt at par rather than at its depressed market value, and charter a national bank, the Bank of the United States .

Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Congressman James Madison rallied opposition to Hamilton’s plan. Yet not until Congress debated the ratification and implementation of the Jay Treaty with Great Britain did two political parties clearly emerge, with the Federalists under Hamilton’s leadership.

Federalist policies thenceforth emphasized commercial and diplomatic harmony with Britain, domestic order and stability and a strong national government under powerful executive and judicial branches. Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796, prepared with Hamilton’s assistance, can be read as a classic text of partisan Federalism as well as a great state paper.

John Adams, Washington’s vice president, succeeded the first president as an avowed Federalist, thus becoming the first person to attain the chief magistracy under partisan colors. Inaugurated in 1797, Adams tried to maintain his predecessor’s cabinet and policies. He engaged the nation in an undeclared naval war with France, and after the Federalists gained control of both houses of Congress in the 1798 election, backed the infamous and Federalist-inspired Alien and Sedition Acts .

In addition to a widespread public outcry against those laws, which restricted freedom of speech and freedom of the press , Adams met with mounting attacks, especially from the Hamiltonian faction of his own party, against his military priorities. When Adams, as much to deflect mounting Democratic-Republican opposition as to end a war, opened diplomatic negotiations with France in 1799 and reorganized the cabinet under his own control, the Hamiltonians broke with him.

Although his actions strengthened the Federalist position in the presidential election of 1800, they were not enough to gain his reelection. His party irreparably split. Adams, on his way to retirement, was nevertheless able to conclude peace with France and to secure the appointment of moderate Federalist John Marshall as chief justice of the Supreme Court . Long after the Federalist Party was dead, Marshall enshrined its principles in constitutional law.

Regional Factions

In the minority, Federalists, at last, accepted the necessity of creating a system of organized, disciplined state party organizations and adopting democratic electoral tactics. Because their greatest strength lay in Massachusetts , Connecticut and Delaware , the Federalists also assumed the aspects of a regional minority.

Ignoring ideological consistency and a traditional commitment to strong national power, they opposed Jefferson’s popular Louisiana Purchase of 1803 as too costly—and too threatening to northern influence in government. Largely as a result, the party continued to lose power at the national level. It carried only Connecticut, Delaware and parts of Maryland against Jefferson in 1804.

That defeat, the party’s increasing regional isolation and Hamilton’s untimely death at the hands of Aaron Burr that same year threatened the party’s very existence. Yet strong, widespread opposition to Jefferson’s ill-conceived Embargo of 1807 revived it.

In the 1808 presidential election against Madison, the Federalist candidate, Charles C. Pinckney, carried Delaware, parts of Maryland and North Carolina, and all of New England except Vermont . The declaration of war against Great Britain in 1812 brought New York , New Jersey , and more of Maryland into the Federalist fold, although these states were not enough to gain the party the presidency.

But Federalist obstruction of the war effort seriously undercut its newfound popularity, and the Hartford Convention of 1814 won for it, however unjustly, the stigma of secession and treason. The party under Rufus King carried only Connecticut, Massachusetts and Delaware in the election of 1816.

Decline of the Federalist Party

Although it lingered on in these states, the party never regained its national following, and by the end of the War of 1812 , it was dead. Its inability to accommodate early enough a rising, popular democratic spirit, often strongest in towns and cities, was its undoing.

Its emphasis upon banking, commerce and national institutions, although fitting for the young nation, nevertheless made it unpopular among the majority of Americans who, as people of the soil, remained wary of government influence.

Yet the Federalist Party's contributions to the nation were extensive. Its principles gave structure to the new government. Its leaders laid the foundations of a national economy, created and staffed a national judicial system and enunciated enduring principles of American foreign policy.

The Federalist and the Republican Party. PBS: American Experience . Federalists. The First Amendment Encyclopedia. Middle Tennessee State University . Timeline of the Federalist Party. Michigan State University .

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The federalist number 45, [26 january] 1788, the federalist number 45.

[26 January 1788]

Having shewn that no one of the powers transferred to the federal government is unnecessary or improper, the next question to be considered is whether the whole mass of them will be dangerous to the portion of authority left in the several states.

