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I always assumed Federalist Papers were primarily written as a way to argue for US Constitution not solely as a response to objections against it.
by soheil 6y ago
I always assumed Federalist Papers were primarily written as a way to argue for US Constitution not solely as a response to objections against it.
- SllX 6y agoYou don’t have to argue for something if no one is objecting. There was fear that the Constitutional Convention, originally called to amend the Articles of Confederation, maybe, and deal with some of the practical problems facing the Union, had gone too far in proposing an entirely new Constitution.
- int_19h 6y agoMost of the papers themselves are structured as a series of "hypothetical" objections, each followed by a retort. The reason why I put that in quotes is that many of them weren't hypothetical to the intended audience. Sometimes it gets really funny, like in #54 (about the 3/5 Compromise), where the author clearly doesn't like the idea on its own all that much, and would prefer to not be seen as an ardent supporter of it - and thus, the retort itself is also written from a third person perspective: "... might one of our Southern brethren observe ... " etc.