We treat the Federalist Papers like the sacred
blueprint of American democracy. I mean, they're
constantly quoted by Supreme Court justices and
revered by historians. Right. They're held up
as this ultimate instruction manual for how the
government is actually supposed to work. Exactly.
But what if I told you that this massive, brilliant
PR campaign, like the most ambitious one in American
history, completely failed its primary mission?
It's honestly the ultimate historical irony.
The men who wrote these essays poured staggering
amounts of intellect into them. Yeah, 85 separate
arguments. Right, 85 of them. And they were all
aimed at this highly specific immediate goal
in the state of New York. And by almost every
metric, the voters there entirely ignored them.
OK, so we really need to unpack this today. Welcome
to the deep dive, by the way. If you are joining
us, we are looking at an extensive Wikipedia
article covering the history, the authorship
and the legacy of the Federalist Papers. And
our mission here is to strip away all that marble
statue reverence and look at the actual messy
high stakes scramble behind the scenes. Yeah,
we want to decode exactly what Alexander Hamilton,
James Madison, and John Jay actually contributed.
And to make all this dense 18th century political
jargon digestible for you, we're going to use
an analogy. A very relatable one, I think. Right.
We're going to view this whole historical event
through the lens of something we have all survived,
which is the ultimate high school group project.
It is surprisingly fitting. I mean, you've got
a strict deadline, a project the whole school's
future depends on, and a hostile environment.
Not to mention a group of guys trying to coordinate
completely different skill sets to build defense
of a brand new government system. Exactly. And
just to set some ground rules for you listening,
as we go through this, our goal isn't to take
sides in the historical federalist versus anti
-federalist debate. Or modern politics, for that
matter. Right. We're just impartially reporting
on the ideas in these sources. We want to look
at the architecture of their arguments. not endorse
them. So let's set the stage. It's the fall of
1787. What is the crisis that forces this group
project to even happen? Well, the United States
is not a unified powerhouse at this point. It's
this loose, fragile confederation operating under
the Articles of Confederation. Which everyone
basically agrees was a total disaster. A catastrophic
failure. The national government has no power
to tax, no power to draft an army, and they can't
even regulate commerce between the states. Okay,
so in our high school analogy, the Articles of
Confederation are the current student council
rules. Right. And the rules are pure chaos. Like,
the council can't raise money for prom, the clubs
are fighting over rooms, and the principal is
threatening to just shut the whole school down.
That's a perfect parallel. So a group of delegates
goes to Philadelphia, locks themselves in a room
for the summer, and completely tears up the old
rules. They write the new constitution. Yes.
A massive overhaul, creating a strong central
government. But just because they wrote it, that
doesn't make it law. The states have to actually
vote to ratify it. The student body has to vote
yes on the new rules. But almost immediately,
there's this huge backlash. It's exactly. Late
September 1787, writers in New York start publishing
these fierce attacks on the proposed constitution
in the local papers. Using burner accounts, basically.
Yeah. Roman pseudonyms like Cato and Brutus.
These are the anti -federalists. And they are
arguing that this new central government is going
to obliterate state sovereignty. They're saying
it'll destroy individual liberties. Right. They
paint it as a one way ticket back to the tyranny.
They literally just fought a revolution to escape.
So they're spamming the school message board
saying, don't vote for these rules. The new president
is going to be a dictator and take your club
funding. And it is gaining serious traction,
especially in New York, which is an existential
problem for the country. Because New York is
right in the middle. Geographically and economically,
yes. If New York rejects it, the union is physically
split in half. The whole experiment could collapse.
So Alexander Hamilton realizes they're losing
the narrative. The pro -constitution side is
getting hammered. So he steps up. He realizes
someone has to launch a massive PR campaign to
convince the state to vote yes. He writes federalist
number one, basically saying, I will answer every
single objection you have. But he knows he can't
do it alone. That's way too much writing. Way
too much. So he recruits a team. He gets John
Jay, a prominent diplomat from New York, and
James Madison, a brilliant political theorist
from Virginia who just happened to be in town.
