John Trumbull, Alexander Hamilton, 1806. via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Penguin Classics
The Federalist Papers
The argument for a constitution, made in public.
$12.00
Available · worldwide delivery
- Author
- Alexander Hamilton; James Madison; John Jay
- Publisher
- Penguin Classics
- Published
- January 1987
- Pages
- 0
- Format
- Paperback
- Size
- Standard
- Language
- English
The Library Essay
A Government Argued Into Existence
Between October 1787 and August 1788, while New York debated ratifying the proposed Constitution, eighty-five essays appeared in the city's newspapers under the name Publius, written at speed by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. They were campaign journalism, meant to win a vote, and they became the most sustained explanation of the constitutional design ever produced, on faction and its cures, on the divided branches, on why a large republic could work when history said it could not.
The essays are still cited by the Supreme Court as evidence of what the framers meant, an afterlife no other newspaper series has approached. The Penguin Classics edition presents them complete, still readable as what they were, urgent public persuasion by men building the thing they were describing.
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