Federalist Papers
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The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles arguing for the ratification of the United States Constitution. They were first published serially in New York City newspapers. A compilation, called The Federalist, was published in 1788. The Federalist Papers serve as a primary source for interpretation of the Constitution, as they outline the philosophy and motivation of the proposed system of government. The authors of the Federalist Papers were not above using the opportunity to provide their own "spin" on certain provisions of the constitution to (i) influence the vote on ratification and (ii) influence future interpretations of the provisions in question.
The articles were written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, under the pseudonym "Publius" in honor of Publius Valerius Publicola. Madison is generally credited as the father of the Constitution and became the fourth President of the United States. Hamilton was an influential delegate at the Constitutional Convention, and later the first Secretary of the Treasury. John Jay would become the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Hamilton penned the majority and Madison made several significant contributions to the series. Jay, who fell ill early in the project, wrote but five.
Federalist No. 10 and Federalist No. 51 are generally regarded as the most influential of the 85 articles; 10 advocates for a large, strong republic and includes discussion on factions, 51 explains the need for separation of powers. Federalist No. 84 is also notable for its opposition to what later became the United States Bill of Rights.
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Origins
The Constitution was sent to the states for ratification in late September 1787. Immediately, it was the target of a substantial number of articles and public letters written by Anti-Federalists and other opponents of the Constitution. For instance, the important Anti-Federalist authors debuted in New York papers on September 27 and October 18, respectively. Hamilton began the Federalist Papers project as a response to the opponents of ratification, a response that would explain the new Constitution to the residents of New York and persuade them to ratify it. He wrote in Federalist No. 1 that the series would "endeavor to give a satisfactory answer to all the objections which shall have made their appearance, that may seem to have any claim to your attention."
Hamilton recruited collaborators for the project. He enlisted Jay, who fell ill and was unable to contribute much to the series. Madison, in New York as a delegate to the Congress, was recruited by Hamilton and Jay and became Hamilton's major collaborator. Gouverneur Morris and William Duer were also apparently considered; Morris turned down the invitation and Hamilton rejected three essays written by Duer.[1]
Publication
The Federalist Papers initially appeared in three New York newspapers: the Independent Journal, the New-York Packet and the Daily Advertiser, beginning on October 27, 1787. Between them, Hamilton, Madison and Jay kept up a rapid pace, with at times three or four new essays by Publius appearing in the papers in a week. Hamilton also encouraged the reprinting of the essay in newspapers outside New York state, and indeed they were published in a number of other states where the ratification debate was taking place.
The high demand for the essays led to their publication in a more permanent form. On January 1, 1788, the New York publishing firm J. & A. McLean announced that they would publish the first thirty-six essays as a bound volume; that volume was released on March 2 and was titled The Federalist. (Its title page appears at the top right of the article.) New essays continued to appear in the newspapers; Federalist No. 77 was the last number to first appear in that form, on April 2. A second bound volume containing the last forty-nine essays was released on May 28. The remaining eight papers were later published in the newspapers as well.[2]
A number of later publications are worth noting. A 1792 French edition ended the collective anonymity of Publius, announcing that the work had been written by "MM Hamilton, Maddisson E Gay," citizens of the State of New York. In 1802 George Hopkins published an American edition that similarly named the authors. Hopkins wished as well that "the name of the writer should be prefixed to each number," but at this point Hamilton insisted that this was not to be, and the division of the essays between the three authors remained a secret.[3]
The first publication to divide the papers in such a way was an 1810 edition that used a list provided by Hamilton to associate the authors with their numbers; this edition appeared as two volumes of the compiled "Works of Hamilton." In 1818, Jacob Gideon published a new edition with a new listing of authors, based on a list provided by Madison. The difference between Hamilton's list and Madison's form the basis for a dispute over the authorship of a dozen of the essays.[4]
The disputed numbers
The authorship of seventy-three numbers of The Federalist is fairly certain, but twelve are in dispute, though today all twelve are generally regarded as the work of Madison. The first open designation of which essay belonged to whom was provided by Hamilton, who in the days before his ultimately fatal duel with Aaron Burr provided his lawyer with a list detailing the author of each number. This list credited Hamilton with a full sixty-three of the essays (three of those being jointly written with Madison), almost three quarters of the whole, and was used as the basis for an 1810 printing that was the first to make specific attribution for the essays.