Just hanging around the Confederation Congress.
Right. And they decide to publish this sweeping
defense under one collective pseudonym. Which
is such a smart branding move because the anti
-federalists are using names like Cato and Brutus,
right? Yes. Roman moralists and assassins who
killed Caesar to save the Republic. They are
branding themselves as the ultimate defenders
against tyranny. So how does Hamilton counter
that? He chooses the name Publius, which comes
from Publius Valerius Publicola, a Roman aristocrat
who helped found the Roman Republic. But the
translation is the best part. Exactly. It translates
to friend of the people. That is just aggressive
PR. The other guys say the Constitution is an
elitist plot, so Hamilton literally names his
project Friend of the People. And he had actually
used that name before. Back in 1778, he used
Publius to expose a corrupt politician named
Samuel Chase, who was price gouging flour during
the war. Oh, wow. So the brand already had a
reputation in New York. It did. People knew Publius
as someone who exposed corruption and defended
everyday citizens. It completely disarmed the
elitist accusations. Brilliant. Okay, so we have
our team. We have the brand name. Let's break
down this group project, starting with the guy
who started it all, Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton
is the absolute engine of the federal's papers.
Out of the 85 essays, he wrote 51 of them. 51?
That's like 60 % of the whole thing. It is. He
recruited the co -authors, managed the publishers,
set the crazy pace, and wrote the opening and
closing arguments. So he's the hyperactive student
body president. The project is due in three days,
he assigns everyone their parts based on their
major, and then he just stays up all night fueled
by pure anxiety and caffeine. Frantically typing
60 % of it himself. Ah. Exactly. Yeah. And the
output is staggering, especially given the philosophical
depth. Let's talk about his core political goals
in these essays. Well, in Federalist Number One,
he frames the stakes. He asks this massive question.
Are societies capable of establishing good government
from reflection and choice? or are they destined
to depend on accident and force? Reflection and
choice versus accident and force, that's heavy.
It's arguably one of the most important sentences
in American political thought. Before this, governments
were usually formed by conquering armies or royal
bloodlines. Right, accident and force. Yeah.
Hamilton is telling the public you have an unprecedented
opportunity to sit down, be rational, and design
your own destiny. He's elevating the debate.
putting immense pressure on the reader to prove
humans can actually govern themselves rationally.
He absolutely is. And then he pivots to the harsh
mechanics of power. The anti -Federalists were
terrified of a strong government, but Hamilton
argues a weak one is way more dangerous. Especially
in Federalists knowing 70, right? Yes. Not a
70. That's where he argues for a one -man chief
executive. and energetic presidency. Wait, but
they just fought a war to get rid of a king.
How does he justify demanding a single powerful
president? Doesn't that just prove the anti -federalists
right? He hits that fear head on by making it
about accountability. Under the old articles,
there was no executive branch, just slow, bickering
committees in Congress. Which is the classic
group project problem. Exactly. If a committee
is in charge, they disagree. They delay during
emergencies. And worst of all, they hide behind
each other to avoid blame. It wasn't my fault.
I voted against it in committee. Right. Hamilton
argues a single executive is actually safer.
Because if things go wrong, the public knows
exactly who to blame. You can't hide. That's
a brilliant pivot, turning the fear of a king
into a demand for transparency. And he doesn't
stop there. He tackles the Supreme Court in number
78. He does. The anti -federalists, specifically
Brutus, thought federal judges with life appointments
would become this untouchable, tyrannical oligarchy.
