Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
treasury. He was joined in this writing endeavor by James Madison (1751–1836),
who represented the state of Virginia at both the Continental Congress and the
Constitutional Convention and who later became the fourth president of the
United States. John Jay (1745–1829), the third author, had been president of the
Continental Congress and secretary of foreign aairs and would become the rst
chief justice of the United States. The three wrote under the pseudonym “Publius,”
publishing in New York newspapers a total of eighty-ve essays between October
1787 and April 1788.
Although they were published anonymously, their authors became known; it is
now the general belief that Hamilton wrote fifty-one essays. In 1788, the collected
essays were published as The Federalist. Their inuence led to the Constitution’s
ratication that same year. Their inuence continues well beyond that year to this
very day, in the denition they gave to this new government that secured individual
rights, protected public good, and mitigated the potential dangers of majority rule.
3.10.1 Federalist #1
[Alexander Hamilton]
FOR THE INDEPENDENT JOURNAL.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1787
To the People of the State of New York:
AFTER an unequivocal experience
of the inecacy of the subsisting federal
government, you are called upon to
deliberate on a new Constitution for
the United States of America. The
subject speaks its own importance;
comprehending in its consequences
nothing less than the existence of the
UNION, the safety and welfare of the
parts of which it is composed, the fate
of an empire in many respects the most
interesting in the world. It has been
frequently remarked that it seems to
have been reserved to the people of this
country, by their conduct and example, to
decide the important question, whether
societies of men are really capable or not
Image 3.15 | Alexander Hamilton
of establishing good government from Artist | John Trumbull
Source | Wikimedia Commons
reection and choice, or whether they
License | Public Domain
are forever destined to depend for their
political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark,
the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in
Page | 515