WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.179 We treat the Federalist Papers like the sacred 00:00:05.179 --> 00:00:07.379 blueprint of American democracy. I mean, they're 00:00:07.379 --> 00:00:10.000 constantly quoted by Supreme Court justices and 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.220 revered by historians. Right. They're held up 00:00:12.220 --> 00:00:14.460 as this ultimate instruction manual for how the 00:00:14.460 --> 00:00:16.559 government is actually supposed to work. Exactly. 00:00:17.199 --> 00:00:20.420 But what if I told you that this massive, brilliant 00:00:20.420 --> 00:00:23.820 PR campaign, like the most ambitious one in American 00:00:23.820 --> 00:00:27.199 history, completely failed its primary mission? 00:00:27.449 --> 00:00:29.489 It's honestly the ultimate historical irony. 00:00:30.109 --> 00:00:32.750 The men who wrote these essays poured staggering 00:00:32.750 --> 00:00:35.469 amounts of intellect into them. Yeah, 85 separate 00:00:35.469 --> 00:00:37.609 arguments. Right, 85 of them. And they were all 00:00:37.609 --> 00:00:40.350 aimed at this highly specific immediate goal 00:00:40.350 --> 00:00:42.979 in the state of New York. And by almost every 00:00:42.979 --> 00:00:45.380 metric, the voters there entirely ignored them. 00:00:45.679 --> 00:00:47.880 OK, so we really need to unpack this today. Welcome 00:00:47.880 --> 00:00:49.820 to the deep dive, by the way. If you are joining 00:00:49.820 --> 00:00:51.960 us, we are looking at an extensive Wikipedia 00:00:51.960 --> 00:00:54.140 article covering the history, the authorship 00:00:54.140 --> 00:00:56.299 and the legacy of the Federalist Papers. And 00:00:56.299 --> 00:00:58.939 our mission here is to strip away all that marble 00:00:58.939 --> 00:01:02.079 statue reverence and look at the actual messy 00:01:02.079 --> 00:01:05.239 high stakes scramble behind the scenes. Yeah, 00:01:05.239 --> 00:01:07.700 we want to decode exactly what Alexander Hamilton, 00:01:08.019 --> 00:01:10.239 James Madison, and John Jay actually contributed. 00:01:10.659 --> 00:01:13.700 And to make all this dense 18th century political 00:01:13.700 --> 00:01:16.079 jargon digestible for you, we're going to use 00:01:16.079 --> 00:01:18.379 an analogy. A very relatable one, I think. Right. 00:01:18.599 --> 00:01:20.680 We're going to view this whole historical event 00:01:20.680 --> 00:01:23.420 through the lens of something we have all survived, 00:01:23.579 --> 00:01:26.000 which is the ultimate high school group project. 00:01:26.180 --> 00:01:28.299 It is surprisingly fitting. I mean, you've got 00:01:28.299 --> 00:01:31.040 a strict deadline, a project the whole school's 00:01:31.040 --> 00:01:33.459 future depends on, and a hostile environment. 00:01:33.609 --> 00:01:36.010 Not to mention a group of guys trying to coordinate 00:01:36.010 --> 00:01:38.430 completely different skill sets to build defense 00:01:38.430 --> 00:01:41.870 of a brand new government system. Exactly. And 00:01:41.870 --> 00:01:43.870 just to set some ground rules for you listening, 00:01:44.349 --> 00:01:47.609 as we go through this, our goal isn't to take 00:01:47.609 --> 00:01:50.430 sides in the historical federalist versus anti 00:01:50.430 --> 00:01:52.829 -federalist debate. Or modern politics, for that 00:01:52.829 --> 00:01:55.469 matter. Right. We're just impartially reporting 00:01:55.469 --> 00:01:57.930 on the ideas in these sources. We want to look 00:01:57.930 --> 00:02:00.359 at the architecture of their arguments. not endorse 00:02:00.359 --> 00:02:02.780 them. So let's set the stage. It's the fall of 00:02:02.780 --> 00:02:06.980 1787. What is the crisis that forces this group 00:02:06.980 --> 00:02:09.460 project to even happen? Well, the United States 00:02:09.460 --> 00:02:12.259 is not a unified powerhouse at this point. It's 00:02:12.259 --> 00:02:15.699 this loose, fragile confederation operating under 00:02:15.699 --> 00:02:18.159 the Articles of Confederation. Which everyone 00:02:18.159 --> 00:02:21.460 basically agrees was a total disaster. A catastrophic 00:02:21.460 --> 00:02:24.430 failure. The national government has no power 00:02:24.430 --> 00:02:27.830 to tax, no power to draft an army, and they can't 00:02:27.830 --> 00:02:30.389 even regulate commerce between the states. Okay, 00:02:30.449 --> 00:02:32.969 so in our high school analogy, the Articles of 00:02:32.969 --> 00:02:35.370 Confederation are the current student council 00:02:35.370 --> 00:02:38.629 rules. Right. And the rules are pure chaos. Like, 00:02:38.689 --> 00:02:41.270 the council can't raise money for prom, the clubs 00:02:41.270 --> 00:02:43.789 are fighting over rooms, and the principal is 00:02:43.789 --> 00:02:45.490 threatening to just shut the whole school down. 00:02:45.669 --> 00:02:48.050 That's a perfect parallel. So a group of delegates 00:02:48.050 --> 00:02:50.389 goes to Philadelphia, locks themselves in a room 00:02:50.389 --> 00:02:52.710 for the summer, and completely tears up the old 00:02:52.710 --> 00:02:55.009 rules. They write the new constitution. Yes. 00:02:55.550 --> 00:02:57.590 A massive overhaul, creating a strong central 00:02:57.590 --> 00:03:01.229 government. But just because they wrote it, that 00:03:01.229 --> 00:03:03.330 doesn't make it law. The states have to actually 00:03:03.330 --> 00:03:05.870 vote to ratify it. The student body has to vote 00:03:05.870 --> 00:03:08.550 yes on the new rules. But almost immediately, 00:03:08.650 --> 00:03:11.969 there's this huge backlash. It's exactly. Late 00:03:11.969 --> 00:03:15.270 September 1787, writers in New York start publishing 00:03:15.270 --> 00:03:17.689 these fierce attacks on the proposed constitution 00:03:17.689 --> 00:03:20.729 in the local papers. Using burner accounts, basically. 00:03:20.810 --> 00:03:24.270 Yeah. Roman pseudonyms like Cato and Brutus. 00:03:24.569 --> 00:03:27.409 These are the anti -federalists. And they are 00:03:27.409 --> 00:03:30.430 arguing that this new central government is going 00:03:30.430 --> 00:03:33.250 to obliterate state sovereignty. They're saying 00:03:33.250 --> 00:03:35.629 it'll destroy individual liberties. Right. They 00:03:35.629 --> 00:03:37.789 paint it as a one way ticket back to the tyranny. 00:03:37.909 --> 00:03:41.039 They literally just fought a revolution to escape. 00:03:41.340 --> 00:03:43.039 So they're spamming the school message board 00:03:43.039 --> 00:03:45.680 saying, don't vote for these rules. The new president 00:03:45.680 --> 00:03:48.000 is going to be a dictator and take your club 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:51.020 funding. And it is gaining serious traction, 00:03:52.099 --> 00:03:53.960 especially in New York, which is an existential 00:03:53.960 --> 00:03:55.740 problem for the country. Because New York is 00:03:55.740 --> 00:03:57.680 right in the middle. Geographically and economically, 00:03:58.020 --> 00:04:01.020 yes. If New York rejects it, the union is physically 00:04:01.020 --> 00:04:03.379 split in half. The whole experiment could collapse. 00:04:03.659 --> 00:04:06.419 So Alexander Hamilton realizes they're losing 00:04:06.419 --> 00:04:09.080 the narrative. The pro -constitution side is 00:04:09.080 --> 00:04:12.020 getting hammered. So he steps up. He realizes 00:04:12.020 --> 00:04:15.319 someone has to launch a massive PR campaign to 00:04:15.319 --> 00:04:18.480 convince the state to vote yes. He writes federalist 00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:21.139 number one, basically saying, I will answer every 00:04:21.139 --> 00:04:23.500 single objection you have. But he knows he can't 00:04:23.500 --> 00:04:26.139 do it alone. That's way too much writing. Way 00:04:26.139 --> 00:04:29.000 too much. So he recruits a team. He gets John 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:31.339 Jay, a prominent diplomat from New York, and 00:04:31.339 --> 00:04:33.600 James Madison, a brilliant political theorist 00:04:33.600 --> 00:04:35.319 from Virginia who just happened to be in town. 00:04:35.319 --> 00:04:37.579 Just hanging around the Confederation Congress. 