Because no one could fire them or correct their
mistakes? Right. But Hamilton counters by laying
the groundwork for a judicial review. He writes
that the judiciary is actually the least dangerous
branch. Because they don't have the army or the
money. Exactly. He says they have neither force
nor will, but merely judgment. Congress has the
purse. The president has the sword. The Supreme
Court just has opinions. But he pairs that weakness
with a massive implicit power. He argues the
courts must have the power to declare laws void
if they violate the Constitution Which is exactly
what the modern Supreme Court does he outlined
it decades before they officially claimed that
power He did but Hamilton makes one argument
that seems well Completely hypocritical for a
guy calling himself Friend of the People. Oh,
Federalist Number 84. This one blew my mind when
I read the source. He explicitly argues against
including a Bill of Rights. It does. Which is
crazy. Today, the Bill of Rights is practically
the only part of the Constitution people can
actually quote from memory. Why would he fight
that? It's counterintuitive today, but his logic
was rooted in a very strict legal philosophy.
The original draft didn't have a list of individual
rights. And the anti -federalists were screaming
that this was proof of a plot to oppress everyone?
Yes. But Hamilton argued adding a list wasn't
just unnecessary. He said it was actively dangerous.
Wait, how is listing my rights dangerous? That
sounds like a trap. It comes down to enumerated
powers. He argued the Constitution only granted
the government very specific, limited powers.
OK, so if it doesn't explicitly say Congress
can regulate the press, then they just can't.
Exactly. Hamilton's point was, why forbid the
government from doing something it hasn't even
been given the power to do? Oh, I see. If you
say, Congress shall make no law about the press,
you're kind of implying that without that sentence,
they would have had the power to do it. Yes.
And his deeper fear was a legal doctrine called
expressio unius est exclusio altarius. The explicit
mention of one thing is the exclusion of another.
Meaning, if you make a list, people will think
that's the only list? Exactly. Hamilton feared
that if you write down 10 protected rights, some
ambitious future government will come along and
say, well, the right to privacy isn't on this
list of 10, so it must not exist. Back to the
high school analogy. If the principal says you
have the right to wear red shirts and blue shirts,
eventually they'll say, well, the rules don't
say you can wear a green shirt, so green shirts
are banned. That is the exact mechanism Hamilton
was warning about. He thought the Constitution
itself was a bill of rights because it strictly
limited government power. But the anti -federalist
Brutus completely disagreed with that, right?
Unveilingly. Brutus thought that was naive academic
nonsense. He argued human nature guarantees rulers
will expand their power and without a hard -written
boundary, tyranny is inevitable. And spoiler
alert, Brutus basically won that argument. They
ratified the Constitution, but everyone agreed
to immediately add the first 10 amendments. The
Bill of Rights. But this brings us perfectly
to our second author, James Madison, because
he found a structural engineering solution to
Hamilton's fear about the list. Right. Madison
actually drafted the Bill of Rights, but he understood
Hamilton's anxiety. So what did he do? He wrote
the Ninth Amendment. Which says what, exactly?
It says, the enumeration in the Constitution
of certain rights shall not be construed to deny
or disparage others retained by the people. Oh,
wow. It's a constitutional catch -all clause.
Yes. It's a direct response to Federalist Number
84. It literally says, just because we made a
list doesn't mean this is the whole list. Madison
wrote a software patch to fix the bug Hamilton
found. That is so cool. So let's talk about Madison.
He's our systems engineer. He really is. He wrote
29 of the essays. And while Hamilton is driving
the schedule with pure force, Madison is obsessed
with the underlying physics of the project. He's
the quiet honor student. He's designing the rules
so the popular kids on the football team can't
just bully the chess club. Exactly. He is anticipating
human misbehavior and building mechanical systems
to counteract it. and his absolute masterpiece
is Federalist Number 10. Okay, Federalist Number
10, what's the central problem he's tackling
there? He is addressing the danger of factions.
And we have to be clear, he doesn't just mean
political parties. How does he define it? He
defines a faction as any group of citizens, majority
or minority, united by a common passion that
is adverse to the rights of others or adverse
to the community as a whole. So basically a mob.
or a selfish special interest group that would
happily destroy the country to get what it wants.
Yes. And at the time, philosophers like Montesquieu
argued a republic could only survive if it was
geographically tiny. Like a small city state
where everyone is homogenous. Because if everyone
is similar, they won't form angry factions. Right.