The adversaries to the plan of the convention instead of considering in the first place what degree of power was absolutely necessary for the purposes of the federal government, have exhausted themselves in a secondary enquiry into the possible consequences of the proposed degree of power, to the governments of the particular states. But if the union, as has been shewn, be essential, to the security of the people of America against foreign danger; if it be essential to their security against contentions and wars among the different states; if it be essential to guard them against those violent and oppressive factions which imbitter the blessings of liberty, and against those military establishments which must gradually poison its very fountain; if, in a word the union be essential to the happiness of the people of America, is it not preposterous, to urge as an objection to a government without which the objects of the union cannot be attained, that such a government may derogate from the importance of the governments of the individual states? Was then the American revolution effected, was the American confederacy formed, was the precious blood of thousands spilt, and the hard earned substance of millions lavished, not that the people of America should enjoy peace, liberty, and safety; but that the governments of the individual states, that particular municipal establishments might enjoy a certain extent of power, and be arrayed with certain dignities and attributes of sovereignty? We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape, that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever, has any other value, than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object. Were the plan of the convention adverse to the public happiness, my voice would be, reject the plan. Were the union itself inconsistent with the public happiness, it would be, abolish the union. In like manner as far as the sovereignty of the states cannot be reconciled to the happiness of the people; the voice of every good citizen must be, let the former be sacrificed to the latter. How far the sacrifice is necessary, has been shewn. How far the unsacrificed residue will be endangered, is the question before us.

Several important considerations have been touched in the course of these papers, which discountenance the supposition that the operation of the federal government will by degrees prove fatal to the state governments. The more I revolve the subject the more fully I am persuaded that the balance is much more likely to be disturbed by the preponderancy of the last than of the first scale.

We have seen in all the examples of antient and modern confederacies, the strongest tendency continually betraying itself in the members to despoil the general government of its authorities, with a very ineffectual capacity in the latter to defend itself against the encroachments. Although in most of these examples, the system has been so dissimilar from that under consideration, as greatly to weaken any inference concerning the latter from the fate of the former; yet as the states will retain under the proposed constitution a very extensive portion of active sovereignty, the inference ought not to be wholly disregarded. In the Achæan league, it is probable that the federal head had a degree and species of power, which gave it a considerable likeness to the government framed by the convention. The Lycian confederacy, as far as its principles and form are transmitted, must have borne a still greater analogy to it. Yet history does not inform us that either of them ever degenerated or tended to degenerate into one consolidated government. On the contrary, we know that the ruin of one of them proceeded from the incapacity of the federal authority to prevent the dissentions, and finally the disunion of the subordinate authorities. These cases are the more worthy of our attention, as the external causes by which the component parts were pressed together, were much more numerous and powerful than in our case; and consequently, less powerful ligaments within, would be sufficient to bind the members to the head, and to each other.

In the feudal system we have seen a similar propensity exemplified. Notwithstanding the want of proper sympathy in every instance between the local sovereigns and the people, and the sympathy in some instances between the general sovereign and the latter; it usually happened that the local sovereigns prevailed in the rivalship for encroachments. Had no external dangers enforced internal harmony and subordination; and particularly had the local sovereigns possessed the affections of the people, the great kingdoms in Europe, would at this time consist of as many independent princes as there were formerly feudatory barons.

The state governments will have the advantage of the federal government, whether we compare them in respect to the immediate dependence of the one on the other; to the weight of personal influence which each side will possess; to the powers respectively vested in them; to the predilection and probable support of the people; to the disposition and faculty of resisting and frustrating the measures of each other.

The state governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government; whilst the latter is no wise essential to the operation or organisation of the former. Without the intervention of the state legislatures, the president of the United States cannot be elected at all. They must in all cases have a great share in his appointment, and will perhaps in most cases of themselves determine it. 1 The senate will be elected absolutely and exclusively by the state legislatures. Even the house of representatives, though drawn immediately from the people, will be chosen very much under the influence of that class of men, whose influence over the people obtains for themselves an election into the state legislatures. Thus each of the principal branches of the federal government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the state governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too obsequious, than too overbearing towards them. On the other side, the component parts of the state governments will in no instance be indebted for their appointment to the direct agency of the federal government, and very little if at all, to the local influence of its members.