00:04:37.639 --> 00:04:40.000 Right. And they decide to publish this sweeping 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:42.800 defense under one collective pseudonym. Which 00:04:42.800 --> 00:04:45.980 is such a smart branding move because the anti 00:04:45.980 --> 00:04:48.500 -federalists are using names like Cato and Brutus, 00:04:48.660 --> 00:04:51.540 right? Yes. Roman moralists and assassins who 00:04:51.540 --> 00:04:53.939 killed Caesar to save the Republic. They are 00:04:53.939 --> 00:04:56.100 branding themselves as the ultimate defenders 00:04:56.100 --> 00:04:58.300 against tyranny. So how does Hamilton counter 00:04:58.300 --> 00:05:01.360 that? He chooses the name Publius, which comes 00:05:01.360 --> 00:05:05.579 from Publius Valerius Publicola, a Roman aristocrat 00:05:05.579 --> 00:05:07.680 who helped found the Roman Republic. But the 00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:09.920 translation is the best part. Exactly. It translates 00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:12.750 to friend of the people. That is just aggressive 00:05:12.750 --> 00:05:15.790 PR. The other guys say the Constitution is an 00:05:15.790 --> 00:05:18.430 elitist plot, so Hamilton literally names his 00:05:18.430 --> 00:05:21.009 project Friend of the People. And he had actually 00:05:21.009 --> 00:05:24.269 used that name before. Back in 1778, he used 00:05:24.269 --> 00:05:27.370 Publius to expose a corrupt politician named 00:05:27.370 --> 00:05:30.310 Samuel Chase, who was price gouging flour during 00:05:30.310 --> 00:05:33.310 the war. Oh, wow. So the brand already had a 00:05:33.310 --> 00:05:37.120 reputation in New York. It did. People knew Publius 00:05:37.120 --> 00:05:39.459 as someone who exposed corruption and defended 00:05:39.459 --> 00:05:42.040 everyday citizens. It completely disarmed the 00:05:42.040 --> 00:05:44.600 elitist accusations. Brilliant. Okay, so we have 00:05:44.600 --> 00:05:46.920 our team. We have the brand name. Let's break 00:05:46.920 --> 00:05:48.920 down this group project, starting with the guy 00:05:48.920 --> 00:05:51.779 who started it all, Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton 00:05:51.779 --> 00:05:54.160 is the absolute engine of the federal's papers. 00:05:54.660 --> 00:05:57.870 Out of the 85 essays, he wrote 51 of them. 51? 00:05:58.029 --> 00:06:00.550 That's like 60 % of the whole thing. It is. He 00:06:00.550 --> 00:06:02.709 recruited the co -authors, managed the publishers, 00:06:03.009 --> 00:06:05.149 set the crazy pace, and wrote the opening and 00:06:05.149 --> 00:06:07.569 closing arguments. So he's the hyperactive student 00:06:07.569 --> 00:06:10.350 body president. The project is due in three days, 00:06:10.449 --> 00:06:12.430 he assigns everyone their parts based on their 00:06:12.430 --> 00:06:14.949 major, and then he just stays up all night fueled 00:06:14.949 --> 00:06:18.029 by pure anxiety and caffeine. Frantically typing 00:06:18.029 --> 00:06:21.389 60 % of it himself. Ah. Exactly. Yeah. And the 00:06:21.389 --> 00:06:24.029 output is staggering, especially given the philosophical 00:06:24.029 --> 00:06:26.800 depth. Let's talk about his core political goals 00:06:26.800 --> 00:06:29.079 in these essays. Well, in Federalist Number One, 00:06:29.519 --> 00:06:33.120 he frames the stakes. He asks this massive question. 00:06:33.699 --> 00:06:36.319 Are societies capable of establishing good government 00:06:36.319 --> 00:06:39.220 from reflection and choice? or are they destined 00:06:39.220 --> 00:06:42.079 to depend on accident and force? Reflection and 00:06:42.079 --> 00:06:44.980 choice versus accident and force, that's heavy. 00:06:45.220 --> 00:06:47.480 It's arguably one of the most important sentences 00:06:47.480 --> 00:06:50.600 in American political thought. Before this, governments 00:06:50.600 --> 00:06:53.060 were usually formed by conquering armies or royal 00:06:53.060 --> 00:06:55.740 bloodlines. Right, accident and force. Yeah. 00:06:56.060 --> 00:06:58.579 Hamilton is telling the public you have an unprecedented 00:06:58.579 --> 00:07:01.639 opportunity to sit down, be rational, and design 00:07:01.639 --> 00:07:03.699 your own destiny. He's elevating the debate. 00:07:03.959 --> 00:07:06.500 putting immense pressure on the reader to prove 00:07:06.500 --> 00:07:08.980 humans can actually govern themselves rationally. 00:07:09.339 --> 00:07:11.480 He absolutely is. And then he pivots to the harsh 00:07:11.480 --> 00:07:13.959 mechanics of power. The anti -Federalists were 00:07:13.959 --> 00:07:16.220 terrified of a strong government, but Hamilton 00:07:16.220 --> 00:07:18.939 argues a weak one is way more dangerous. Especially 00:07:18.939 --> 00:07:22.300 in Federalists knowing 70, right? Yes. Not a 00:07:22.300 --> 00:07:25.959 70. That's where he argues for a one -man chief 00:07:25.959 --> 00:07:28.769 executive. and energetic presidency. Wait, but 00:07:28.769 --> 00:07:30.649 they just fought a war to get rid of a king. 00:07:30.910 --> 00:07:33.370 How does he justify demanding a single powerful 00:07:33.370 --> 00:07:35.970 president? Doesn't that just prove the anti -federalists 00:07:35.970 --> 00:07:38.730 right? He hits that fear head on by making it 00:07:38.730 --> 00:07:40.990 about accountability. Under the old articles, 00:07:41.170 --> 00:07:45.009 there was no executive branch, just slow, bickering 00:07:45.009 --> 00:07:47.930 committees in Congress. Which is the classic 00:07:47.930 --> 00:07:50.629 group project problem. Exactly. If a committee 00:07:50.629 --> 00:07:53.370 is in charge, they disagree. They delay during 00:07:53.370 --> 00:07:56.089 emergencies. And worst of all, they hide behind 00:07:56.089 --> 00:07:58.129 each other to avoid blame. It wasn't my fault. 00:07:58.189 --> 00:08:00.649 I voted against it in committee. Right. Hamilton 00:08:00.649 --> 00:08:03.009 argues a single executive is actually safer. 00:08:03.550 --> 00:08:05.810 Because if things go wrong, the public knows 00:08:05.810 --> 00:08:08.360 exactly who to blame. You can't hide. That's 00:08:08.360 --> 00:08:10.600 a brilliant pivot, turning the fear of a king 00:08:10.600 --> 00:08:13.079 into a demand for transparency. And he doesn't 00:08:13.079 --> 00:08:15.160 stop there. He tackles the Supreme Court in number 00:08:15.160 --> 00:08:18.500 78. He does. The anti -federalists, specifically 00:08:18.500 --> 00:08:21.120 Brutus, thought federal judges with life appointments 00:08:21.120 --> 00:08:23.839 would become this untouchable, tyrannical oligarchy. 