- ANTONE PIERUCCI
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This Week in History: The Federalist Papers
If you think politics is a brutal business today, you would blanch at some of the op-eds written by our founding fathers.
In an age before television and radio, politicians had very few arenas in which to sway public opinion.
What they did have were newspapers and pamphlets (small booklets that were printed separately). With so few options available, they had to know how to use what weapons they did have with deadly efficiency.
Some of our most revered founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton were ruthless pamphleteers, having no qualms about hitting below the belt when it suited their needs.
John Adams alluded to Alexander Hamilton’s illegitimate birth in one article, and in another a goon of Jefferson’s all but accused Hamilton of having an extra-marital affair.
To be fair, Hamilton was a bastard and had had such an affair. Still, it doesn’t quite feel right that the same illuminated minds that birthed the notion that “all men are created equal,” also traded in “yo’ mamma” insults.
It’s partially because they were published amid such mud-slinging attacks that the Federalist Papers stand out like beacons of clear light. That, and they were utterly brilliant.
Theodore Roosevelt declared that the Federalist Papers were “on the whole the greatest book dealing with applied politics that there has ever been.”
Decades before Roosevelt, the famed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall went so far as to say that the essays in the Federalist Papers could be used like ciphers – helping to interpret the very constitution.
So what were these papers, and why are they still required reading for high school students?
To start, the Federalist Papers represent the clearest enunciation of the principles of the U.S. Constitution that has ever been written. They were forged from the minds of the very brightest of our founding fathers.
And they went a long way in helping to create America as we know it.
Revolutionary War: Part 2
It all started with a fight.
The bloody battles of the revolution were more than five years behind us when Americans geared up for another row – this one over the very character of the nation they had fought to create.
In early 1787, the Constitutional Convention had gathered together a group of delegates from each colony (except Rhode Island, which was early America’s version of that friend who flips the board game over when he’s about to lose).
After months of debate and polishing, the convention presented to the nation a new operating document, to replace the faulty Articles of Confederation, which had been scraped together in the early days of the Revolutionary War. In order for the new document to go into effect, 9 states had to ratify it.
For the supporters and detractors of the Constitution both, now was the time to prepare for the final push.
Each state needed to elect delegates to their own ratifying conventions.
Alexander Hamilton, a young foreign-born bastard with a sharp tongue and sharper quill pen, led the charge in favor of ratifying.
By early October 1787, Hamilton had conceived an ambitious writing project to help the Constitution’s cause. He had devised the project as a team effort.
Seeking out his long-time friend, John Jay, and his newfound ally James Madison, Hamilton gathered together the sharpest minds of the day.
Each team member was to write essays on topics they were specifically qualified to talk about. Jay would write about foreign relations as it related to the constitution and James Madison would write on the history of republics and confederations.
Turning once more to his most powerful of assets, the pen, Hamilton would write about the branches of government and matters of taxation.
The first installment of what would become known collectively as the Federalist Papers appeared in newspapers in New York. The authors had to camouflage their identities, partly so their arguments would stand on their own merit and not become victims of the authors’ personal reputations.
Also, delegates to the Constitutional Convention had sworn an oath of secrecy – nothing said at the convention was to be repeated outside of it.
Since they were planning on doing just that in their attempts to defend the document, Hamilton and his team hid behind the pseudonym of Publius – the name of an ancient Roman hero who assassinated the last Roman King.
Over the course of seven months, the trio wrote some 175,000 words organized in 85 essays. Soon after starting the project, John Jay had to drop out due to illness. That left Hamilton and Madison to write one essay each week for months.
Within no time, three of the four New York newspapers were printing their installments. Eventually, the essays were collected into bound volumes and distributed to delegates to the New York Ratifying Convention.
Among the many topics discussed, the Federalist Papers highlighted the weakness of a loose confederation (what the Constitution’s detractors preferred) and pointed out all the benefits of having a strong central government.
They argued that under the Constitution, they would have a central government that could prevent states from squabbling and speak with a single voice on the international stage. After all, a country of 13 states under one leader has more authority in foreign negotiations than 13 separate leaders under one confederation (can you imagine trying to negotiate with 13 different people at once?).
As a sort of revolutionary-style chain mail, Hamilton and Madison sent copies of the Federalist Papers to as many state delegates as possible, maximizing the reach of their ideas and helping to sway opinions from South Carolina to New York.
In the end, it was still a close-fought thing. On April 28, Maryland ratified the Constitution, becoming the seventh state to do so.
By late May of 1788, South Carolina gave its blessing, bringing the total ratifying states to eight – just one shy of the number needed. But looking over the remaining states, supporters weren’t certain of victory. North Carolina and Rhode Island both scorned the Constitution outright, while New Hampshire was unsure.
That left just New York and Virginia. Even with the potent support of Alexander Hamilton, the Constitutional cause rested on shaky ground in New York. For several weeks, it looked like the battle could go either way.
Fortunately for supporters of the constitution, New Hampshire made up its mind and together with Virginia voted to ratify, becoming the ninth and 10th states to do so.
Now if the remaining holdout states didn’t ratify, they’d be removed from the new United States of America, becoming separate islands of sovereignty unto themselves. Rhode Island, as pernicious as ever, waited until 1790 to finally ratify. With that, the United States of America became a reality.
It didn’t take long, however, for squabbling to recommence and within a year or so, one-time allies Hamilton and Madison became the staunchest of enemies.
Politics really hasn’t changed much after all.
Antone Pierucci is curator of history at the Riverside County Park and Open Space District and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.