The number of individuals employed under the constitution of the United States, will be much smaller, than the number employed under the particular states. There will consequently be less of personal influence on the side of the former, than of the latter. The members of the legislative, executive and judiciary departments of thirteen and more states; the justices of peace, officers of militia, ministerial officers of justice, with all the county corporation and town officers, for three millions and more of people, intermixed and having particular acquaintance with every class and circle of people, must exceed beyond all proportion, both in number and influence, those of every description who will be employed in the administration of the federal system. Compare the members of the three great departments, of the Thirteen States, excluding from the judiciary department the justices of peace, with the members of the corresponding departments of the single government of the union; compare the militia officers of three millions of people, with the military and marine officers of any establishment which is within the compass of probability, or I may add, of possibility, and in this view alone, we may pronounce the advantage of the states to be decisive. If the federal government is to have collectors of revenue, the state governments will have theirs also. And as those of the former will be principally on the sea-coast, and not very numerous; whilst those of the latter will be spread over the face of the country, and will be very numerous, the advantage in this view also lies on the same side. It is true that the confederacy is to possess, and may exercise, the power of collecting internal as well as external taxes throughout the states: But it is probable that this power will not be resorted to, except for supplemental purposes of revenue; that an option will then be given to the states to supply their quotas by previous collections of their own; and that the eventual collection under the immediate authority of the union, will generally be made by the officers, and according to the rules, appointed by the several states. Indeed it is extremely probable that in other instances, particularly in the organization of the judicial power, the officers of the states will be cloathed with the correspondent authority of the union. Should it happen however that separate collectors of internal revenue should be appointed under the federal government, the influence of the whole number would not be a comparison with that of the multitude of state-officers in the opposite scale. Within every district, to which a federal collector would be allotted, there would not be less than thirty or forty or even more officers of different descriptions and many of them persons of character and weight, whose influence would lie on the side of the state.

The powers delegated by the proposed constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negociation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the state.

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the state governments, in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the state governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate indeed the federal powers may be rendered to the national defence, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favour their ascendancy over the governments of the particular states.

If the new constitution be examined with accuracy and candour, it will be found that the change which it proposes, consists much less in the addition of new powers to the union, than in the invigoration of its original powers . The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained. The powers relating to war and peace, armies and fleets, treaties and finance, with the other more considerable powers, are all vested in the existing congress by the articles of confederation. The proposed change does not enlarge these powers; it only substitutes a more effectual mode of administering them. The change relating to taxation, may be regarded as the most important: and yet the present congress have as compleat authority to require of the states indefinite supplies of money for the common defence and general welfare, as the future congress will have to require them of individual citizens; and the latter will be no more bound than the states themselves have been, to pay the quotas respectively taxed on them. Had the states complied punctually with the articles of confederation, or could their compliance have been enforced by as peaceable means as may be used with success towards single persons, our past experience is very far from countenancing an opinion that the state governments would have lost their constitutional powers, and have gradually undergone an entire consolidation. To maintain that such an event would have ensued, would be to say at once, that the existence of the state governments is incompatible with any system whatever that accomplishes the essential purposes of the union.

McLean description begins The Federalist, A Collection of Essays, written in favour of the New Constitution, By a Citizen of New-York. Printed by J. and A. McLean (New York, 1788). description ends , II, 77–83.

1 .  The Constitution stipulates that each state legislature shall direct the manner by which the presidential electors are appointed, and as JM hinted, six of the eligible eleven legislatures chose some or all of their states’ electors in Washington’s first election (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 [Washington, 1960], p. 681).

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First Amendment Exhibit Historic Graphic

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The first amendment, the anti-federalists and their important role during the ratification fight.

September 27, 2017 | by Ugonna Eze

On this day in 1787, the debate over the newly written Constitution began in the press after an anonymous writer in the New York Journal warned citizens that the document was not all that it seemed.

the federalist papers most important

Most Americans know of the Federalist Papers, the collection of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Madison, in defense of the U.S. Constitution. Fewer know of the Anti-Federalist Papers authored by Cato and other incognito writers, their significance to American political history, or their responsibility for producing the Bill of Rights.

When the Constitution was drafted in the summer of 1787, its ratification was far from certain; it still needed to be ratified by at least nine of the 13 state legislatures. The failure of the Articles of Confederation made it clear that America needed a new form of government. Yet there was worry that the Constitution gave too much power to the federal government. The original draft of the Constitution did not have a Bill of Rights, declared all state laws subservient to federal ones, and created a king-like office in the presidency. At the Philadelphia Convention and in the Federalist Papers, James Madison argued against having a Bill of Rights, fearing that they would limit the people’s rights.

