Federalist Papers

What It Is

Eighty-five essays published in New York newspapers between October 1787 and August 1788, signed Publius, arguing that New York should ratify the proposed federal constitution. Alexander Hamilton conceived the series and wrote about fifty-one of them. James Madison wrote twenty-nine. John Jay fell ill and managed five.

They were written at a punishing pace, sometimes four a week, and it shows. Some are workmanlike advocacy hammered out against a printer's deadline. A handful are among the best political writing produced in English. New York ratified narrowly, and historians doubt the essays changed many votes there. Their influence began afterwards, and has not stopped.

Around six hundred pages of eighteenth-century periodic prose. This is a book to work through, not to fall into.

Why It Matters

No other constitution has ever been explained at this length, in public, by the men who wrote it, while the question was still open. That alone would make it a document without parallel.

What raises it above documentary interest is the theory inside it. Federalist 10 takes the classical assumption that a republic must be small and homogeneous to survive and turns it over, and the reversal is still the most original piece of political theory produced in America. Federalist 51 states the mechanism with a candour few founding documents permit themselves, and it does not flatter the people it is designed for. Federalist 78 supplies the argument for judicial review that the Supreme Court would later stand on.

It is also, and unembarrassedly, advocacy. Publius is arguing a case, occasionally against what Hamilton privately thought. Read the Anti-Federalist essays of Brutus and the Federal Farmer alongside it, or you are hearing one side of a trial and calling it the verdict.

Before You Read

Do not read it cover to cover on a first pass. It was published serially, it repeats itself, and long runs of it are devoted to arguments that have since been settled.

A first reading might take 1, 6, 9, 10, 14, 15, 23, 37, 39, 45, 47, 48, 51, 62, 63, 68, 70, 78, 84 and 85. That is a coherent book in about a fifth of the pages, and it leaves you free to return. The extended sequences on taxation and the militia are heavy going and are commonly skimmed.

Keep the Constitution open beside you; every decent edition prints it. When a sentence collapses under its own subordinate clauses, read it aloud. It was written for men who did.

Which Edition to Read

• The Gideon Edition, edited by George W. Carey and James McClellan (Liberty Fund, 2001) — recommended. It prints the 1818 Gideon text, the last one the authors themselves corrected, and the first to settle the authorship question using Madison's own list. The apparatus is the best there is for a reader rather than a specialist: a reader's guide, cross-references from every essay to the clauses of the Constitution it discusses, a glossary, a real index. The cost: the editors have a constitutional philosophy of their own and it colours the introduction. Read it knowing that. View on Amazon →
• Signet Classics, edited by Clinton Rossiter, updated by Charles R. Kesler (2003). The classroom standard, and the best paperback to carry. Kesler's introduction is the finest short essay on the whole series, and his notes are genuinely helpful. The cost: it keeps Rossiter's text rather than the authors' final corrections.
• Jacob E. Cooke (Wesleyan University Press, 1961). The variorum edition scholars cite, printing the essays as they appeared in the New York papers with all the textual variants. The cost: expensive, austere, and it offers the first-time reader almost no help.

Take the Gideon edition to read and keep, the Signet to carry, Cooke if you are writing about it.

Getting the Most From This Book

Read 10 and 51 twice, then again in a year. They repay it.

Watch how Publius handles objections. He states the strongest version of the opposing case before answering it, which is a habit worth acquiring for reasons that have nothing to do with 1788.

And hold on to one fact while you read. Within five years, Hamilton and Madison were leading opposed political factions and attacking each other's reading of the document they had just defended together. The Federalist did not settle what the Constitution means. It opened the argument, at the highest level it has ever been conducted.