The anti -federalists used this to argue that
a huge diverse United States would inevitably
tear itself apart. You'd have northern merchants,
southern farmers, bankers, laborers. They'd form
massive factions and rip each other to shreds.
So how does Madison counter that? By completely
inverting the conventional wisdom. Madison argues
in number 10 that a massive extended commercial
republic is actually the best defense against
factions. Wait, really? How does making it bigger
solve the problem? Well, he says you can't erase
the causes of factions because human nature means
people will always have different opinions and
unequal wealth. So you have to control the effects.
And you control the effects mechanically. Yes,
by scaling up the playing field. In a small republic,
it's super easy for one corrupt faction to get
a majority and brutally oppress the minority.
Like in our high school. If the school is tiny
and it's just the football team and the debate
club, the football team has more guys. They can
just vote to take 100 % of the school budget
for helmets. And the debate club ceases to exist.
That is majority tyranny. But if Madison expands
the school, he brings in the robotics team, the
marching band, the theater kids, the track team,
the art students. Now the football team doesn't
have a majority anymore. If they want helmets,
they have to negotiate, form temporary coalitions
and actually compromise. The sheer size and diversity
of the school acts as a mechanical shield against
any one group becoming a tyrant. It's mathematically
impossible for one faction to dominate. That
is so elegant. He takes their biggest fear, the
massive size of the country, and turns it into
its greatest feature. He expands on that directly
in Federalist Number 14, too, defending the concept
of the extended republic. But he doesn't just
want to control the citizens. He wants to control
the government itself. Which brings us to Federalist
Number 51, the checks and balances essay. Right.
If number 10 is about controlling the people,
no, 51 is about controlling the politicians.
And he gives this incredibly profound, cynical
assessment of human nature. The famous quote,
right? If men were angels. Yes. If men were angels,
no government would be necessary. If angels were
to govern men, Neither external nor internal
controls on government would be necessary. He's
basically looking at this massive maze of vetoes
and overlapping jurisdictions he just built and
admitting we didn't build this because we trust
our leaders. We built it because we know they're
going to be selfish. He embraces the flaw. He
says you have to construct the government so
that its parts are the means of keeping each
other in their proper places. You pit ambition
against ambition. So you don't rely on the president
being a saint. You give Congress the power to
stop a bad president. And the president, the
power to stop a reckless Congress. Exactly. You
weaponize their personal ambition to protect
the constitutional rights of their branch. Which
is exactly what you see today when politicians
argue over executive overreach. You're watching
Madison's blueprint play out in real time. Absolutely.
And he also mapped out how this balance works
between the national government and the states
in Federalist Number 39. The federalism essay.
Yes. Dual sovereignty. The anti -federalists
said the states would be erased entirely by this
new national empire. But Madison proves it's
a hybrid system, right? He methodically shows
that citizens are subject to two different jurisdictions
simultaneously, but in distinct spheres. The
national government handles war, money, interstate
commerce. And the states handle local criminal
law, education, interstate business. Right. In
your school project analogy, the principal's
office has supreme authority to expel a student
or negotiate with a rival high school. But the
principal has absolutely no right to tell the
homeroom teacher where a student sits or how
to grade a spelling test. They share power over
the same student body, but in completely separate
lanes. And Madison engineered it so these two
layers would constantly be jealous of each other's
power, acting as a final check against tyranny.
So we've got Hamilton frantically writing about
executive energy, Madison designing these intricate
gears. What about John Jay? Ah, John Jay. He's
an incredibly distinguished figure. He negotiated
the Treaty of Paris. He was the Secretary for
Foreign Affairs under the Articles of Confederation.
He's got more high -level diplomatic experience
than almost anyone in the country. And yet, out
of 85 essays, John Jay wrote exactly five. Five.