Opposition to the Constitution after the Philadelphia Convention began with Elbridge Gerry, Edmund Randolph, and George Mason, the “Three Dissenters” who refused to sign the document. It then grew to include Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and Richard Henry Lee, heroes of the Revolutionary War who objected to the Constitution’s consolidation of power. In time, the various opponents to the new Constitution came to be known as the Anti-Federalists. Their collected speeches, essays, and pamphlets later became known as the “Anti-Federalist Papers.”

While each of the Anti-Federalists had their own view for what a new constitution for the United States should look like, they generally agreed on a few things. First, they believed that the new Constitution consolidated too much power in the hands of Congress, at the expense of states. Second, they believed that the unitary president eerily resembled a monarch and that that resemblance would eventually produce courts of intrigue in the nation’s capital. Third, they believed that the liberties of the people were best protected when power resided in state governments, as opposed to a federal one. Lastly, they believed that without a Bill of Rights, the federal government would become tyrannous.

These arguments created a powerful current against adopting the Constitution in each of the states. In state legislatures across the country, opponents of the Constitution railed against the extensive powers it granted the federal government and its detraction from the republican governments of antiquity. In Virginia, Patrick Henry, author of the famous “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, called the proposed constitution, “A revolution as radical as that which separated us from Great Britain.” In the Essays of Brutus, an anonymous author worried that without any limitations, the proposed Constitution would make “the state governments… dependent on the will of the general government for their existence.”

The Anti-Federalists mobilized against the Constitution in state legislatures across the country.

Anti-Federalists in Massachusetts, Virginia and New York, three crucial states, made ratification of the Constitution contingent on a Bill of Rights. In Massachusetts, arguments between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists erupted in a physical brawl between Elbridge Gerry and Francis Dana. Sensing that Anti-Federalist sentiment would sink ratification efforts, James Madison reluctantly agreed to draft a list of rights that the new federal government could not encroach.

The Bill of Rights is a list of 10 constitutional amendments that secure the basic rights and privileges of American citizens. They were fashioned after the English Bill of Rights and George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights. They include the right to free speech, the right to a speedy trial, the right to due process under the law, and protections against cruel and unusual punishments. To accommodate Anti-Federalist concerns of excessive federal power, the Bill of Rights also reserves any power that is not given to the federal government to the states and to the people.

Since its adoption, the Bill of Rights has become the most important part of the Constitution for most Americans. In Supreme Court cases, the Amendments are debated more frequently than the Articles. They have been cited to protect the free speech of Civil Rights activists, protect Americans from unlawful government surveillance, and grant citizens Miranda rights during arrest. It is impossible to know what our republic would look like today without the persistence of the Anti-Federalists over two hundred years ago.

Ugonna Eze is a Fellow for Constitutional Studies at the National Constitution Center.

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Who wrote the federalist papers, what was the aim of the federalist papers.

Opinion columns in newspapers or online aren’t always the best way of convincing people to share a viewpoint. There is always the risk that political biases will end up causing greater tensions or divisions. Still, a well-written piece can raise enough questions and shift the balance in a debate.

This was the aim of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays published between October 1787 and May 1788, to persuade New Yorkers to change their minds about rejecting the proposed United States Constitution. 

Not all were convinced, but the essays did help, and arguably, this wouldn’t have happened with less knowledgeable and skilled writers behind the venture. So, who wrote the Federalist Papers, and why were they anonymous at the time of their publication?

Authors of the Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers were not the work of a single author but rather a group of men acting together to put forth convincing arguments in favor of the constitution via a series of well-thought-out essays. Alexander Hamilton , James Madison, and John Jay created a impressive number of installments for the people of New York to help them to see the value in the Federalist way of thinking.

Hamilton and Madison were prominent figures at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia , where the new constitution was drafted. In collaboration with Jay, they produced a collection of work that is still revered as a key historical document in the evolution of the United States. 

Who Was Publius? 

Initially, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay preferred to remain anonymous and used a pseudonym for their publications. It made sense for the three writers of these famous essays to retain their anonymity in order to let the writing speak for itself. Readers might not have given as much attention if they knew who the authors were.

At the same time, this sort of shared identity meant that it wouldn’t have been immediately clear who wrote which piece. There were differences in style and message to a point, but it remained a group effort with a common goal. What’s more, there was a high level of secrecy around creating and ratifying the constitution, where many documents were destroyed.

