The Federalist Papers

Aside from the commercially inspired Mount Vernon Compact of 1785, the first public acknowledgement of the enormous inability of Congress to govern the peace in the new United States was the calling of the Annapolis Convention for September 1786. William Grayson, writing to James Madison that May, sounded upon the grievances of an ineffective Congress, arguing a proposed Annapolis Convention should “comprehend all the grievances of the union, and to combine the commercial arrangements with them, and make them dependent on each other.”[1]

As with the Constitutional Convention of 1787, James Madison was a primary mover of the Annapolis Convention of 1786. The most important outcome of the Annapolis Convention (less than half the states bothered to send delegates) was the appearance of two brilliant men (Madison and Alexander Hamilton) on the national stage and the agreement to hold another national meeting in May 1787 in Philadelphia.[2] The Annapolis Convention propelled the issue of a weak nation onto the national scene in a formal way.

To arrive at the time of The Federalist papers (1787-1788) requires navigating the Constitutional Convention during the summer of 1787. As that event is well known there is no need to provide an overview other than to say the proposed Constitution was signed on September 17 and sent to the states for debate and, it was hoped, ratification. To enhance the chances of ratification in a pivotal state, New York, Alexander Hamilton devised a plan to promote the proposed Constitution through a series of essays to be published anonymously under the signature of “Publius.” Hamilton reached out to several colleagues to be on the writing team to produce the essays. Eventually James Madison of Virginia and John Jay of New York agreed to be part of it. William Duer and Gouverneur Morris of New York declined to participate. While Hamilton would write the majority of the eighty-five essays (fifty-one), Madison would contribute to the southern perspective (twenty-six essays). Having Madison participate was a brilliant move on Hamilton’s part. The “Father of the Constitution” was particularly well suited to argue on its behalf. Jay, due to illness, contributed just five; so closely were Hamilton’s and Madison’s thoughts aligned that there are three essays with disputed authorship, either Madison or Hamilton, and up to a dozen attributed to either Hamilton or Madison that cannot be firmly linked to either.

New York chancellor and highly regarded American jurist James Kent, writing to Hamilton’s widow Elizabeth on December 10, 1832, remembered her husband Alexander as the primary author of The Federalist papers, writing,

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The essays composing The Federalist made, at the time, a wonderful impression upon reflecting men. The necessity and importance of the union of states, the utter incompetency of the Articles of Confederation to maintain that union, their fundamental fatal defects . . . were all of them topics of vast magnitude and affecting most deeply all our foreign and domestic concerns.[3]

Kent clearly identified the goals and desires of The Federalist, and the Constitution, as a union of the states grounded in a strong federal constitution.

Hamilton indeed would set the tone for the entire work when he published the first essay in the Independent Journal on October 27, 1787, barely a month after the Constitutional Convention concluded its work. Hamilton family lore has it that Alexander wrote the first essay on a packet ship (owned by his father-in-law) traveling the Hudson River between Albany and New York City. Essay one was written to offer an overview of the forthcoming essays. Hamilton wrote,

After an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION . . .
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 the 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.[4]

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John Jay’s early contributions, prior to his illness, saw Jay relying on his extensive foreign service background. In essays two through five Jay argued that a united federal government, as proposed in the draft Constitution, would fare much better in the rough world of international relations. Having thirteen sovereign, separate states would create chaos at home and endless opportunity for European machinations in American affairs. Writing in essay four, Jay stated, “Wisely, therefore, do they [the people of America] consider union and a good national government as necessary to put and keep them in such a situation as, instead of inviting war, will tend to repress and discourage it.”[5] Prophetically, Jay considered the tendency of states to consolidate around like-minded issues and the tendency this created for sectional rivalry. Specifically, Jay worried about the most glaring sectional rivalry existing in America, the different economic approaches between the north and south. Jay wrote at the end of essay five, “Let candid men judge when, whether the division of America into any given number of independent sovereignties would tend to secure us against the hostilities and improper interference of foreign nations.”[6] Hamilton followed in essay six with the same warning: “A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these states should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contest with each other.”[7]