Madison did not immediately dispute Hamilton's list, but provided his own list for the 1818 Gideon edition of The Federalist. Madison claimed twenty-nine numbers for himself, and he suggested that the difference between the two lists was "owing doubtless to the hurry in which [Hamilton's] memorandum was made out." A known error in Hamilton's list—Hamilton incorrectly ascribed No. 54 to Jay, when in fact Jay wrote No. 64—has provided some evidence for Madison's suggestion.[5]
Statistical analysis has been undertaken a number of times to try to decide based on word frequencies and writing styles, and nearly all of the statistical studies show that all twelve disputed papers were written by Madison.[6][7]
Judicial use and interpretation
Federal judges frequently use the Federalist Papers when interpreting the Constitution as a contemporary account of the intentions of the framers and ratifiers. However, the amount of deference that should be given to the Federalist Papers in constitutional interpretation has always been somewhat controversial. As early as 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall said about the Federalist Papers in the famous case McCulloch v. Maryland that "the opinions expressed by the authors of that work have been justly supposed to be entitled to great respect in expounding the Constitution. No tribute can be paid to them which exceeds their merit; but in applying their opinions to the cases which may arise in the progress of our government, a right to judge of their correctness must be retained."
Opposition to the Bill of Rights
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The Federalist Papers (specifically Federalist No. 84) are remarkable for their opposition to what later became the United States Bill of Rights. The idea of adding a bill of rights to the constitution was originally controversial. The idea was that the constitution, as written did not specifically enumerate or protect the rights of the people, and as such needed an addition to ensure such protection. However, many Americans at the time opposed the bill of rights: If such a bill were created, many people feared that this would later be interpreted as a list of the only rights that people had. Supporters of the bill of rights argued that a list of rights would and should not be interpreted as exhaustive; i.e. that these rights were examples of important rights that people had, but that people had other rights as well. People in this school of thought were confident that the judiciary would interpret these rights in an expansive fashion.
See also
References
- Adair, Douglass. Fame and the Founding Fathers. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1974. A collection of essays; that used here is "The Disputed Federalist Papers."
- Furtwangler, Albert. The Authority of Publius: A Reading of the Federalist Papers. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Notes
- ^ Furtwangler, 51-56.
- ^ The Federalist timeline at www.sparknotes.com
- ^ Adair, 40-41.
- ^ Adair, 44-46.
- ^ Adair, 48.
- ^ Frederick Mosteller and David L. Wallace. Inference and Disputed Authorship: The Federalist. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1964.
- ^ Fung, Glenn, The disputed federalist papers: SVM feature selection via concave minimization, New York City, ACM Press, 2003. (9 pg pdf file)
Further reading
- Dietze, Gottfried. The Federalist: A Classic on Federalism and Free Government, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1960.
- Epstein, David F. The Political Theory of the Federalist, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984.
- Gray, Leslie, and Wynell Burroughs. "Teaching With Documents: Ratification of the Constitution," Social Education, 51 (1987): 322-324.
- Patrick, John J., and Clair W. Keller. Lessons on the Federalist Papers: Supplements to High School Courses in American History, Government and Civics, Bloomington, IN: Organization of American Historians in association with ERIC/ChESS, 1987. ED 280 764.
- Schechter, Stephen L. Teaching about American Federal Democracy, Philadelphia: Center for the Study of Federalism at Temple University, 1984. ED 248 161.
- Yarbrough, Jean. "The Federalist". This Constitution: A Bicentennial Chronicle, 16 (1987): 4-9. SO 018 489.
- Webster, Mary E. The Federalist Papers: In Modern Language Indexed for Today's Political Issues. Bellevue, WA.: Merril Press, 1999.
- Wills, Gary. The Federalist Papers: By Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, New York: Bantam Book, 1982.
External links
- Speaker of the House: The Federalist Papers
- The Federalist Papers at the Library of Congress
- The Federalist Papers etext from Project Gutenberg
- Teaching the Federalist Papers
- The Avalon Project at Yale Law School: The Federalist Papers
- Federalist Papers on the Bill of Rights
| Federalist Papers |
| List of Essays |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 |
| Authors: Alexander Hamilton | James Madison | John Jay |
| See also: Anti-Federalist Papers |