Just five. Our high school analogy really needs
to explain this. Well, John Jay is the highly
respected senior who agrees to help launch the
project. He writes the introduction to give it
an air of authority, and then... He gets a severe
case of mono. Oh no. He's physically incapacitated
and misses almost the entire semester, leaving
Hamilton and Madison to pull the all -nighters.
That is painfully relatable. But the five essays
he did write, they were hyper focused on his
expertise, weren't they? Very much so. He wrote
numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5 right at the beginning
and then managed to write number 64 much later.
He leveraged his diplomatic resume to address
foreign threats. Because in 1787, the U .S. is
not a superpower. It's this weak strip of land
surrounded by the British, the French, and the
Spanish empires. Right. And Jay relentlessly
hammers the point that a divided America would
be irresistible prey. for Europe. The anti -federalists
wanted to risk staying a loose confederation,
maybe splitting into regional groups. And Jay
says if you do that, Europe will play us against
each other. Britain allies with the North, France
with the South, and America just becomes a battleground
for European proxy wars. He's the guy looking
at the geopolitical chessboard saying, I negotiate
with these empires. If we don't unite with one
military and one foreign policy, they will pick
us apart. It was a very sobering, practical survival
argument. It totally bypassed the theoretical
debates about liberty. And what about his last
essay, number 64? He recovered enough to defend
the Senate specific treaty making powers. He
explained why the Senate which is smaller and
more stable, should advise and consent on foreign
treaties instead of the massive shifting House
of Representatives. Makes perfect sense. And
he didn't completely give up after that, right?
Didn't he write a separate pamphlet? He did.
In the spring of 1788, he published an address
to the people of the state of New York. So he
handed in an extra credit assignment directly
to the teacher. You could definitely say that.
And Hamilton actually cited Jay's pamphlet proudly
in the final Federalist paper, number 85. So
his intellectual weight was still felt. Okay,
so we have the players, we have their philosophical
arguments. Let's talk logistics. Writing 85 graduate
level political science essays is one thing.
Publishing them in the 1780s is another. The
logistics are staggering. It was designed to
be a media blitzkrieg. When did this start? Late
October 1787. And they were publishing simultaneously
in three major New York newspapers. And how fast
were they writing? I know Hamilton was frantic,
but what was the actual pace? At their peak,
they were publishing up to three or four massive,
highly complex essays every single week. Three
or four a week. They are writing, typesetting
by hand, and printing a thesis every two days.
That's an insane schedule. It was a deliberate
tactical choice. Historian Gary Wills points
out that the goal was to literally suffocate
the opposition's ability to respond. Just drown
them in content. Yeah. Wills wrote, who, given
ample time, could have answered such a battery
of arguments, and no time was given. That's the
ultimate debate tactic. If Brutus reads number
10, spends three days writing a thoughtful counter
-argument, by the time it hits the press, Publius
has already published 11, 12, 13, and 14. Brutus
is constantly a week behind the conversation.
Publius just controls the narrative by outwriting
them. And public demand got so high that before
the newspaper run even finished, a publishing
firm started binding the essays into a permanent
book. The first volume came out in March 1788.
They turned their op -eds into a physical textbook
while the debate was still happening. But here's
where it gets really interesting for me. The
whodunit mystery. Yes, the authorship mystery.
Because they publish under a fake name. For decades
no one actually knew who wrote which specific
essay. It's one of the great literary puzzles
in American history. Obviously they use pseudonyms
at first so people wouldn't just say, you guys
wrote the Constitution, of course you like it.
But why keep the exact breakdown a secret for
so long after ratification? Because of the toxic
political climate in the 1790s. Shortly after
ratification, Hamilton and Madison became bitter,
mortal political enemies. Right. Hamilton starts
the Federalist Party for a strong central bank
and Madison joins Jefferson to start the Democratic
Republican Party to fight Hamilton. Exactly.
They were tearing each other apart in the press.