00:08:24.040 --> 00:08:25.720 Because no one could fire them or correct their 00:08:25.720 --> 00:08:29.079 mistakes? Right. But Hamilton counters by laying 00:08:29.079 --> 00:08:32.200 the groundwork for a judicial review. He writes 00:08:32.200 --> 00:08:35.340 that the judiciary is actually the least dangerous 00:08:35.340 --> 00:08:37.590 branch. Because they don't have the army or the 00:08:37.590 --> 00:08:40.750 money. Exactly. He says they have neither force 00:08:40.750 --> 00:08:43.789 nor will, but merely judgment. Congress has the 00:08:43.789 --> 00:08:46.169 purse. The president has the sword. The Supreme 00:08:46.169 --> 00:08:49.269 Court just has opinions. But he pairs that weakness 00:08:49.269 --> 00:08:53.279 with a massive implicit power. He argues the 00:08:53.279 --> 00:08:56.360 courts must have the power to declare laws void 00:08:56.360 --> 00:08:59.200 if they violate the Constitution Which is exactly 00:08:59.200 --> 00:09:01.179 what the modern Supreme Court does he outlined 00:09:01.179 --> 00:09:03.399 it decades before they officially claimed that 00:09:03.399 --> 00:09:06.539 power He did but Hamilton makes one argument 00:09:06.539 --> 00:09:09.080 that seems well Completely hypocritical for a 00:09:09.080 --> 00:09:11.460 guy calling himself Friend of the People. Oh, 00:09:11.639 --> 00:09:13.940 Federalist Number 84. This one blew my mind when 00:09:13.940 --> 00:09:16.600 I read the source. He explicitly argues against 00:09:16.600 --> 00:09:19.059 including a Bill of Rights. It does. Which is 00:09:19.059 --> 00:09:21.240 crazy. Today, the Bill of Rights is practically 00:09:21.240 --> 00:09:23.159 the only part of the Constitution people can 00:09:23.159 --> 00:09:25.620 actually quote from memory. Why would he fight 00:09:25.620 --> 00:09:28.679 that? It's counterintuitive today, but his logic 00:09:28.679 --> 00:09:31.419 was rooted in a very strict legal philosophy. 00:09:31.879 --> 00:09:33.980 The original draft didn't have a list of individual 00:09:33.980 --> 00:09:36.490 rights. And the anti -federalists were screaming 00:09:36.490 --> 00:09:39.570 that this was proof of a plot to oppress everyone? 00:09:40.210 --> 00:09:43.149 Yes. But Hamilton argued adding a list wasn't 00:09:43.149 --> 00:09:46.429 just unnecessary. He said it was actively dangerous. 00:09:46.970 --> 00:09:49.190 Wait, how is listing my rights dangerous? That 00:09:49.190 --> 00:09:51.809 sounds like a trap. It comes down to enumerated 00:09:51.809 --> 00:09:55.019 powers. He argued the Constitution only granted 00:09:55.019 --> 00:09:58.080 the government very specific, limited powers. 00:09:58.259 --> 00:10:01.100 OK, so if it doesn't explicitly say Congress 00:10:01.100 --> 00:10:03.179 can regulate the press, then they just can't. 00:10:03.360 --> 00:10:06.399 Exactly. Hamilton's point was, why forbid the 00:10:06.399 --> 00:10:08.200 government from doing something it hasn't even 00:10:08.200 --> 00:10:10.860 been given the power to do? Oh, I see. If you 00:10:10.860 --> 00:10:12.860 say, Congress shall make no law about the press, 00:10:12.940 --> 00:10:14.740 you're kind of implying that without that sentence, 00:10:14.740 --> 00:10:16.419 they would have had the power to do it. Yes. 00:10:16.639 --> 00:10:19.440 And his deeper fear was a legal doctrine called 00:10:19.440 --> 00:10:23.740 expressio unius est exclusio altarius. The explicit 00:10:23.740 --> 00:10:26.399 mention of one thing is the exclusion of another. 00:10:26.820 --> 00:10:28.259 Meaning, if you make a list, people will think 00:10:28.259 --> 00:10:31.480 that's the only list? Exactly. Hamilton feared 00:10:31.480 --> 00:10:34.500 that if you write down 10 protected rights, some 00:10:34.500 --> 00:10:36.659 ambitious future government will come along and 00:10:36.659 --> 00:10:39.039 say, well, the right to privacy isn't on this 00:10:39.039 --> 00:10:41.600 list of 10, so it must not exist. Back to the 00:10:41.600 --> 00:10:44.320 high school analogy. If the principal says you 00:10:44.320 --> 00:10:46.240 have the right to wear red shirts and blue shirts, 00:10:46.419 --> 00:10:48.440 eventually they'll say, well, the rules don't 00:10:48.440 --> 00:10:50.580 say you can wear a green shirt, so green shirts 00:10:50.580 --> 00:10:53.600 are banned. That is the exact mechanism Hamilton 00:10:53.600 --> 00:10:56.159 was warning about. He thought the Constitution 00:10:56.159 --> 00:10:58.860 itself was a bill of rights because it strictly 00:10:58.860 --> 00:11:01.600 limited government power. But the anti -federalist 00:11:01.600 --> 00:11:04.240 Brutus completely disagreed with that, right? 00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:07.139 Unveilingly. Brutus thought that was naive academic 00:11:07.139 --> 00:11:10.740 nonsense. He argued human nature guarantees rulers 00:11:10.740 --> 00:11:13.440 will expand their power and without a hard -written 00:11:13.440 --> 00:11:16.580 boundary, tyranny is inevitable. And spoiler 00:11:16.580 --> 00:11:19.460 alert, Brutus basically won that argument. They 00:11:19.460 --> 00:11:21.620 ratified the Constitution, but everyone agreed 00:11:21.620 --> 00:11:23.899 to immediately add the first 10 amendments. The 00:11:23.899 --> 00:11:26.240 Bill of Rights. But this brings us perfectly 00:11:26.240 --> 00:11:29.059 to our second author, James Madison, because 00:11:29.059 --> 00:11:31.480 he found a structural engineering solution to 00:11:31.480 --> 00:11:34.299 Hamilton's fear about the list. Right. Madison 00:11:34.299 --> 00:11:37.080 actually drafted the Bill of Rights, but he understood 00:11:37.080 --> 00:11:39.700 Hamilton's anxiety. So what did he do? He wrote 00:11:39.700 --> 00:11:42.100 the Ninth Amendment. Which says what, exactly? 00:11:42.179 --> 00:11:44.580 It says, the enumeration in the Constitution 00:11:44.580 --> 00:11:47.659 of certain rights shall not be construed to deny 00:11:47.659 --> 00:11:50.580 or disparage others retained by the people. Oh, 00:11:50.580 --> 00:11:53.279 wow. It's a constitutional catch -all clause. 00:11:53.460 --> 00:11:56.519 Yes. It's a direct response to Federalist Number 00:11:56.519 --> 00:11:59.460 84. It literally says, just because we made a 00:11:59.460 --> 00:12:01.870 list doesn't mean this is the whole list. Madison 00:12:01.870 --> 00:12:04.309 wrote a software patch to fix the bug Hamilton 00:12:04.309 --> 00:12:07.250 found. That is so cool. So let's talk about Madison. 00:12:07.350 --> 00:12:09.809 He's our systems engineer. He really is. He wrote 00:12:09.809 --> 00:12:12.509 29 of the essays. And while Hamilton is driving 00:12:12.509 --> 00:12:15.570 the schedule with pure force, Madison is obsessed 00:12:15.570 --> 00:12:17.889 with the underlying physics of the project. He's 00:12:17.889 --> 00:12:20.389 the quiet honor student. He's designing the rules 00:12:20.389 --> 00:12:22.570 so the popular kids on the football team can't 00:12:22.570 --> 00:12:26.149 just bully the chess club. Exactly. He is anticipating 00:12:26.149 --> 00:12:28.990 human misbehavior and building mechanical systems 00:12:28.990 --> 00:12:31.980 to counteract it. and his absolute masterpiece 00:12:31.980 --> 00:12:35.360 is Federalist Number 10. Okay, Federalist Number 00:12:35.360 --> 00:12:37.440 10, what's the central problem he's tackling 00:12:37.440 --> 00:12:41.120 there? He is addressing the danger of factions. 00:12:41.580 --> 00:12:43.399 And we have to be clear, he doesn't just mean 00:12:43.399 --> 00:12:45.679 political parties. How does he define it? He 00:12:45.679 --> 00:12:49.139 defines a faction as any group of citizens, majority 00:12:49.139 --> 00:12:52.539 or minority, united by a common passion that 00:12:52.539 --> 00:12:55.259 is adverse to the rights of others or adverse 00:12:55.259 --> 00:12:57.759 to the community as a whole. So basically a mob. 00:12:58.110 --> 00:13:00.970 or a selfish special interest group that would 00:13:00.970 --> 00:13:03.129 happily destroy the country to get what it wants. 00:13:03.309 --> 00:13:06.009 Yes. And at the time, philosophers like Montesquieu 00:13:06.009 --> 00:13:09.009 argued a republic could only survive if it was 00:13:09.009 --> 00:13:11.820 geographically tiny. Like a small city state 00:13:11.820 --> 00:13:13.799 where everyone is homogenous. Because if everyone 00:13:13.799 --> 00:13:16.620 is similar, they won't form angry factions. Right. 