To undertake an essay-by-essay overview here would be needlessly cumbersome. If there is one single essay that most are familiar with it is Madison’s number ten. In this essay, Madison famously wrote, “Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”[8] Madison’s reflections in essay ten have become much quoted for his impression that faction was, while natural, still controllable. “The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.”[9]

In short, the topics covered by Jay, Madison, and Hamilton, are those relating to the Constitution. The three authors were after all writing primarily to influence the vote in the New York Constitutional Ratifying Convention. These essays therefore were opinion pieces designed to convince New York delegates to support the draft Constitution. In addition to expounding on the Constitution Article by Article, Publius consistently brought out the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation. Additionally, Publius delved into political theory stretching back to ancient Greek and Roman times. Hamilton, as befitting a future secretary of the Treasury, argued convincingly of the need for revenue and revenue collection systems.

In true Enlightenment fashion, Hamilton, in essay thirty-one, “used the example of geometry and of mathematical truths to highlight the need for a national revenue.”[10] Hamilton wrote, “A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people.”[11]

Madison, writing in essay thirty-seven, noted just how delicate and nuanced a job the delegates had in Philadelphia, writing,

Among the difficulties encountered by the convention, a very important one must have lain in combining the requisite stability and energy in government, with the inviolable attention due to liberty and to the republican form. Without substantially accomplishing this part of their undertaking, they would have very imperfectly fulfilled the object of their appointment.[12]

Continuing in essay thirty-seven, Madison wrote, “The precise extent of the common law, and the statute law, the maritime law, the ecclesiastical law, the law of corporations, and other local laws and customs, remains still to be clearly and finally established in Great Britain, where accuracy in such subjects has been more industriously pursued than in any other part of the world.”[13]

In Federalist forty, Madison addressed the often-heard complaint that the Constitutional Convention had exceeded its mandate by drafting a new constitution. Madison countered with the closing statement from the Annapolis Convention, which did not mention the Articles of Confederation but rather called for a convention to “devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the Constitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.”[14] Madison argued that the Philadelphia Convention, as instructed by the Annapolis Convention, was to “propose remedies which were commensurate with the problems facing the United States” at the time of their meeting.[15] Madison concluded essay forty by stating, “The states would never have appointed a convention with so much latitude, if some substantial reform had not been in contemplation.”[16]

One unique aspect of the Constitution is the three-branch system of government. Madison explained this in Federalist forty-seven writing,

No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that on which the objection [concentrating power in one ruler] is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.[17]

It was left to Madison, the lone southerner forming Publius, to consider enslavement. He did so in two essays. In number forty-two, he lamented enslavement overall while referring to the ban on slave importation scheduled to begin in 1808. Madison wrote,

It ought to be considered as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate forever, within these States, a traffic which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy; that within that period, it will receive a considerable discouragement from the federal government, and may be totally abolished, by a concurrence of the few States which continue the unnatural traffic, in the prohibitory example which has been given by so great a majority of the Union. Happy would it be for the unfortunate Africans, if an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed from the oppressions of their European brethren![18]

No one essay dealt exclusively with enslavement. Rather, like the Constitution itself, enslaved individuals were only recognized as they enhanced the political power of their white masters. In essay fifty-four, in a discussion on apportionment for determining the numbers of representatives for each state, Madison saw the argument against counting the enslaved for representation purposes as, “Slaves are considered as property, not as persons. They ought therefore to be comprehended in estimates of taxation which are founded on property, and to be excluded from representation which is regulated by a census of persons. This is the objection, as I understand it, stated in its full force.”[19] Straining credulity, Madison, in essay fifty-four, wrote,

The federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixed character of persons and of property. This is in fact their true character. It is the character bestowed on them by the laws under which they live; and it will not be denied, that these are the proper criterion; because it is only under the pretext that the laws have transformed the negroes into subjects of property.[20]

In other words, Madison put the status of the enslaved as determined by the Constitution without following up to say the Constitution was written by men, who, through the Constitution, determined the role of a single race of people.