Neither man wanted to publicly claim the Publius
essays because it would highlight how closely
they used to collaborate. The unified voice became
a political liability. But the secret finally
leaks out in 1804 under crazy circumstance. Very
dramatic. In July 1804, Hamilton engages in his
famous fatal duel with Aaron Burr. Just days
before the duel, he stops by a lawyer friend's
office and hides a piece of paper in a book.
And what's on the paper? It's a detailed list
claiming authorship of the essays. Hamilton claimed
he was the sole author of 63 of the 85 essays.
So on his way out the door, he leaves a note
basically saying, by the way, I did all the work.
That list became public after he died and an
1810 printing actually assigned authorship based
on his claims. But James Madison was still alive
and he definitely saw this list. How did the
systems engineer react to the project manager
stealing all the credit? Madison was characteristically
methodical and very polite, but he firmly corrected
the record. In 1818, he provided his own list.
And did it match? No. Madison's list directly
contradicted Hamilton's on 12 specific essays.
Madison claimed he, not Hamilton, wrote numbers
49 through 58, as well as 62 and 63. 12 disputed
essays. Did he just call Hamilton a liar? How
do you call out a dead founding father? He framed
it as a tragic error of memory. He said the discrepancies
were, quote, owing doubtless to the hurry in
which his memorandum was made out. He was in
a hurry. That is brutal, elegant, 18th century
shade. Poor Alexander was so stressed about Aaron
Burr shooting him that he accidentally claimed
12 of my masterpieces. Exactly. And Madison has
circumstantial proof too. He pointed out that
Hamilton's list had documentable errors about
John Jay's contributions. Hamilton credited mum
54 to Jay, but it was a verified fact that Jay
wrote number 64. Ah, so Madison is saying if
his memory was wrong about Jay, it's definitely
wrong about my 12. Right, but it remained a historical
standoff for 150 years. So how do we actually
know who's right? It wasn't solved until 1964,
and it required crossing political history with
advanced mathematics. Okay, you have to explain
how math solves a literary mystery. Two statisticians,
Frederick Mosteller and David Wallace, used Bayesian
statistical inference. They didn't look at the
philosophical arguments because Publius had a
unified voice. Right, they all sounded like Publius,
so what did they look for? Unconscious stylistic
fingerprints. Specifically, the frequency of
non -contextual filler words. Like forensic linguistics,
what kind of words? Words a writer uses without
thinking. They calculated exactly how often Hamilton
used the word while versus Madison using the
word whilst. They tracked words like upon, enough,
and by. And they established a mathematical baseline
for both guys? Exactly. Then they ran the 12
disputed essays through this model. And the math
was definitive. The linguistic fingerprints perfectly
matched Madison's unconscious writing habits.
No way. Yes. For example, Hamilton used the word
upon at a vastly higher rate than Madison. The
disunited essays reflected Madison's much lower
rate. So Madison's polite shade was mathematically
proven. Hamilton really was just in a hurry and
overclaimed his work count. It took computers
in the 60s to figure out who wrote a newspaper
column in 1788. This is incredible. OK, so the
project is finished, published, bound into books.
The authors are finally identified. Now we have
to ask the most important question of this whole
deep dive. Did it actually work? Right. Did this
legendary PR blitz achieve its immediate goal
in New York? This is where we arrive at the great
overarching irony. The whole point was to sway
the delegates voting at the New York ratifying
convention. So what happened at the convention?
The sources reveal a shocking reality. The immediate
impact of the federalist papers on that vote
was almost completely negligible. Wait, what?
They wrote the definitive text on American government,
published three times a week, built arguments
we use today, and the New York voters just ignored
it. Let's look at the brutal math. Despite this
massive media blitz, the actual voters remain
solidly anti -federalist. When the delegates
arrived, there were only 19 pro -constitution
federalists. And how many anti -federalists?