00:13:16.899 --> 00:13:18.980 The anti -federalists used this to argue that 00:13:18.980 --> 00:13:21.340 a huge diverse United States would inevitably 00:13:21.340 --> 00:13:23.440 tear itself apart. You'd have northern merchants, 00:13:23.759 --> 00:13:25.779 southern farmers, bankers, laborers. They'd form 00:13:25.779 --> 00:13:28.019 massive factions and rip each other to shreds. 00:13:28.100 --> 00:13:31.159 So how does Madison counter that? By completely 00:13:31.159 --> 00:13:34.139 inverting the conventional wisdom. Madison argues 00:13:34.139 --> 00:13:37.200 in number 10 that a massive extended commercial 00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:39.279 republic is actually the best defense against 00:13:39.279 --> 00:13:41.980 factions. Wait, really? How does making it bigger 00:13:41.980 --> 00:13:44.860 solve the problem? Well, he says you can't erase 00:13:44.860 --> 00:13:47.879 the causes of factions because human nature means 00:13:47.879 --> 00:13:50.220 people will always have different opinions and 00:13:50.220 --> 00:13:53.240 unequal wealth. So you have to control the effects. 00:13:53.360 --> 00:13:55.519 And you control the effects mechanically. Yes, 00:13:55.639 --> 00:13:58.639 by scaling up the playing field. In a small republic, 00:13:59.120 --> 00:14:03.019 it's super easy for one corrupt faction to get 00:14:03.019 --> 00:14:05.860 a majority and brutally oppress the minority. 00:14:06.080 --> 00:14:09.759 Like in our high school. If the school is tiny 00:14:09.759 --> 00:14:11.899 and it's just the football team and the debate 00:14:11.899 --> 00:14:14.840 club, the football team has more guys. They can 00:14:14.840 --> 00:14:16.940 just vote to take 100 % of the school budget 00:14:16.940 --> 00:14:20.539 for helmets. And the debate club ceases to exist. 00:14:20.820 --> 00:14:24.110 That is majority tyranny. But if Madison expands 00:14:24.110 --> 00:14:26.269 the school, he brings in the robotics team, the 00:14:26.269 --> 00:14:28.730 marching band, the theater kids, the track team, 00:14:29.110 --> 00:14:30.769 the art students. Now the football team doesn't 00:14:30.769 --> 00:14:32.409 have a majority anymore. If they want helmets, 00:14:32.470 --> 00:14:35.269 they have to negotiate, form temporary coalitions 00:14:35.269 --> 00:14:38.690 and actually compromise. The sheer size and diversity 00:14:38.690 --> 00:14:41.409 of the school acts as a mechanical shield against 00:14:41.409 --> 00:14:44.320 any one group becoming a tyrant. It's mathematically 00:14:44.320 --> 00:14:46.860 impossible for one faction to dominate. That 00:14:46.860 --> 00:14:49.679 is so elegant. He takes their biggest fear, the 00:14:49.679 --> 00:14:52.279 massive size of the country, and turns it into 00:14:52.279 --> 00:14:55.379 its greatest feature. He expands on that directly 00:14:55.379 --> 00:14:58.299 in Federalist Number 14, too, defending the concept 00:14:58.299 --> 00:15:00.779 of the extended republic. But he doesn't just 00:15:00.779 --> 00:15:02.799 want to control the citizens. He wants to control 00:15:02.799 --> 00:15:05.620 the government itself. Which brings us to Federalist 00:15:05.620 --> 00:15:09.700 Number 51, the checks and balances essay. Right. 00:15:10.039 --> 00:15:12.299 If number 10 is about controlling the people, 00:15:12.759 --> 00:15:14.940 no, 51 is about controlling the politicians. 00:15:16.159 --> 00:15:19.440 And he gives this incredibly profound, cynical 00:15:19.440 --> 00:15:22.279 assessment of human nature. The famous quote, 00:15:22.399 --> 00:15:25.799 right? If men were angels. Yes. If men were angels, 00:15:26.059 --> 00:15:28.700 no government would be necessary. If angels were 00:15:28.700 --> 00:15:31.379 to govern men, Neither external nor internal 00:15:31.379 --> 00:15:33.700 controls on government would be necessary. He's 00:15:33.700 --> 00:15:37.019 basically looking at this massive maze of vetoes 00:15:37.019 --> 00:15:39.259 and overlapping jurisdictions he just built and 00:15:39.259 --> 00:15:41.080 admitting we didn't build this because we trust 00:15:41.080 --> 00:15:42.659 our leaders. We built it because we know they're 00:15:42.659 --> 00:15:45.659 going to be selfish. He embraces the flaw. He 00:15:45.659 --> 00:15:47.460 says you have to construct the government so 00:15:47.460 --> 00:15:49.379 that its parts are the means of keeping each 00:15:49.379 --> 00:15:51.700 other in their proper places. You pit ambition 00:15:51.700 --> 00:15:54.679 against ambition. So you don't rely on the president 00:15:54.679 --> 00:15:57.559 being a saint. You give Congress the power to 00:15:57.559 --> 00:15:59.669 stop a bad president. And the president, the 00:15:59.669 --> 00:16:02.870 power to stop a reckless Congress. Exactly. You 00:16:02.870 --> 00:16:05.190 weaponize their personal ambition to protect 00:16:05.190 --> 00:16:07.850 the constitutional rights of their branch. Which 00:16:07.850 --> 00:16:10.350 is exactly what you see today when politicians 00:16:10.350 --> 00:16:13.649 argue over executive overreach. You're watching 00:16:13.649 --> 00:16:16.710 Madison's blueprint play out in real time. Absolutely. 00:16:17.009 --> 00:16:19.070 And he also mapped out how this balance works 00:16:19.070 --> 00:16:21.230 between the national government and the states 00:16:21.230 --> 00:16:24.409 in Federalist Number 39. The federalism essay. 00:16:24.590 --> 00:16:27.340 Yes. Dual sovereignty. The anti -federalists 00:16:27.340 --> 00:16:30.279 said the states would be erased entirely by this 00:16:30.279 --> 00:16:33.019 new national empire. But Madison proves it's 00:16:33.019 --> 00:16:35.200 a hybrid system, right? He methodically shows 00:16:35.200 --> 00:16:37.840 that citizens are subject to two different jurisdictions 00:16:37.840 --> 00:16:41.019 simultaneously, but in distinct spheres. The 00:16:41.019 --> 00:16:44.200 national government handles war, money, interstate 00:16:44.200 --> 00:16:46.600 commerce. And the states handle local criminal 00:16:46.600 --> 00:16:49.700 law, education, interstate business. Right. In 00:16:49.700 --> 00:16:51.860 your school project analogy, the principal's 00:16:51.860 --> 00:16:54.139 office has supreme authority to expel a student 00:16:54.139 --> 00:16:56.720 or negotiate with a rival high school. But the 00:16:56.720 --> 00:16:59.299 principal has absolutely no right to tell the 00:16:59.299 --> 00:17:02.000 homeroom teacher where a student sits or how 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:05.000 to grade a spelling test. They share power over 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:08.099 the same student body, but in completely separate 00:17:08.099 --> 00:17:10.779 lanes. And Madison engineered it so these two 00:17:10.779 --> 00:17:12.940 layers would constantly be jealous of each other's 00:17:12.940 --> 00:17:15.759 power, acting as a final check against tyranny. 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:18.319 So we've got Hamilton frantically writing about 00:17:18.319 --> 00:17:21.700 executive energy, Madison designing these intricate 00:17:21.700 --> 00:17:26.410 gears. What about John Jay? Ah, John Jay. He's 00:17:26.410 --> 00:17:29.089 an incredibly distinguished figure. He negotiated 00:17:29.089 --> 00:17:31.190 the Treaty of Paris. He was the Secretary for 00:17:31.190 --> 00:17:33.369 Foreign Affairs under the Articles of Confederation. 