From America's Beginnings: The Dramatic Events That Shaped a Nation's Character
by Tony Williams
© 2010 by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
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48 •
The Federalist
A
fter the Constitution was published and sent to the states for ratification, the opponents of the new Constitution rallied quickly and
penned essays against it. Its supporters were alarmed by the force of these
arguments. Alexander Hamilton noted that, ‘‘The artillery of its opponents makes some impression.’’ James Madison worried that ‘‘the newspapers here begin to teem with vehement and virulent calumniations of
the proposed government.’’
In mid-October, Hamilton was traveling from Albany, where he
was attending the session of the New York Supreme Court, to his home
in New York City. During his leisure time sailing on the Hudson by
sloop, he outlined a plan to write a number of essays in defense of the
Constitution against its critics. He sought to demonstrate that the
national government would have the vigor to act while not endangering
the liberties of the people. He enlisted the help of the ardent nationalist
and ‘‘father of the Constitution,’’ James Madison, as well as New York
diplomat and president of the Continental Congress, John Jay. Gouverneur Morris declined to make any contributions when asked, and William Duer’s submission was awful enough not to include. Jay fell ill after
working on essays 2 through 5 and had to back out of the project. It
was left to Hamilton and Madison to write the essays.
The first Federalist, as the essays were called, appeared in the New
York Independent Journal on October 27. Hamilton addressed his essay to
the ‘‘people of the State of New York,’’ but his true audience was the
delegates to the New York Ratifying Convention, where opposition was
strong. Though The Federalist would come to be seen as much more, it
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was written as propaganda and aimed at the Anti-Federalists, especially at
the New York convention. It was published in four of New York City’s
five newspapers.
The Federalist was written at the frenetic pace of nearly 1,000 words
per day. There were usually two entries in each newspaper edition, overwhelming the opposition, the printers, and the authors. Hamilton and
Madison were able to accomplish their Herculean writing task because
of their extensive knowledge of ancient and modern history and political
philosophy, partly as a result of their preparation for and experience at
the Annapolis and Philadelphia Conventions. They conferred on the
early entries. As Madison wrote, ‘‘In the beginning it was the practice of
the writers . . . to communicate each to the other, their respective papers
before they were sent to the press.’’ They wrote as Publius, the Roman
ruler who nobly countered the suspicions that he sought to usurp the
people.
When Federalist 1 appeared on October 27, Hamilton laid down
the importance of the deliberations about their Constitution. He wrote:
It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their
conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government
from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to
depend upon their political constitutions on accident and force.
By January 11, 1788, Madison agreed to write the next twenty-two
essays beginning with Federalist 37. Hamilton took a break to attend to
his legal practice. To assuage Anti-Federalist fears of a national leviathan
that would destroy the states, Madison explained in Federalist 39 that
the plan of government was ‘‘neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both.’’ Hamilton soon re-entered the fray and
penned the rest of the essays while Madison went home to Virginia to
fight for ratification.
By early February, six states had ratified the Constitution including
the critically important Massachusetts, but New York and Virginia still
had not met. Therefore, Hamilton and Madison published the Federalist
in book form on March 22, rearranging the order of the essays for logical
sequence. The first thirty-six essays were nicely bound in a format that
From America's Beginnings: The Dramatic Events That Shaped a Nation's Character
by Tony Williams
© 2010 by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
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America’s Beginnings
could be easily distributed to the delegates of the New York Convention
and around the country.
By April 2, the last of the Federalist essays—number seventyseven—was published in newspapers. On May 28, just weeks before the
New York and Virginia conventions were scheduled to convene, the second volume of The Federalist was published in book form. Hamilton had
written an additional eight essays for the book that never appeared in the
newspapers. Among their number was Federalist 78 in which he called
the judiciary ‘‘the least dangerous’’ branch and argued for its power to
‘‘declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.’’
In Federalist 84, Hamilton answered the important Anti-Federalist
objection that the Constitution lacked a bill of rights. Hamilton contended that the written constitution granted the limited, republican
national government enumerated powers and it had no authority to violate the rights of the sovereign people in the first place. In the next and
last essay, he imputed the motives of his opponents, warning of the dismal
price of failure: ‘‘I dread the more the consequences of new attempts
because I know the POWERFUL INDIVIDUALS, in this [New York]
and in other states, are enemies to a general national government in every
possible shape.’’
The Federalist shaped the debate over the ratification of the Constitution. It was a brilliant piece of political propaganda, Yet many contemporary observers noted its importance to republican political theory.
George Washington described it as throwing ‘‘new light upon the science of government [and] they have given the rights of man a full and
fair discussion.’’ Future Supreme Court chief justice John Marshall
thought that it ‘‘will be read and admired when the controversy in which
that valuable treatise on government originated, shall no longer be
remembered.’’ Thomas Jefferson praised The Federalist simply as ‘‘the best
commentary on the principles of government which ever was written.’’
From America's Beginnings: The Dramatic Events That Shaped a Nation's Character
by Tony Williams
© 2010 by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
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