The Federalist

This story appears annually at TomKlingenstein.com on October 27, in commemoration of 250 years — and counting — of American independence.

New York, early fall, 1787. A new Constitution for America had miraculously come forth from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia after four months of intense argument and fateful compromise during a historic summer. But it would not become the basis of a new federal government until ratified by nine of the thirteen states.

Criticism from opponents of the Constitution began pouring into the public press even before the Constitution was made public. These opponents would come to be called “Anti-Federalists.” Alexander Hamilton, who had been a delegate from New York to the Constitutional Convention, recruited fellow New Yorker John Jay and fellow Convention delegate James Madison (from Virginia) to answer the Anti-Federalist criticism.

Beginning on October 27, and continuing through May of the following year, under the pseudonym “Publius,” the three of them (mainly Hamilton and Madison) published 85 essays in New York newspapers defending and explaining the proposed Constitution. Even before they were all published in newspapers, the essays were gathered in two volumes, giving them a more permanent form while their urgent immediate purpose — to secure ratification of the Constitution — still hung in the balance. The title given to the two-volume work was The Federalist.

It’s usually hard to know, in the midst of working for urgent immediate purposes, whether your efforts possess any enduring qualities. If you achieve your immediate ends — in this case, securing ratification of the Constitution — your efforts can be measured by what they accomplished, even if they contain no treasures for the ages. In truth, no one could tell at the time whether the essays by the mystery author “Publius” had any effect in helping to get the Constitution ratified.