00:17:33.549 --> 00:17:35.710 He's got more high -level diplomatic experience 00:17:35.710 --> 00:17:38.009 than almost anyone in the country. And yet, out 00:17:38.009 --> 00:17:41.930 of 85 essays, John Jay wrote exactly five. Five. 00:17:42.089 --> 00:17:44.269 Just five. Our high school analogy really needs 00:17:44.269 --> 00:17:46.210 to explain this. Well, John Jay is the highly 00:17:46.210 --> 00:17:48.410 respected senior who agrees to help launch the 00:17:48.410 --> 00:17:50.390 project. He writes the introduction to give it 00:17:50.390 --> 00:17:53.769 an air of authority, and then... He gets a severe 00:17:53.769 --> 00:17:57.569 case of mono. Oh no. He's physically incapacitated 00:17:57.569 --> 00:18:00.089 and misses almost the entire semester, leaving 00:18:00.089 --> 00:18:02.029 Hamilton and Madison to pull the all -nighters. 00:18:02.309 --> 00:18:05.809 That is painfully relatable. But the five essays 00:18:05.809 --> 00:18:08.190 he did write, they were hyper focused on his 00:18:08.190 --> 00:18:10.480 expertise, weren't they? Very much so. He wrote 00:18:10.480 --> 00:18:12.700 numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5 right at the beginning 00:18:12.700 --> 00:18:15.099 and then managed to write number 64 much later. 00:18:15.720 --> 00:18:18.240 He leveraged his diplomatic resume to address 00:18:18.240 --> 00:18:21.500 foreign threats. Because in 1787, the U .S. is 00:18:21.500 --> 00:18:24.599 not a superpower. It's this weak strip of land 00:18:24.599 --> 00:18:26.640 surrounded by the British, the French, and the 00:18:26.640 --> 00:18:29.559 Spanish empires. Right. And Jay relentlessly 00:18:29.559 --> 00:18:32.220 hammers the point that a divided America would 00:18:32.220 --> 00:18:35.759 be irresistible prey. for Europe. The anti -federalists 00:18:35.759 --> 00:18:38.200 wanted to risk staying a loose confederation, 00:18:38.299 --> 00:18:40.519 maybe splitting into regional groups. And Jay 00:18:40.519 --> 00:18:43.400 says if you do that, Europe will play us against 00:18:43.400 --> 00:18:45.819 each other. Britain allies with the North, France 00:18:45.819 --> 00:18:48.599 with the South, and America just becomes a battleground 00:18:48.599 --> 00:18:51.319 for European proxy wars. He's the guy looking 00:18:51.319 --> 00:18:54.099 at the geopolitical chessboard saying, I negotiate 00:18:54.099 --> 00:18:56.319 with these empires. If we don't unite with one 00:18:56.319 --> 00:18:58.920 military and one foreign policy, they will pick 00:18:58.920 --> 00:19:01.619 us apart. It was a very sobering, practical survival 00:19:01.619 --> 00:19:04.299 argument. It totally bypassed the theoretical 00:19:04.299 --> 00:19:06.319 debates about liberty. And what about his last 00:19:06.319 --> 00:19:09.140 essay, number 64? He recovered enough to defend 00:19:09.140 --> 00:19:12.059 the Senate specific treaty making powers. He 00:19:12.059 --> 00:19:14.259 explained why the Senate which is smaller and 00:19:14.259 --> 00:19:16.920 more stable, should advise and consent on foreign 00:19:16.920 --> 00:19:19.759 treaties instead of the massive shifting House 00:19:19.759 --> 00:19:22.059 of Representatives. Makes perfect sense. And 00:19:22.059 --> 00:19:23.920 he didn't completely give up after that, right? 00:19:24.180 --> 00:19:25.980 Didn't he write a separate pamphlet? He did. 00:19:26.299 --> 00:19:29.559 In the spring of 1788, he published an address 00:19:29.559 --> 00:19:31.619 to the people of the state of New York. So he 00:19:31.619 --> 00:19:33.740 handed in an extra credit assignment directly 00:19:33.740 --> 00:19:35.660 to the teacher. You could definitely say that. 00:19:35.789 --> 00:19:39.109 And Hamilton actually cited Jay's pamphlet proudly 00:19:39.109 --> 00:19:42.809 in the final Federalist paper, number 85. So 00:19:42.809 --> 00:19:44.890 his intellectual weight was still felt. Okay, 00:19:44.930 --> 00:19:46.829 so we have the players, we have their philosophical 00:19:46.829 --> 00:19:51.299 arguments. Let's talk logistics. Writing 85 graduate 00:19:51.299 --> 00:19:53.660 level political science essays is one thing. 00:19:54.059 --> 00:19:56.599 Publishing them in the 1780s is another. The 00:19:56.599 --> 00:19:58.660 logistics are staggering. It was designed to 00:19:58.660 --> 00:20:01.519 be a media blitzkrieg. When did this start? Late 00:20:01.519 --> 00:20:05.059 October 1787. And they were publishing simultaneously 00:20:05.059 --> 00:20:08.119 in three major New York newspapers. And how fast 00:20:08.119 --> 00:20:09.839 were they writing? I know Hamilton was frantic, 00:20:09.920 --> 00:20:12.250 but what was the actual pace? At their peak, 00:20:12.430 --> 00:20:15.369 they were publishing up to three or four massive, 00:20:15.650 --> 00:20:18.349 highly complex essays every single week. Three 00:20:18.349 --> 00:20:20.970 or four a week. They are writing, typesetting 00:20:20.970 --> 00:20:23.750 by hand, and printing a thesis every two days. 00:20:24.190 --> 00:20:26.630 That's an insane schedule. It was a deliberate 00:20:26.630 --> 00:20:29.650 tactical choice. Historian Gary Wills points 00:20:29.650 --> 00:20:32.430 out that the goal was to literally suffocate 00:20:32.430 --> 00:20:34.789 the opposition's ability to respond. Just drown 00:20:34.789 --> 00:20:38.569 them in content. Yeah. Wills wrote, who, given 00:20:38.569 --> 00:20:41.000 ample time, could have answered such a battery 00:20:41.000 --> 00:20:43.900 of arguments, and no time was given. That's the 00:20:43.900 --> 00:20:46.400 ultimate debate tactic. If Brutus reads number 00:20:46.400 --> 00:20:49.259 10, spends three days writing a thoughtful counter 00:20:49.259 --> 00:20:51.839 -argument, by the time it hits the press, Publius 00:20:51.839 --> 00:20:55.460 has already published 11, 12, 13, and 14. Brutus 00:20:55.460 --> 00:20:57.440 is constantly a week behind the conversation. 00:20:57.599 --> 00:20:59.779 Publius just controls the narrative by outwriting 00:20:59.779 --> 00:21:02.660 them. And public demand got so high that before 00:21:02.660 --> 00:21:04.859 the newspaper run even finished, a publishing 00:21:04.859 --> 00:21:06.920 firm started binding the essays into a permanent 00:21:06.920 --> 00:21:10.519 book. The first volume came out in March 1788. 00:21:10.759 --> 00:21:13.099 They turned their op -eds into a physical textbook 00:21:13.099 --> 00:21:14.980 while the debate was still happening. But here's 00:21:14.980 --> 00:21:16.980 where it gets really interesting for me. The 00:21:16.980 --> 00:21:19.579 whodunit mystery. Yes, the authorship mystery. 00:21:19.839 --> 00:21:23.160 Because they publish under a fake name. For decades 00:21:23.160 --> 00:21:25.920 no one actually knew who wrote which specific 00:21:25.920 --> 00:21:28.359 essay. It's one of the great literary puzzles 00:21:28.359 --> 00:21:30.849 in American history. Obviously they use pseudonyms 00:21:30.849 --> 00:21:32.950 at first so people wouldn't just say, you guys 00:21:32.950 --> 00:21:34.829 wrote the Constitution, of course you like it. 00:21:35.089 --> 00:21:37.829 But why keep the exact breakdown a secret for 00:21:37.829 --> 00:21:40.430 so long after ratification? Because of the toxic 00:21:40.430 --> 00:21:43.490 political climate in the 1790s. Shortly after 00:21:43.490 --> 00:21:46.930 ratification, Hamilton and Madison became bitter, 00:21:47.470 --> 00:21:50.259 mortal political enemies. Right. Hamilton starts 00:21:50.259 --> 00:21:52.559 the Federalist Party for a strong central bank 00:21:52.559 --> 00:21:55.359 and Madison joins Jefferson to start the Democratic 00:21:55.359 --> 00:21:57.839 Republican Party to fight Hamilton. Exactly. 00:21:58.279 --> 00:22:00.140 They were tearing each other apart in the press. 