46. 46 to 19. They had a super majority. Hamilton's
brilliant campaign didn't even make a dent. Historian
John Kaminsky explicitly points this out. The
anti -federalist political machine in New York,
led by Governor George Clinton, was just too
entrenched. Hamilton's profound essays on judicial
review didn't change the minds of farmers terrified
of a distant central government. I am completely
confused, then. If the PR campaign failed and
the convention hated the Constitution by a two
-to -one margin, how did it actually pass in
New York? They didn't form their own country.
They ratified it because of harsh geopolitical
realities, not because of Pupilis' prose. Explain
them. Under the old articles, you needed a unanimous
vote of all 13 states to change anything. But
the new Constitution changed the rules. Once
nine states ratified it, the new government would
officially start among those nine. Lowering the
threshold. Nine states equals a new country.
Exactly. And while New York was digging its heels
in, the rest of the country moved forward. Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, Connecticut. By the time New York
finally approached a vote on July 26, 1788, ten
other states had already ratified it. Ten states.
So the new government already existed. Crucially,
Virginia had ratified it in June. Virginia was
the largest, wealthiest, most powerful state.
Once they joined, the debate was functionally
over. The United States was happening, with or
without New York. Oh, it wasn't about the brilliance
of Federalist No. 10, it was absolute geopolitical
FOMO. Fear of missing out, exactly. Historian
Albert Furtwängler notes that New York's refusal
would make them an odd outsider. If they voted
no, they'd be this isolated, independent nation
completely surrounded by the new U .S., cut off
economically vulnerable militarily. Virginia's
ratification essentially put a gun to New York's
head. Voting no was geopolitical suicide. So
Hamilton's masterpiece didn't save the day in
New York. Geography did. Did the essays do anything
useful for ratification anywhere? They did find
an alternative use. Hamilton actually shipped
the bound volumes down to the Virginia Convention.
Firtwengler says it functioned as a highly effective
debater's handbook for the Federalists there.
Oh, a cheat sheet. The delegates could just flip
to an essay, read Madison's exact points on federalism,
and hammer the opposition on the floor. Yes.
But even in Virginia, the essays were secondary.
The real deciding factors were Madison debating
brilliantly in person and the implicit support
of George Washington. Right, Washington wanting
it to pass carries infinitely more weight than
a pseudonymous newspaper column. Okay, this is
fascinating. If it failed as a local PR tool
in NY and was just a backup cheat sheet in VA,
why are we still talking about it? Why is it
the most important political writing in American
history? Because of its afterlife. It failed
to change the immediate election math, But it
succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in becoming
the ultimate authoritative legal operating manual
for the government. How does a failed newspaper
column become a legal manual? Well, the Constitution
is remarkably brief. It lays out the framework,
but doesn't explain the deep logic behind every
clause. Almost immediately, massive legal fights
break out over what the government is actually
allowed to do. And when the Supreme Court needs
to figure out a vague clause, they look backward.
Right. They used the Federalist Papers as the
definitive contemporary account of the framers'
original intentions. It's like finding a piece
of legacy software with weird code and reading
the original developers' notes to figure out
why they built it that way. That is a perfect
analogy. And they started doing it incredibly
early. Our sources point out that as early as
1798, just 10 years later, the Supreme Court
cited them in a landmark case called Calder v.
Bull. What were they trying to figure out in
1798? The exact limits of ex post facto laws.
Laws that retroactively make an action illegal
after someone committed it. The court cited Publius
to explain why the framers explicitly banned
those laws. They're saying, we don't have to
guess, Hamilton and Madison explained the exact
logic in the papers. Yes. And that trend never
stopped. They've been cited in major cases about
foreign affairs, separation powers, executive
authority. By the year 2000, the sources say
they had been explicitly quoted 291 times by
the Supreme Court. 291 times. That's staggering.
