![]() “ou make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens”Īfter emphasizing the central government’s weakness in law enforcement under the Articles of Confederation in Federalist 21-22, Hamilton dove into a comprehensive defense of the proposed Constitution in the next 14 essays, devoting seven of them to the importance of the government’s power of taxation. “Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests,” he wrote. In Federalist 10, which became the most influential of all the essays, Madison argued against the French political philosopher Montesquieu’s assertion that true democracy-including Montesquieu’s concept of the separation of powers-was feasible only for small states.Ī larger republic, Madison suggested, could more easily balance the competing interests of the different factions or groups (or political parties) within it. In addition to laying out the many ways in which they believed the Articles of Confederation didn’t work, Hamilton, Jay and Madison used the Federalist essays to explain key provisions of the proposed Constitution, as well as the nature of the republican form of government. In the Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Jay and Madison argued that the decentralization of power that existed under the Articles of Confederation prevented the new nation from becoming strong enough to compete on the world stage or to quell internal insurrections such as Shays’s Rebellion. Madison wrote a total of 29 essays, while Hamilton wrote a staggering 51. ![]() In it, Hamilton argued that the debate facing the nation was not only over ratification of the proposed Constitution, but over the question of “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”Īfter writing the next four essays on the failures of the Articles of Confederation in the realm of foreign affairs, Jay had to drop out of the project due to an attack of rheumatism he would write only one more essay in the series. He wrote the first essay, which appeared in the Independent Journal, on October 27, 1787. To avoid opening himself and Madison to charges of betraying the Convention’s confidentiality, Hamilton chose the pen name “Publius,” after a general who had helped found the Roman Republic. The two later enlisted the help of James Madison, another delegate to the Constitutional Convention who was in New York at the time serving in the Confederation Congress. Instead, it established an entirely new system, including a robust central government divided into legislative, executive and judicial branches.Īs soon as 39 delegates signed the proposed Constitution in September 1787, the document went to the states for ratification, igniting a furious debate between “Federalists,” who favored ratification of the Constitution as written, and “Antifederalists,” who opposed the Constitution and resisted giving stronger powers to the national government.Īs a collaborator, Hamilton recruited his fellow New Yorker John Jay, who had helped negotiate the treaty ending the war with Britain and served as secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation. ![]() The document that emerged from the Constitutional Convention went far beyond amending the Articles, however. ![]() In May 1787, 55 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to address the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation and the problems that had arisen from this weakened central government. As the first written constitution of the newly independent United States, the Articles of Confederation nominally granted Congress the power to conduct foreign policy, maintain armed forces and coin money.īut in practice, this centralized government body had little authority over the individual states, including no power to levy taxes or regulate commerce, which hampered the new nation’s ability to pay its outstanding debts from the Revolutionary War.
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