00:22:00.859 --> 00:22:03.359 Neither man wanted to publicly claim the Publius 00:22:03.359 --> 00:22:05.339 essays because it would highlight how closely 00:22:05.339 --> 00:22:08.160 they used to collaborate. The unified voice became 00:22:08.160 --> 00:22:11.119 a political liability. But the secret finally 00:22:11.119 --> 00:22:14.539 leaks out in 1804 under crazy circumstance. Very 00:22:14.539 --> 00:22:18.619 dramatic. In July 1804, Hamilton engages in his 00:22:18.619 --> 00:22:22.259 famous fatal duel with Aaron Burr. Just days 00:22:22.259 --> 00:22:24.980 before the duel, he stops by a lawyer friend's 00:22:24.980 --> 00:22:27.099 office and hides a piece of paper in a book. 00:22:27.500 --> 00:22:29.980 And what's on the paper? It's a detailed list 00:22:29.980 --> 00:22:33.000 claiming authorship of the essays. Hamilton claimed 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:35.880 he was the sole author of 63 of the 85 essays. 00:22:36.259 --> 00:22:38.140 So on his way out the door, he leaves a note 00:22:38.140 --> 00:22:40.799 basically saying, by the way, I did all the work. 00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:43.460 That list became public after he died and an 00:22:43.460 --> 00:22:46.619 1810 printing actually assigned authorship based 00:22:46.619 --> 00:22:49.599 on his claims. But James Madison was still alive 00:22:49.599 --> 00:22:52.500 and he definitely saw this list. How did the 00:22:52.500 --> 00:22:55.500 systems engineer react to the project manager 00:22:55.500 --> 00:22:58.420 stealing all the credit? Madison was characteristically 00:22:58.420 --> 00:23:01.480 methodical and very polite, but he firmly corrected 00:23:01.480 --> 00:23:04.680 the record. In 1818, he provided his own list. 00:23:04.799 --> 00:23:07.500 And did it match? No. Madison's list directly 00:23:07.500 --> 00:23:10.339 contradicted Hamilton's on 12 specific essays. 00:23:10.960 --> 00:23:13.220 Madison claimed he, not Hamilton, wrote numbers 00:23:13.220 --> 00:23:17.799 49 through 58, as well as 62 and 63. 12 disputed 00:23:17.799 --> 00:23:20.200 essays. Did he just call Hamilton a liar? How 00:23:20.200 --> 00:23:22.220 do you call out a dead founding father? He framed 00:23:22.220 --> 00:23:25.099 it as a tragic error of memory. He said the discrepancies 00:23:25.099 --> 00:23:27.299 were, quote, owing doubtless to the hurry in 00:23:27.299 --> 00:23:29.440 which his memorandum was made out. He was in 00:23:29.440 --> 00:23:33.500 a hurry. That is brutal, elegant, 18th century 00:23:33.500 --> 00:23:36.619 shade. Poor Alexander was so stressed about Aaron 00:23:36.619 --> 00:23:38.880 Burr shooting him that he accidentally claimed 00:23:38.880 --> 00:23:42.299 12 of my masterpieces. Exactly. And Madison has 00:23:42.299 --> 00:23:44.900 circumstantial proof too. He pointed out that 00:23:44.900 --> 00:23:47.400 Hamilton's list had documentable errors about 00:23:47.400 --> 00:23:51.240 John Jay's contributions. Hamilton credited mum 00:23:51.240 --> 00:23:55.059 54 to Jay, but it was a verified fact that Jay 00:23:55.059 --> 00:23:58.559 wrote number 64. Ah, so Madison is saying if 00:23:58.559 --> 00:24:00.940 his memory was wrong about Jay, it's definitely 00:24:00.940 --> 00:24:03.759 wrong about my 12. Right, but it remained a historical 00:24:03.759 --> 00:24:07.220 standoff for 150 years. So how do we actually 00:24:07.220 --> 00:24:10.359 know who's right? It wasn't solved until 1964, 00:24:11.119 --> 00:24:13.039 and it required crossing political history with 00:24:13.039 --> 00:24:15.359 advanced mathematics. Okay, you have to explain 00:24:15.359 --> 00:24:18.619 how math solves a literary mystery. Two statisticians, 00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:21.940 Frederick Mosteller and David Wallace, used Bayesian 00:24:21.940 --> 00:24:23.880 statistical inference. They didn't look at the 00:24:23.880 --> 00:24:25.920 philosophical arguments because Publius had a 00:24:25.920 --> 00:24:27.640 unified voice. Right, they all sounded like Publius, 00:24:27.720 --> 00:24:30.019 so what did they look for? Unconscious stylistic 00:24:30.019 --> 00:24:32.400 fingerprints. Specifically, the frequency of 00:24:32.400 --> 00:24:35.460 non -contextual filler words. Like forensic linguistics, 00:24:35.539 --> 00:24:37.920 what kind of words? Words a writer uses without 00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:41.460 thinking. They calculated exactly how often Hamilton 00:24:41.460 --> 00:24:44.339 used the word while versus Madison using the 00:24:44.339 --> 00:24:48.240 word whilst. They tracked words like upon, enough, 00:24:48.680 --> 00:24:51.279 and by. And they established a mathematical baseline 00:24:51.279 --> 00:24:54.339 for both guys? Exactly. Then they ran the 12 00:24:54.339 --> 00:24:57.140 disputed essays through this model. And the math 00:24:57.140 --> 00:25:00.460 was definitive. The linguistic fingerprints perfectly 00:25:00.460 --> 00:25:02.980 matched Madison's unconscious writing habits. 00:25:03.200 --> 00:25:05.940 No way. Yes. For example, Hamilton used the word 00:25:05.940 --> 00:25:09.430 upon at a vastly higher rate than Madison. The 00:25:09.430 --> 00:25:12.390 disunited essays reflected Madison's much lower 00:25:12.390 --> 00:25:14.690 rate. So Madison's polite shade was mathematically 00:25:14.690 --> 00:25:17.630 proven. Hamilton really was just in a hurry and 00:25:17.630 --> 00:25:19.809 overclaimed his work count. It took computers 00:25:19.809 --> 00:25:22.049 in the 60s to figure out who wrote a newspaper 00:25:22.049 --> 00:25:25.250 column in 1788. This is incredible. OK, so the 00:25:25.250 --> 00:25:27.309 project is finished, published, bound into books. 00:25:27.470 --> 00:25:29.809 The authors are finally identified. Now we have 00:25:29.809 --> 00:25:31.710 to ask the most important question of this whole 00:25:31.710 --> 00:25:34.650 deep dive. Did it actually work? Right. Did this 00:25:34.650 --> 00:25:37.349 legendary PR blitz achieve its immediate goal 00:25:37.349 --> 00:25:39.819 in New York? This is where we arrive at the great 00:25:39.819 --> 00:25:42.920 overarching irony. The whole point was to sway 00:25:42.920 --> 00:25:45.140 the delegates voting at the New York ratifying 00:25:45.140 --> 00:25:47.160 convention. So what happened at the convention? 00:25:47.480 --> 00:25:50.359 The sources reveal a shocking reality. The immediate 00:25:50.359 --> 00:25:52.539 impact of the federalist papers on that vote 00:25:52.539 --> 00:25:55.259 was almost completely negligible. Wait, what? 00:25:56.099 --> 00:25:58.299 They wrote the definitive text on American government, 00:25:58.559 --> 00:26:00.799 published three times a week, built arguments 00:26:00.799 --> 00:26:03.720 we use today, and the New York voters just ignored 00:26:03.720 --> 00:26:07.339 it. Let's look at the brutal math. Despite this 00:26:07.339 --> 00:26:10.200 massive media blitz, the actual voters remain 00:26:10.200 --> 00:26:13.420 solidly anti -federalist. When the delegates 00:26:13.420 --> 00:26:16.339 arrived, there were only 19 pro -constitution 00:26:16.339 --> 00:26:18.200 federalists. And how many anti -federalists? 00:26:18.400 --> 00:26:22.380 46. 46 to 19. They had a super majority. Hamilton's 00:26:22.380 --> 00:26:24.980 brilliant campaign didn't even make a dent. Historian 00:26:24.980 --> 00:26:27.900 John Kaminsky explicitly points this out. The 00:26:27.900 --> 00:26:30.240 anti -federalist political machine in New York, 00:26:30.359 --> 00:26:33.000 led by Governor George Clinton, was just too 00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:36.380 entrenched. Hamilton's profound essays on judicial 00:26:36.380 --> 00:26:38.740 review didn't change the minds of farmers terrified 00:26:38.740 --> 00:26:41.099 of a distant central government. I am completely 00:26:41.099 --> 00:26:44.380 confused, then. If the PR campaign failed and 00:26:44.380 --> 00:26:46.680 the convention hated the Constitution by a two 00:26:46.680 --> 00:26:49.559 -to -one margin, how did it actually pass in 00:26:49.559 --> 00:26:51.259 New York? They didn't form their own country. 