4
Advocate
Fall 2007/Winter 2008
4. Hamilton, who orga-
nized the writing of The
Federalist, invited at least
two partisans other than
Jay and Madison to make
contributions.
Gouverneur Morris declined
Hamilton’s offer, thus missing the
chance to go down in history as
one the world’s greatest political
writers.
William Duer did try out to be a
member of the team, but his work
did not meet Hamilton’s exacting
standards. Duer’s essays were later
published separately under the
moniker “Philo-Publius.”
5. It is unclear to what
extent the identity of Publius was known among
readers as the essays circulated in New York.
The first formal proclamation of authorship seems to have come
in 1792, with the publication of a French-language edition of the
essays. That book, titled Le Fédéraliste identified the authors as “MM.
HAMILTON, MADISSON, e GAY.”
Like other early book editions, this volume identified the three
authors only in collective fashion, without attributing the authorship
of particular essays to any one of them.
6. In fact, with few exceptions, each of the essays
was written by one of the three authors with no or
virtually no aid from either of the others.
This fact gives rise to the greatest of all curiosities about The
Federalist: During the lifetimes of Hamilton and Madison, the two
men made conflicting claims of authorship as to 15 separate essays
(Nos. 18-20, 49-58 and 62-63).
To this day, it is not definitively known who wrote each of these
tracts, although the prevailing modern view (driven in part by
computer-based analysis of word choice patterns) supports Madison’s
claim that he wrote all 15.
7. It is indicative of the prescience of The Federalist
that its treatment of the federal courts specifically
anticipated the central issues presented in three of
the most prominent Supreme Court decisions of
the post-ratification period: Marbury v. Madison
(considering the power of judicial review), Martin
v. Hunter’s Lessee (considering the authority of the
U.S. Supreme Court to overturn judgments of state
tribunals) and Chisholm v. Georgia (considering the
availability of the sovereign immunity defense in
federal-court actions brought against states, such
as actions brought by holders of state bonds).
In both Marbury and Martin, the Supreme Court reached the same
result advocated by Publius, and closely tracked his reasoning as well.
In contrast, the Supreme Court in Chisholm eschewed the argu-
ment, made by Hamilton in No. 81, that the state sovereign immu-
nity defense should carry over to federal actions. The result in that
case proved so controversial and disruptive, however, that the nation
quickly endorsed the Hamiltonian position by approving the 11th
Amendment.
8. Notwithstanding the brilliance of The Federalist,
the essays contained some material of a highly
dubious nature, at least when viewed from a mod-
ern perspective.
In the newspaper version of No. 77, for example, Hamilton
asserted (reasoning by way of a questionable reference to the
Appointments Clause) that a president’s removal of executive officers
“at any station” – even cabinet officers selected by a previously sitting
president – would require approval by a Senate majority.
Hamilton himself retreated from this position in a later edition of
the essays, writing in a footnote: “this construction has since been
rejected by the legislature; and it is now settled in practice, that the
power of displacing belongs exclusively to the President.”
It is also no badge of honor that The Federalist vigorously defend-
ed the Philadelphia Convention’s decision not to include in the
Constitution any Bill of Rights.
Each of the three authors of The Federalist, however, later served as
a delegate to his own state’s ratification convention and in that capac-
ity agreed to support a post-ratification addition of a Bill of Rights by
way of constitutional amendment.
9. Madison’s participation in the writing of The
Federalist almost certainly resulted from the hap-
penstance that New York City served as our nation-
al capital in 1787 – following its location, earlier
in the same decade, in Philadelphia, Princeton,
Annapolis and Trenton.
Why? Because James Madison was a Virginia representative to the
national Congress and, for this reason, found himself in New York