The pen name adopted, Publius, was a nod to a key figure involved in founding the Roman Empire – Publius Valerius Publicola. It appears that Hamilton saw something of himself and his peers in Publius. The name stuck and was attached to the essays in their serialized form and the bound version created in 1788.

Authors Role in the Creation of the Constitution

The need for the Federalist Papers came about from the creation of the constitution during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Delegates from across the 13 states – with the exception of Rhode Island – descended on the city for months of debates. The current Articles of Confederation were not fit for purpose and needed practical adaptions to better serve the nation. The result was an entirely new United States Constitution. This was passed to Congress for approval before the requisite ratification process .

The three members of Publius were ardent Federalists that supported the need for a more centralized form of government. But, there were plenty of Anti-Federalists that weren’t keen to sign. The Federalist Papers gave the authors the chance to defend the ideas within the proposed constitution and explain why the original Articles of Confederation had to change.

The writers began their series of essays in October of 1787 , not long after the constitution was sent out for ratification. Their target was New York, a vitally important state because of its population and wealth, and one the United States couldn’t afford to lose.

The papers became a series in two leading newspapers for all to read in the hope of swaying the state and speeding up the ratification process. This turned into a long-running series of essays with 85. As the essays continued to be published, many states signed, and the document achieved the majority needed for ratification, but the remaining states held out.

Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Papers

The man most famous for his role in the creation of the Federalist Papers was Alexander Hamilton, who was the head of the project in more ways than one. It was his idea to create the series to advocate for the new constitution. He was also responsible for bringing in the other two participants, creating the Publius pseudonym, and penning the majority of the essays in the series.

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Interestingly, he is said to have had little influence at the Constitutional Convention compared to Madison. He also held strong opinions on centralized government and a preference for British models that didn’t go down well with other delegates. Yet, he eventually found his way onto the Committee of Style and Arrangement with William Samuel Johnson, Gouverneur Morris, James Madison , and Rufus King.

Hamilton was a Delegate to the Congress of the Confederation from New York before becoming Secretary of the Treasury under President George Washington in 1789. He worked on the creation of the central bank and the nation’s war debts – issues detailed in the constitution.

Was Hamilton the Most Influential Contributor?

It is widely accepted that Alexander Hamilton wrote 51 of the 85 essays. The pieces were often split into themes, where the authors could continue to develop ideas and write more persuasive arguments about key areas of the constitution. Hamilton was also responsible for the opening piece and the all-important Federalist 84 that discussed the Bill of Rights.

It should be noted that when the papers were first compiled as a bound edition under the Publius name, it was Alexander Hamilton that saw to the edits and corrections. This suggests a keen desire to create the most persuasive and accurate portrayal of their argument right to the end.

Federalist 84 and the Bill Of Rights

Despite the best efforts of Publius to prove their point, there was still discontent among Anti-Federalists in the states yet to ratify. They weren’t convinced about signing away the rights and freedoms of their people by giving a centralized federal government more power. Their proposal was simple. They wanted a Bill of Rights .

This was an idea tabled during the Constitutional Convention but disregarded by the final framers. They deemed it unnecessary when there were strong clauses about citizens’ freedoms and unwritten rights. Alexander Hamilton was strongly opposed to the Bill of Rights and detailed his arguments in Federalist 84.

Despite all this, the Federalists eventually had to concede and give assurances that Congress would work on a Bill from its first session. This convinced New York and other resistant states to ratify the document. An interesting note here is that Publius member Madison was influential in creating that Bill of Rights in his new role in Congress in 1789. 

The Role of James Madison

Alexander Hamilton wanted to bring in the best possible writers for the job, and he chose James Madison and John Jay. James Madison is a name we know well as a later President of the United States. Following the creation of the Federalist Papers, he would also become a member of the United States House of Representatives from Virginia, Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson , and finally President in 1809.

Despite his links to Virginia rather than New York, like the others, Madison was an ideal fit for the role. He was a passionate Federalist keen to express his opinions and the man with the longest involvement in the constitutional process. He arrived in Philadelphia eleven days before most other delegates with speeches prepared and was eager to set the convention’s agenda as it progressed. 

The Lesser-Known John Jay 

John Jay is perhaps the least well-known of all of the writers of the Federalist Papers despite his political acumen. His compatriots had a stronger say in the creation and final draft of the constitution, but Jay had an abundance of political experience.

