Tag: Federalist

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Hamilton, the Humanist: Philosophical Collision in Federalist No. 6

In December 2023, intellectual history lost one of its greatest innovators: J. G. A. Pocock. Professor Pocock, who dedicated his life to reconstructing the relationship between written text and historical context, leaves behind a body of work that has dramatically altered our understanding of Atlantic political thought. Underpinning much of his scholarship is a strong […]

by Vincent Calvagno
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Partisan Politics and the Laws Which Shaped the First Congress

Every ten years the United States engages in the process of re-apportionment, wherein each state with more than one House seat redraws their Congressional districts. Simultaneously, every re-districting cycle partisans, activists, and pundits alike all bewail the harmful effects of gerrymandering on the process. Far from a modern phenomenon, partisan politics has always had a […]

by Samuel T. Lair
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A Second Bonaparte: Searching for the Character of Alexander Hamilton

Thomas Jefferson, that American Sphinx,[1] is perhaps Alexander Hamilton’s only rival within the high pantheon of the founding generation for enigma. Hamilton’s character recalls Giambologna’s The Rape of the Sabine Women, a spiraling marble Renaissance masterpiece resident in Florence’s Piazza Signoria, featuring three intertwined figures that can only be captured conclusively from a host of vantage […]

by Steven C. Hertler
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Standing Armies: The Constitutional Debate

Introduction Few ideas were more widely accepted in early America than that of the danger of peacetime standing armies.[1] This anti-standing army sentiment motivated colonial opposition to post-French and Indian War British policies, intensified after the Boston Massacre, influenced the writings of most founding fathers, and remained politically relevant well after the Revolutionary War ended. […]

by Griffin Bovée
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Alexander Hamilton, Benedict Arnold and a “forgotten” Publius

Thanks to a critically-acclaimed and phenomenally popular Broadway musical, Alexander Hamilton has, quite literally, returned to the spotlight. The success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, a show inspired by Ron Chernow’s best-selling 2004 biography Alexander Hamilton, has helped to rekindle interest in a man who, even when judged by the exceptional standards of the Founding Fathers, […]

by Stephen Brumwell