But wait, I'm thinking about the mechanics of
this and I want to push back. There is a massive
structural irony here about how judges use these
papers today. You are hitting on one of the most
contentious debates in constitutional law, the
question of deference. Yes. If federal judges
are using these papers to discover original intent,
how much legal weight should they actually give
to the secret personal intentions of Hamilton
and Madison? Because I read the sources and James
Madison himself had a very strong opinion on
this, didn't he? This is the ultimate aha moment
of our deep dive. Even Chief Justice John Marshall
warned about this in 1819. He said their opinions
deserve great respect, but the right to judge
their correctness must be retained. They aren't
infallible law. But Madison went way further
than Marshall. Madison explicitly told the future
not to use his essays to interpret the law. He
was extraordinarily strict about it. He viewed
the Constitution as a strict legal contract.
In an 1821 letter to a man named Thomas Ritchie,
the father of the Constitution, completely dismantled
the modern theory of original intent regarding
his own work. What exactly did he say? He wrote
that the legitimate meaning of the instrument
must be derived from the text itself. And if
the text is ambiguous, he explicitly states where
you must not look. He says the meaning must never
be sought in the opinions or intentions of the
body which planned and proposed the Constitution.
Meaning, do not look at my secret notes from
Philadelphia. And do not look at the private
intentions of the guys who wrote the PR essays.
Exactly. He argued the drafters were just architects
drawing a blueprint. The blueprint has no legal
power. He said you must look for the meaning
in the sense attached to it by the people in
their respective state conventions. That is profound.
He's saying it's not law because he wrote it,
it's law because the people voted for it. The
only intentions that matter legally are the intentions
of the voters who signed the contract. He is
enforcing a strict democratic theory of law.
The author of the ultimate operating manual is
telling the future, this manual is just my personal
philosophical opinion. The true legal power belongs
to the user agreement signed by the public. And
yet modern courts still elevate Publius to the
level of near -sacred text. That is a massive
lingering irony. It really is. Okay, let's pull
all this complex history together. We've gone
on quite the journey today. We started with a
chaotic high school group project in 1787. We
had Hamilton, the frantic project manager, pulling
all -nighters to write 60 % of the defense for
an energetic government. We had Madison, the
systems engineer, designing intricate mechanical
checks and balances, diluting factions through
sheer geographic size because he knew men were
not angels. And John Jay, the sideline diplomat,
delivering that vital warning about the terrifying
geopolitical dangers of a divided house. Together,
as Publius, they wrote a masterpiece. A philosophical
blitzkrieg aimed at a local problem. and even
though they totally failed to change the mathematical
reality in New York. Saved only by Virginia and
massive geopolitical FOMO. Their rushed pseudonymous
columns transcended their immediate failure.
They became the universal principles, the definitive
lens for American law centuries later. It's an
incredible testament to the enduring quality
of their ideas. The process was messy, the goal
was missed, but the architecture was so sound,
we still live inside it. Now, before we wrap
up, we promised a final provocative thought from
the source text. What do you have for us? I want
to look at the very end of the project. Beyond
all the mechanics, the vetoes, the federalism,
the federalist papers begin and end with a dire
warning about human psychology. In the very last
paper, number 85, Hamilton steps back and offers
a lesson of moderation. What's the lesson? He
warns the reader against hazarding the fragile
new nation. to the military despotism of a successful
demagogue. A demagogue. Someone who uses passion
and prejudice to gain power instead of reason.
Exactly. Hamilton is warning about ambitious
leaders who use highly divisive appeals, stoking
anger and fear, aiming ultimately at tyranny.
He understood the greatest threat wasn't a foreign
army. It was the internal vulnerability of the
public to a charismatic manipulator. 230 -something
years later, the incredibly complex framework
they defended still stands. It was explicitly
built as a mechanical bulwark against that very
human flaw, something to seriously mull over
as you watch today's political landscape unfold.
That is a deeply powerful thought to leave on.
The machinery was built to survive our worst
instincts. We just have to keep the machine running.
Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
dive into Publius. We hope you walk away feeling
more informed about the mechanics of the Constitution
and may be appreciative of the chaotic, imperfect
waters of history. Because sometimes, even when
a project looks like a complete failure, you
end up writing the blueprint for the future.
Stay curious, keep exploring, and we'll see you
next time.