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The Federalist Papers

85 essays promoting ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

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The Federalist Papers comprise a series of essays that were created to advocate for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.[1] From October 1787 through April 1788, these writings were printed in New York City newspapers.[2]

Making and release

Alexander Hamilton launched the series in response to critical articles opposing the new Constitution.[3] He recruited John Jay and James Madison as his primary collaborators.[4][5] A bound volume of the first 36 essays was released on March 22, 1788.[6] The Independent Journal, the New-York Packet, and the Daily Advertiser were the three newspapers that carried the essays.[7]

During some weeks, the public could read three or four newly published essays from Publius.[8] The final eight papers, numbers 78 through 85, were printed again in newspapers from June 14 to August 16, 1788.[9]

What the cited sources add

Robert Yates, writing as "Brutus", argued that a government without a bill of rights could easily become tyrannical.[10] In 1944, Douglass Adair's scholarly investigation proposed which author wrote which essay, a set of assignments later confirmed by statistical methods.[11] Multiple statistical analyses have been performed over time to determine who wrote each of the Federalist essays.[12] The consensus from these studies is that James Madison authored the essays whose authorship was in question.[12]

A few scholars, however, argue that certain essays commonly credited to Madison were actually written jointly with others.[12] In its rulings, the Supreme Court has referenced The Federalist Papers 291 times.[13]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Furtwangler, [ p. 21]. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Lloyd, "Introduction to the Federalist", teachingamericanhistory.org; "The Federalist: a Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution, as Agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787, in two volumes", J. & A. McLean, 1788; "The Encyclopedia of New York City", Yale University Press, 1995, p. 194 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Gunn, "Early American Writing", Penguin Classics, 1994, p. 540 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Jay, "The debates in the several state conventions on the adoption of the Federal Constitution: as recommended by the general convention at Philadelphia, in 1787", columbia.edu, 1836–1859 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Furtwangler, [ pp. 51–56].; "An Introduction to The Federalist", csac.history.wisc.edu (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Lloyd, "Introduction to the Federalist", teachingamericanhistory.org (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Encyclopædia Britannica, "Founding Fathers: The Essential Guide to the Men Who Made America", John Wiley & Sons, 2007 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wills, xii. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Lloyd, "Introduction to the Federalist", teachingamericanhistory.org; Encyclopædia Britannica, "Founding Fathers: The Essential Guide to the Men Who Made America", John Wiley & Sons, 2007 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Tulis, "The Rhetorical Presidency", Princeton University Press, 1987, p. 30; Harvey Flaumenhaft, "Hamilton's Administrative Republic and the American Presidency," in The Presidency in the Constitutional Order, ed. Joseph M. Bessette and (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  11. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mosteller, "Applied Bayesian and Classical Inference: The Case of The Federalist Papers", Springer Science & Business Media, 2012 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  12. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mosteller, "Applied Bayesian and Classical Inference: The Case of The Federalist Papers", Springer Science & Business Media, 2012; Collins, "Detecting Collaborations in Text: Comparing the Authors' Rhetorical Language Choices in The Federalist Papers", Computers and the Humanities, February 2004, p. 15–36; Fung, "The Disputed Federalist Papers: SVM Feature Selection via Concave Minimization", Journal of the ACM, 2003 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  13. Wikipedia, "The Federalist Papers" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: See, among others, a very early exploration of the judicial use of The Federalist in Charles W. Pierson, "The Federalist in the Supreme Court", The Yale Law Jou; Chernow, Ron. "Alexander Hamilton". Penguin Books, 2004. (p. 260) (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article The Federalist Papers (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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