FEDERALIST PAPERS.

FEDERALIST PAPERS. On 27 October 1787, the first essay of The Federalist, written under the pen name Publius, appeared in a New York City newspaper. Its author was Alexander Hamilton, who conceived the project of publishing an extended series of essays to support the ratification of the newly proposed Federal Constitution. Hamilton recruited two other prominent leaders as his co-authors: John Jay and James Madison. Together, they published seventy-seven newspaper essays by April 1788, and another eight appeared in the second volume of the first book edition. Hamilton is credited with writing fifty-one essays, Madison twenty-nine, and Jay, weakened by illness, just five. All three authors drew upon their extensive experience in national politics and the military and diplomatic struggle for independence. The two main authors also played critical roles in the maneuvers leading to the Federal Convention and the drafting of the Constitution, and they also founded the rival schools of constitutional interpretation that developed after it took effect. As a result, The Federalist has long been regarded as the most authoritative exposition of the original meaning of the Constitution, and the leading American contribution to Western political thought.

The division of assignments allowed the authors to tap their particular strengths. Hamilton, the more ardent nationalist, had seven years of service in the Continental Army, mostly as aide-de-camp to General Washington; he was also a close student of public finance and a successful attorney. It was therefore fitting that he wrote the essays emphasizing the necessity for an effective national union with adequate powers over national defense and revenue, as well as those examining the executive and judiciary. Madison's experience was primarily legislative; he was more engaged with basic questions of political theory, and more concerned than Hamilton with balancing the authority of the Union and the states. It was equally fitting, then, that he wrote the leading essays on Congress and federalism, as well as addressing anti-Federalist objections that the Constitution violated fundamental maxims of free government.

Two of those maxims were closely associated with one of the most celebrated works of eighteenth-century political science, Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws. One of these maxims argued that republican government could safely operate only in small, homogeneous societies where the citizens shared similar interests and the virtue to subordinate private interest to public good. The other held that liberty depended upon a rigid separation of both the functions and personnel of the different departments of government. Madison challenged these propositions in two famous essays. "Federalist 10" argued that liberty would be more secure in a large, diverse republic, where "factious majorities" would find it more difficult to gain control of the government. "Federalist 51" concluded a series of essays on the separation of powers by arguing that the task of maintaining equilibrium among the departments required giving the members of each branch the incentives and means to protect their constitutional powers. Hamilton's best-known essay is "Federalist 78," which offered an early defense of the theory of judicial review, enabling courts to measure legislative and executive acts against constitutional standards.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adair, Douglass. "The Tenth Federalist Revisited." William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 8 (1951): 48–67.

———. "'That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science': David Hume, James Madison, and the Tenth Federalist." Huntington Library Quarterly, 20 (1957): 343–360.

Cooke, Jacob, ed. The Federalist. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.

Epstein, David F. The Political Theory of The Federalist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Furtwangler, Albert. The Authority of Publius: A Reading of the Federalist Papers. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Kesler, Charles R. ed. Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding. New York: Free Press, 1987.