Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers Several documents have helped carve the United States government from the beginning into what we know it as today…the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence…to name a few. One of the most important of those documents was The Federalist Papers. It is a series of 85 articles/essays that were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, between 1787 and 1788.

This paper will focus on the purpose of the Federalist Papers, who the intended audience was, and why another document – the Articles of Confederation – written after the American Revolution, failed in the wake of the Constitution being drafted and ratified. (Peacock, n. d. ) The Federalist Papers, better known as The Federalist, or The New Constitution, was a planned attack devised by Alexander Hamilton, a lawyer from New York. Federalist Papers, 2012) I say attack, but it was more of a “strong support” of the newly proposed Constitution. He, along with Madison and Jay, wrote the papers under the pseudonym of Publius (the Roman citizen was that credited with saving the Roman republicanism). This was common practice when someone was writing something for public eyes, yet he or she didn’t want anyone to know who was writing the material. The Federalist Papers, 2002) The purpose was to try to and assist American republicanism by demonstrating the necessity of the Constitution. The essays had another other significant purpose: it immediately showed New Yorkers why it was a good idea to ratify the Constitution and in turn word quickly spread to the other States in the Union. They actually took the lead in ratifying the document, with New York coming in after the necessary nine states that were needed had already ratified.

The Federalist Papers have helped our society to clearly understand what the writers of the Constitution were thinking when they wrote that document nearly 200 years ago. That document’s main audience at that time: the people within the Union, in particular, the “doubters” and critics of the drafted Constitution. Although a number of important states had already ratified the Constitution before the essays were published, it most assuredly helped in getting the nine out of the thirteen states within the Union needed in order to get it passed.

It clarified for many what the Constitution was telling them and why it was so important to have. Today, federal judges frequently use the Federalist Papers to interpret the Constitution as a means to get a broader picture of the intentions of the framers and ratifiers (The Federalist Papers, 2002) I don’t think the authors, Hamilton, Madison and Jay, knew that the papers they drafted and published between 1787 and 1788 would still be influential in today’s government choices and proceedings.

The Articles of Confederation, formally the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was an agreement among the 13 founding states that established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution. (Why did the Articles of Confederation fail? , 2012) With time, several things were pointed out as wrong or needing revising with the Articles.

Among the reasons the Articles failed, giving way to the new Constitution, were: every state was independent (free to make their own choices, which did not sit well with the countries leaders) which reflected the seemingly written purpose that this was done so that the national government was kept as weak as possible; each state only had one vote in Congress, regardless of their size; Congress did not have the power to tax nor did they have the power to control trade (which was something that was needed to keep the finances of America over water); there was no national court system (criminals were free to run wild; no steady judgments were made by any laws); and the states refused to finance the national government. These were just a few of the noticeably problems. In 1786, a rebellion is western Massachusetts protested the rising debt and economy chaos…but the national government was unable to assemble to a military force to help out it down, something else seen as needing to be fixed as soon as possible.

For these reasons, the Articles of Confederation failed. (Kelly, 2012) The Federalist Papers are a significant piece to our nation’s history. People were set with the Articles of Confederation as being the only constitution they needed, but as the years went by, more things made it clear that a revision, or a whole new document for that matters, was needed to address the current states of the Union. It took some persuading to get the Constitution ratified, and the 85 essays written by Hamilton, Madison and Jay helped persuade the American people to define the United States as we know it today. References Federalist Papers. (2012). Retrieved from http://en. wikipedia. rg/wiki/Federalist_Papers. The Federalist Papers. (2002). Retrieved from http://www. crf-usa. org/foundations-of-our-constitution/the-federalist-papers. html. Kelly, M. (2012). Why Did the Articles of Confederation Fall? Retrieved from http://americanhistory. about. com/od/governmentandpolitics/f/articles_of_confederation_fails. htm. Peacock, Anthony A. (n. d. ). First Principles Series. The Federalist Papers. Retrieved from http://www. heritage. org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/the-federalist-papers. Why did the Articles of Confederation fail? (2012). Retrieved from http://essayinfo. com/sample/essay/465. Essay Info – Essay Writing Center.