Chapter 1.0. The Federalist-Antifederalist Debates, Introduction
This chapter focuses on the controversies that erupted as the Philadelphia Convention was closing between those who supported the new constitution, who became known as Federalists, and those who opposed it, who became known as Anti-Federalists. This introductory section begins by describing the Federalists.
After the signing of the Constitution on September 17th, 1787, a robust debate grew among supporters of the document and those, for various reasons, who were opposed to its ratification as written, or at all. This “out of doors,” to use the language of the times, debate took place in the newspapers, taverns, parlors, and homes of Americans across the thirteen states, and served as the public backdrop to the considerations, debates, and eventual decisions of the ratification conventions that would determine the fate of the Constitution and the republic it proposed.
The Federalists
On the pro-Constitution side, of course, are the eighty-five essays collectively known as The Federalist, which began to appear in four different New York newspapers in response to the Antifederalist attacks on the Constitution that were flooding New York right after the Philadelphia Convention ended on September 17, 1787. These essays, which were published as a book in 1788, were known to have been written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, but all three published them under the same pseudonym, “Publius.”
Their shared pseudonym suggests the strong agreement among these three authors, but it is almost certain that Jay wrote only five essays (nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 64), all focused on foreign affairs. Hamilton probably wrote, in whole or part, 51, including the opening and closing essays (nos. 1 and 83-85); most of those in the introductory series on the defects of the Articles and the need for a new plan (nos. 6-9; 11-13; 15-17; 18-20 with Madison; and 21-36); three of the those on the House of Representatives (nos. 59-61); two of those on the Senate (nos. 65-66); and all of those on the executive and judicial branches (nos. 67-82).
Although James Madison wrote fewer of the essays, probably 29, his have often been considered the best. They include: two in the opening series (nos. 10 and 14); an entire section on the challenges of the founding and the principles of the separation of powers (nos. 37-51); most of the those on the House of Representatives (nos. 52-58); and the first two of those on the Senate (nos. 62-63).
Although these essays have acquired an authoritative status sometimes considered to be almost equal to the Constitution itself, they were not the only, or even the most influential, of the pro-Constitution essays.
This introduction is adapted and abridged from Gordon Lloyd’s Introduction to the Federalist-Antifederalist Debates and related material on the Teaching American History website. For a more detailed outline of the Federalist, see Gordon Lloyd’s Introduction to the Federalist on the above website. The source he uses for the texts from this book (including the essays below by Madison) is The Federalist: The Gideon Edition, eds. George W. Carey and James McClellan (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001).