- We forget how controversial the
- Constitution was in the moment
- of its birth. The document that
- now governs the United States
- was drafted in secrecy by men
- who knew that they had acted
- beyond the mandate given to
- them. Sent as state delegates to
- Philadelphia in the summer of
- 1787 to discuss problems in the
- new union, they had been told to
- make any adjustments within the
- Articles of Confederation as the
- official compact of union. The
- Articles had been drafted in the
- anti-authoritarian moment and
- spirit of 1776. It was a companion
- document to the Declaration of
- Independence, and it left
- autonomy in the hands of the
- individual states.
- Nonetheless, five years would
- pass before the apprehensive
- states approved this loose
- coalition, and they did so in 1781,
- only after many revisions by
- Revolutionary leaders who feared
- centralized authority. The framers
- of the Constitution in Philadelphia
- basically ignored these fears.
- Instead of tinkering with the
- arrangement, they junked the
- Articles of Confederation
- altogether and wrote out their
- own document of fundamental
- principles. When they were done,
- they had substituted a much
- stronger idea of union that the
- suspicious compromisers of the
- original Confederation had
- contemplated or would
- have allowed.
- Nor was that all. When the framers
- in Philadelphia made their
- document public on September 17,
- 1797, after four long months of
- closed deliberation, they tacked on
- a string of non-negotiable
- demands. They insisted that their
- document, the new Constitution,
- be submitted unchanged by
- Confederation authorities to the
- states for ratification, that it be
- approved through state
- conventions for that purpose
- rather than through the existing
- state legislature, that ratifications
- require only a strong majority of
- the states rather than the
- unanimity stipulated under the
- original compact, and that their
- own deliberations remain secret
- and inviolable during debate over
- the document that they had
- written. Finally, the framers
- resisted any reconsideration by a
- comparable deliberative body of
- the kind that they had just
- conducted among themselves.
- When asked toward the end of the
- Convention about the possible
- amendments through another
- general conclave because “it was
- improper to say to the people, take
- this or nothing,” Charles Pinckney
- answered for all of the framers
- when he replied, “Conventions
- are serious things, and
- ought not to be repeated.”
- The early responses to the framers’
- proposals ranged from uncertainty
- to outrage. If the Constitution was
- to be accepted, clearly much would
- have to be explained and quickly.
- The essays that make up The
- Federalist sought to be that
- explanation. The Federalist,
- in this sense, must be read as
- a partisan response to the anxiety
- that most early republicans felt as
- they tried to absorb the altered
- plan of union offered to them.
- The initial articles were treated,
- in fact, as political bluster for
- the popular press. When they
- continued to appear and
- accumulate, they won another
- dubious distinction. The eighty-
- five assembled papers would be
- the most protracted and prolix
- pamphlet series Americans had
- seen in an age of obsessive
- pamphleteering. Beleaguered
- opponents dubbed them the
- most tiresome production they
- had ever encountered.
- Supporters, of course, found
- high qualities; a few even saw
- what the essays would become.
- When Thomas Jefferson,
- ambassador to France, read his
- own copy of The Federalist in late
- 1788, he called it “the best
- commentary on the principles of
- government, which ever was
- written,” a claim that holds up
- well today. There is no other book
- in constitutional thought in any
- language quite like The Federalist
- for its careful and thorough blend
- of range, penetration, principle,
- structure, and practical implication.
Hamilton, Alexander, Jay, John, and Madison, James. The Federalist. Intro. Robert Ferguson. New York: Barnes and Nobles, 2006. xiv-xv.