Monday, October 16, 2006
The Federalist Papers
Hi. Let’s talk about The Federalist Papers. What are The Federalist Papers? Well, they are actually 85 different articles written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. These articles, published in New York City newspapers during the years of 1787 and 1788, pushed to have the United States Constitution accepted by the government. They call it “ratified.” Though the exact numbers are argued about, Alexander Hamilton wrote most of the articles, probably 51, while John Jay wrote the least, 5. Bet you can figure out how many James Madison wrote… that’s right, 29. These numbers were confirmed by James Madison.
Each writer used the fake name Publius instead of their real name. This was pretty common practice. Benjamin Franklin wrote a bunch of articles using fake names like Anthony Afterwit and Silence Dogood. He actually pretended that Silence Dogood was a woman!
The most famous of the articles spoke about the separation of powers in government, checks and balances in government, guarding against “factions” that have an interest that harm the rights of the whole community, and even an argument against The Bill of Rights. Back then it was common for people to be opposed to a specific Bill of Rights. People thought that if you listed the rights of the people, the government might interpret those rights as the only rights that the people could have. They thought of a Bill of Rights as something between a king and his subjects.
This is important to the duel because of the big political rivalry between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. Alexander Hamilton was a Federalist. Even James Madison, co-author of the Federalist Papers, became a political rival of Alexander Hamilton’s. But you’ll get into that a little later with Phineas.
Just so you know, James Madison became the 4th President of the United States, while John Jay became the 1st Chief Justice of the United States.