Hamilton, in essay sixty-eight, attempted to defend the electoral college, writing, “A small number of persons selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations [of electing a president].”[21] The past two hundred and fifty years have shown Hamilton to be slightly off in his understanding of at least this aspect of the “general mass.”

One issue Publius had to contend with was a new law code. America would no longer be bound by the British common law. Rather, America would have a written Constitution (unlike Britain) with an established supreme court (again, unlike Britain). Publius had to devote several essays to this topic. While Madison did discuss the larger ramifications of constitutional law, Hamilton drilled down to look at the specifics of a supreme court defining constitutional law. “Starting with Federalist seventy-eight, Hamilton, in five quick essays, laid before his readers the concept of a national judiciary.”[22] Of all the articles in the new Constitution, Article III was likely the most bewildering. Hamilton acknowledged a federal judiciary was not a common topic in colonial and early America. He wrote, “as the propriety of the institution in the abstract is not disputed; the only questions which have been raised being relative to the manner of constituting it, and to its extent.”[23] It should be remembered that the Constitution only created a supreme court and left it to Congress to create lesser courts. Hamilton went on to detail how a national judiciary would be the weakest of the three branches,

The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever, It may truly be said to have neither FORCE or WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.[24]

Strangely, this description makes the judiciary seem less than a co-equal branch of the government.

By essay eighty-four, Hamilton reflected on topics “which either did not fall naturally under any particular head or were forgotten in their proper places.”[25] And, finally, Hamilton effectively ended the series of essays in number eighty-five which “reflected back on the preceding essays and the topics covered.”[26] Hamilton, by this point, acknowledged that seven states had already ratified the Constitution, leaving just two more necessary for the document to become the law of the land. While taking his leave of The Federalist project, Hamilton was by no means finished with government service. His post-Federalist career is certainly as colorful and impactful as the time spent as the primary author of The Federalist.

While it is nearly impossible to say The Federalist papers were the deciding factor in the New York ratifying convention, it is possible to say they did not hurt the cause of ratification. It was a close contest on July 26, 1788, when the federal Constitution was adopted by a vote of thirty to twenty-seven.

In the twenty-first century The Federalist papers have a mythical aura around them as if having been delivered from Delphi. While that may be a slight exaggeration, the essays are often quoted in court opinions, including Supreme Court opinions, and have secured a place alongside the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as part of America’s founding heritage. In some respects, it is fair to say The Federalist papers have had a more expansive post-publication life than when originally written. They have never been out of print, and early editions are highly sought after by collectors. The Federalist are highly revered physically with printed first editions fetching nearly a quarter million dollars at auction (a first edition belonging to Washington’s nephew and Supreme Court justice Bushrod Washington, was up for sale in September 2024). They are an oracle on the American Founding second only to the Constitution itself.

[1] William Grayson to James Madison, May 28, 1786, founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-09-02-0012.

[2] The Annapolis Convention has been covered in this Journal by Jason Yonce, May 27, 2019.

[3] William Kent, ed., Memoirs and Letters of James Kent, LL.D. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1898), 300-303.

[4] The Federalist 1787-1788 (Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1979), 6. In the original, Hamilton used all uppercase.

[5] Ibid., 19.

[6] Ibid., 26.

[7] Ibid., 27.

[8] Ibid., 54.

[9] Ibid., 56.

[10] Jude M. Pfister, Charting an American Republic, The Origins and Writing of the Federalist Papers (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2016), 194.

[11] The Federalist 1787-1788, 195.

[12] Ibid., 233.

[13] Ibid., 236.

[14] As quoted in ibid., 528.

[15] Pfister, Charting an American Republic, 196.

[16] The Federalist 1787-1788, 261.

[17] Ibid., 322.

[18] Ibid., 280-281.

[19] Ibid., 366.

[20] Ibid., 367.

[21] Ibid., 456.

[22] Pfister, Charting an American Republic, 199.

[23] The Federalist 1787-1788, 519.

[24] Ibid., 520.

[25] Ibid., 572.

[26] Pfister, Charting an American Republic, 202.