He was not as heavily involved in the scheme as his peers due to health issues, having developed rheumatism, which impeded his writing ability. He started strong, writing the second, third, fourth, and fifth on the subject of “Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence.” He then returned to write Federalist 64 on the role of the Senate in the creation of foreign treaties.

Before the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Jay had been influential in the First and Second Continental Congress . He was president of the latter for a year before becoming the United States Minister to Spain, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Acting Secretary of State, Governor of New York, and then the first Chief Justice. Again, a strong New York connection is significant with regards to his role in Publius.

Was Gouverneur Morris an Author of the Federalist Papers?

There is a fourth figure that runs the risk of being forgotten in relation to the Federalist Papers. While Gouverneur Morris was not one of the contributing authors to the serialized essays, he was considered by Hamilton for the role. This comes as no surprise considering his influence at the Constitutional Convention. He would have been a good fit for the Publius collective because of his political knowledge and links to New York. Later, he would act as the United States Minister to France and Senator for New York.

Morris is one of the most important founders related to the creation of the constitution and was responsible for writing the preamble. His signature can be found on the constitution and the Articles of Confederation that preceded it. He introduced the idea of the people becoming citizens of the United States rather than their respective home states. He was also highly influential at the Constitutional Convention, making more speeches than any other delegate.

When Were the Identities of the Authors Revealed?

For quite some time, nobody knew who was behind the Publius name, and the writers kept that secret long after the ratification of the constitution. The bound collection of papers retained the pseudonym to protect their identities and further the cause in its first edition. The names weren’t officially revealed until decades later, with a new edition in 1818. Madison amended this version, and the decision was made to attribute the work to its true authors.

In doing so, they cleared up the mystery and made the publication more interesting. Historians could now see which author focused on which subject, the language used, and the ratio of pieces written. Hamilton would not live to see this or any praise for his work as he died in 1804.

The attributions on the documents also show the importance of the pseudonym in the first place. There is some dispute over exactly who wrote what. While Hamilton is now credited with 51 of the 85, there are asterisks by the name where it is believed he had assistance from Madison.

Madison would challenge the idea that he was only responsible for 29 because of these contributions. Had the trio kept their names in place instead of working as the Publius collective, there may have been more in-fighting and issues getting to that grand total of 85.

The Legacy of the Federalist Papers Writers Today

The work of these three men, with their questionable attributions, is still available to view online. You can see how these men argued for their case and detailed the need for a shift from the Articles of Confederation to the new constitution. However influential the essays were at the time, there is no doubt that they hold an important place in American history today.

Alicia Reynolds

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THE FEDERALIST PAPERS #52. "The House of Representatives." by Alexander Hamilton or James Madison Simple Gifts

Authored by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay to appear anonymously in New York papers under the pseudonym ”Publius” in 1787 and 1788, the Federalist Papers aimed to rally public support for the proposed Constitution of the United States. As such, it is one of the most important sources for understanding the original intent of the US Constitution by those who participated in its construction. In Federalist number one Alexander Hamilton sets forth the ambition of arguing the following positions in favor of the adoption of the Constitution: ”I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following interesting particulars: THE UTILITY OF THE UNION TO YOUR POLITICAL PROSPERITY THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE PRESENT CONFEDERATION TO PRESERVE THAT UNION THE NECESSITY OF A GOVERNMENT AT LEAST EQUALLY ENERGETIC WITH THE ONE PROPOSED, TO THE ATTAINMENT OF THIS OBJECT THE CONFORMITY OF THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION TO THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT ITS ANALOGY TO YOUR OWN STATE CONSTITUTION and lastly, THE ADDITIONAL SECURITY WHICH ITS ADOPTION WILL AFFORD TO THE PRESERVATION OF THAT SPECIES OF GOVERNMENT, TO LIBERTY, AND TO PROPERTY.” Articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the collective pseudonym ”Publius” to promote the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. If you enjoy our content, why not buy us a cup of coffee? via https://ko-fi.com/thechristianatheist #thefederalistpapers #federalist #alexanderhamilton #hamilton #jamesmadison #madison #johnjay #publius #ratification #constitution #unitedstates #thefederalist #independentjournal #newyorkpacket #dailyadvertiser #poem #poetry #verse #literature #aestheticliterature #aesthetic #history #historical #philosophy #religion #christianity #bible #god #jesus #science #culture #society #humanities #wisdomofthepast #wisdom #classics #faith

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