00:26:51.579 --> 00:26:54.460 They ratified it because of harsh geopolitical 00:26:54.460 --> 00:26:57.259 realities, not because of Pupilis' prose. Explain 00:26:57.259 --> 00:26:59.839 them. Under the old articles, you needed a unanimous 00:26:59.839 --> 00:27:03.039 vote of all 13 states to change anything. But 00:27:03.039 --> 00:27:05.779 the new Constitution changed the rules. Once 00:27:05.779 --> 00:27:08.519 nine states ratified it, the new government would 00:27:08.519 --> 00:27:10.640 officially start among those nine. Lowering the 00:27:10.640 --> 00:27:12.960 threshold. Nine states equals a new country. 00:27:13.240 --> 00:27:15.420 Exactly. And while New York was digging its heels 00:27:15.420 --> 00:27:17.660 in, the rest of the country moved forward. Pennsylvania, 00:27:18.460 --> 00:27:20.579 Massachusetts, Connecticut. By the time New York 00:27:20.579 --> 00:27:24.440 finally approached a vote on July 26, 1788, ten 00:27:24.440 --> 00:27:26.960 other states had already ratified it. Ten states. 00:27:27.039 --> 00:27:29.279 So the new government already existed. Crucially, 00:27:29.539 --> 00:27:32.170 Virginia had ratified it in June. Virginia was 00:27:32.170 --> 00:27:34.549 the largest, wealthiest, most powerful state. 00:27:35.049 --> 00:27:37.130 Once they joined, the debate was functionally 00:27:37.130 --> 00:27:40.170 over. The United States was happening, with or 00:27:40.170 --> 00:27:42.930 without New York. Oh, it wasn't about the brilliance 00:27:42.930 --> 00:27:45.869 of Federalist No. 10, it was absolute geopolitical 00:27:45.869 --> 00:27:49.599 FOMO. Fear of missing out, exactly. Historian 00:27:49.599 --> 00:27:51.859 Albert Furtwängler notes that New York's refusal 00:27:51.859 --> 00:27:55.319 would make them an odd outsider. If they voted 00:27:55.319 --> 00:27:58.839 no, they'd be this isolated, independent nation 00:27:58.839 --> 00:28:02.160 completely surrounded by the new U .S., cut off 00:28:02.160 --> 00:28:05.400 economically vulnerable militarily. Virginia's 00:28:05.400 --> 00:28:07.980 ratification essentially put a gun to New York's 00:28:07.980 --> 00:28:11.880 head. Voting no was geopolitical suicide. So 00:28:11.880 --> 00:28:13.900 Hamilton's masterpiece didn't save the day in 00:28:13.900 --> 00:28:16.890 New York. Geography did. Did the essays do anything 00:28:16.890 --> 00:28:19.950 useful for ratification anywhere? They did find 00:28:19.950 --> 00:28:22.349 an alternative use. Hamilton actually shipped 00:28:22.349 --> 00:28:24.910 the bound volumes down to the Virginia Convention. 00:28:25.369 --> 00:28:27.549 Firtwengler says it functioned as a highly effective 00:28:27.549 --> 00:28:29.750 debater's handbook for the Federalists there. 00:28:30.089 --> 00:28:33.150 Oh, a cheat sheet. The delegates could just flip 00:28:33.150 --> 00:28:36.150 to an essay, read Madison's exact points on federalism, 00:28:36.269 --> 00:28:38.390 and hammer the opposition on the floor. Yes. 00:28:38.910 --> 00:28:40.910 But even in Virginia, the essays were secondary. 00:28:41.150 --> 00:28:43.710 The real deciding factors were Madison debating 00:28:43.710 --> 00:28:46.269 brilliantly in person and the implicit support 00:28:46.269 --> 00:28:48.250 of George Washington. Right, Washington wanting 00:28:48.250 --> 00:28:50.509 it to pass carries infinitely more weight than 00:28:50.509 --> 00:28:53.049 a pseudonymous newspaper column. Okay, this is 00:28:53.049 --> 00:28:56.549 fascinating. If it failed as a local PR tool 00:28:56.549 --> 00:29:00.069 in NY and was just a backup cheat sheet in VA, 00:29:00.750 --> 00:29:02.890 why are we still talking about it? Why is it 00:29:02.890 --> 00:29:04.950 the most important political writing in American 00:29:04.950 --> 00:29:08.289 history? Because of its afterlife. It failed 00:29:08.289 --> 00:29:11.039 to change the immediate election math, But it 00:29:11.039 --> 00:29:13.799 succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in becoming 00:29:13.799 --> 00:29:17.299 the ultimate authoritative legal operating manual 00:29:17.299 --> 00:29:19.859 for the government. How does a failed newspaper 00:29:19.859 --> 00:29:22.900 column become a legal manual? Well, the Constitution 00:29:22.900 --> 00:29:25.799 is remarkably brief. It lays out the framework, 00:29:25.980 --> 00:29:28.500 but doesn't explain the deep logic behind every 00:29:28.500 --> 00:29:31.579 clause. Almost immediately, massive legal fights 00:29:31.579 --> 00:29:33.460 break out over what the government is actually 00:29:33.460 --> 00:29:35.539 allowed to do. And when the Supreme Court needs 00:29:35.539 --> 00:29:38.119 to figure out a vague clause, they look backward. 00:29:38.299 --> 00:29:40.799 Right. They used the Federalist Papers as the 00:29:40.799 --> 00:29:42.819 definitive contemporary account of the framers' 00:29:43.160 --> 00:29:45.039 original intentions. It's like finding a piece 00:29:45.039 --> 00:29:47.799 of legacy software with weird code and reading 00:29:47.799 --> 00:29:49.759 the original developers' notes to figure out 00:29:49.759 --> 00:29:52.000 why they built it that way. That is a perfect 00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:54.619 analogy. And they started doing it incredibly 00:29:54.619 --> 00:29:57.609 early. Our sources point out that as early as 00:29:57.609 --> 00:30:00.750 1798, just 10 years later, the Supreme Court 00:30:00.750 --> 00:30:03.450 cited them in a landmark case called Calder v. 00:30:03.589 --> 00:30:05.609 Bull. What were they trying to figure out in 00:30:05.609 --> 00:30:09.470 1798? The exact limits of ex post facto laws. 00:30:09.930 --> 00:30:13.329 Laws that retroactively make an action illegal 00:30:13.329 --> 00:30:15.910 after someone committed it. The court cited Publius 00:30:15.910 --> 00:30:18.509 to explain why the framers explicitly banned 00:30:18.509 --> 00:30:20.589 those laws. They're saying, we don't have to 00:30:20.589 --> 00:30:22.630 guess, Hamilton and Madison explained the exact 00:30:22.630 --> 00:30:25.329 logic in the papers. Yes. And that trend never 00:30:25.329 --> 00:30:27.990 stopped. They've been cited in major cases about 00:30:27.990 --> 00:30:29.950 foreign affairs, separation powers, executive 00:30:29.950 --> 00:30:32.049 authority. By the year 2000, the sources say 00:30:32.049 --> 00:30:34.910 they had been explicitly quoted 291 times by 00:30:34.910 --> 00:30:37.950 the Supreme Court. 291 times. That's staggering. 00:30:38.390 --> 00:30:40.029 But wait, I'm thinking about the mechanics of 00:30:40.029 --> 00:30:42.099 this and I want to push back. There is a massive 00:30:42.099 --> 00:30:44.500 structural irony here about how judges use these 00:30:44.500 --> 00:30:46.740 papers today. You are hitting on one of the most 00:30:46.740 --> 00:30:49.599 contentious debates in constitutional law, the 00:30:49.599 --> 00:30:52.740 question of deference. Yes. If federal judges 00:30:52.740 --> 00:30:55.720 are using these papers to discover original intent, 00:30:56.440 --> 00:30:58.920 how much legal weight should they actually give 00:30:58.920 --> 00:31:01.480 to the secret personal intentions of Hamilton 00:31:01.480 --> 00:31:03.920 and Madison? Because I read the sources and James 00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:05.519 Madison himself had a very strong opinion on 00:31:05.519 --> 00:31:09.500 this, didn't he? This is the ultimate aha moment 00:31:09.500 --> 00:31:12.549 of our deep dive. Even Chief Justice John Marshall 00:31:12.549 --> 00:31:15.509 warned about this in 1819. He said their opinions 00:31:15.509 --> 00:31:18.029 deserve great respect, but the right to judge 00:31:18.029 --> 00:31:20.750 their correctness must be retained. They aren't 00:31:20.750 --> 00:31:23.470 infallible law. But Madison went way further 00:31:23.470 --> 00:31:25.690 than Marshall. Madison explicitly told the future 00:31:25.690 --> 00:31:28.150 not to use his essays to interpret the law. He 00:31:28.150 --> 00:31:30.210 was extraordinarily strict about it. He viewed 00:31:30.210 --> 00:31:32.670 the Constitution as a strict legal contract. 00:31:33.509 --> 00:31:36.269 In an 1821 letter to a man named Thomas Ritchie, 00:31:36.319 --> 00:31:39.819 the father of the Constitution, completely dismantled 00:31:39.819 --> 00:31:42.140 the modern theory of original intent regarding 00:31:42.140 --> 00:31:44.839 his own work. What exactly did he say? He wrote 00:31:44.839 --> 00:31:46.759 that the legitimate meaning of the instrument 00:31:46.759 --> 00:31:50.680 must be derived from the text itself. And if 00:31:50.680 --> 00:31:53.500 the text is ambiguous, he explicitly states where 00:31:53.500 --> 00:31:56.200 you must not look. He says the meaning must never 00:31:56.200 --> 00:31:58.339 be sought in the opinions or intentions of the 00:31:58.339 --> 00:32:00.619 body which planned and proposed the Constitution. 00:32:01.319 --> 00:32:03.720 Meaning, do not look at my secret notes from 00:32:03.720 --> 00:32:05.880 Philadelphia. And do not look at the private 00:32:05.880 --> 00:32:08.380 intentions of the guys who wrote the PR essays. 00:32:08.900 --> 00:32:11.460 Exactly. He argued the drafters were just architects 00:32:11.460 --> 00:32:13.839 drawing a blueprint. The blueprint has no legal 00:32:13.839 --> 00:32:16.319 power. He said you must look for the meaning 00:32:16.319 --> 00:32:18.799 in the sense attached to it by the people in 00:32:18.799 --> 00:32:21.789 their respective state conventions. That is profound. 00:32:21.930 --> 00:32:23.990 He's saying it's not law because he wrote it, 00:32:24.029 --> 00:32:26.849 it's law because the people voted for it. The 00:32:26.849 --> 00:32:29.589 only intentions that matter legally are the intentions 00:32:29.589 --> 00:32:32.049 of the voters who signed the contract. He is 00:32:32.049 --> 00:32:34.509 enforcing a strict democratic theory of law. 00:32:35.369 --> 00:32:37.450 The author of the ultimate operating manual is 00:32:37.450 --> 00:32:40.089 telling the future, this manual is just my personal 00:32:40.089 --> 00:32:43.150 philosophical opinion. The true legal power belongs 00:32:43.150 --> 00:32:46.160 to the user agreement signed by the public. And 00:32:46.160 --> 00:32:49.160 yet modern courts still elevate Publius to the 00:32:49.160 --> 00:32:52.599 level of near -sacred text. That is a massive 00:32:52.599 --> 00:32:55.700 lingering irony. It really is. Okay, let's pull 00:32:55.700 --> 00:32:57.480 all this complex history together. We've gone 00:32:57.480 --> 00:33:00.039 on quite the journey today. We started with a 00:33:00.039 --> 00:33:03.799 chaotic high school group project in 1787. We 00:33:03.799 --> 00:33:06.859 had Hamilton, the frantic project manager, pulling 00:33:06.859 --> 00:33:09.339 all -nighters to write 60 % of the defense for 00:33:09.339 --> 00:33:11.710 an energetic government. We had Madison, the 00:33:11.710 --> 00:33:14.369 systems engineer, designing intricate mechanical 00:33:14.369 --> 00:33:17.170 checks and balances, diluting factions through 00:33:17.170 --> 00:33:20.410 sheer geographic size because he knew men were 00:33:20.410 --> 00:33:23.130 not angels. And John Jay, the sideline diplomat, 00:33:23.329 --> 00:33:25.809 delivering that vital warning about the terrifying 00:33:25.809 --> 00:33:29.190 geopolitical dangers of a divided house. Together, 00:33:29.369 --> 00:33:32.509 as Publius, they wrote a masterpiece. A philosophical 00:33:32.509 --> 00:33:35.150 blitzkrieg aimed at a local problem. and even 00:33:35.150 --> 00:33:37.390 though they totally failed to change the mathematical 00:33:37.390 --> 00:33:39.869 reality in New York. Saved only by Virginia and 00:33:39.869 --> 00:33:42.970 massive geopolitical FOMO. Their rushed pseudonymous 00:33:42.970 --> 00:33:45.089 columns transcended their immediate failure. 00:33:45.470 --> 00:33:47.630 They became the universal principles, the definitive 00:33:47.630 --> 00:33:50.410 lens for American law centuries later. It's an 00:33:50.410 --> 00:33:52.509 incredible testament to the enduring quality 00:33:52.509 --> 00:33:55.269 of their ideas. The process was messy, the goal 00:33:55.269 --> 00:33:57.430 was missed, but the architecture was so sound, 00:33:57.549 --> 00:34:00.390 we still live inside it. Now, before we wrap 00:34:00.390 --> 00:34:03.289 up, we promised a final provocative thought from 00:34:03.289 --> 00:34:06.289 the source text. What do you have for us? I want 00:34:06.289 --> 00:34:09.210 to look at the very end of the project. Beyond 00:34:09.210 --> 00:34:12.110 all the mechanics, the vetoes, the federalism, 00:34:12.610 --> 00:34:15.210 the federalist papers begin and end with a dire 00:34:15.210 --> 00:34:18.429 warning about human psychology. In the very last 00:34:18.429 --> 00:34:22.309 paper, number 85, Hamilton steps back and offers 00:34:22.309 --> 00:34:24.849 a lesson of moderation. What's the lesson? He 00:34:24.849 --> 00:34:27.409 warns the reader against hazarding the fragile 00:34:27.409 --> 00:34:31.119 new nation. to the military despotism of a successful 00:34:31.119 --> 00:34:33.860 demagogue. A demagogue. Someone who uses passion 00:34:33.860 --> 00:34:36.019 and prejudice to gain power instead of reason. 00:34:36.260 --> 00:34:38.940 Exactly. Hamilton is warning about ambitious 00:34:38.940 --> 00:34:42.139 leaders who use highly divisive appeals, stoking 00:34:42.139 --> 00:34:44.840 anger and fear, aiming ultimately at tyranny. 00:34:45.079 --> 00:34:46.840 He understood the greatest threat wasn't a foreign 00:34:46.840 --> 00:34:49.679 army. It was the internal vulnerability of the 00:34:49.679 --> 00:34:52.719 public to a charismatic manipulator. 230 -something 00:34:52.719 --> 00:34:55.539 years later, the incredibly complex framework 00:34:55.539 --> 00:34:59.320 they defended still stands. It was explicitly 00:34:59.320 --> 00:35:01.920 built as a mechanical bulwark against that very 00:35:01.920 --> 00:35:05.119 human flaw, something to seriously mull over 00:35:05.119 --> 00:35:07.639 as you watch today's political landscape unfold. 00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:10.199 That is a deeply powerful thought to leave on. 00:35:10.420 --> 00:35:12.440 The machinery was built to survive our worst 00:35:12.440 --> 00:35:15.039 instincts. We just have to keep the machine running. 00:35:15.920 --> 00:35:18.099 Thank you so much for joining us on this deep 00:35:18.099 --> 00:35:20.440 dive into Publius. We hope you walk away feeling 00:35:20.440 --> 00:35:22.739 more informed about the mechanics of the Constitution 00:35:22.739 --> 00:35:25.480 and may be appreciative of the chaotic, imperfect 00:35:25.480 --> 00:35:28.179 waters of history. Because sometimes, even when 00:35:28.179 --> 00:35:30.059 a project looks like a complete failure, you 00:35:30.059 --> 00:35:31.820 end up writing the blueprint for the future. 00:35:32.460 --> 00:35:34.739 Stay curious, keep exploring, and we'll see you 00:35:34.739 --> 00:35:35.179 next time.