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Full Text of the Federalist Papers
- saqadri 3y agoIt's mind-blowing to me that Alexander Hamilton wrote the vast majority of these. Unreal impact
- arkis22 3y agoRon Chernow's biography on him is really excellent. It's so good that I think it's actually a disservice to mention that it inspired the Broadway play. If you can respect Scalia's legal talent, this video where he mentions the federalist papers is interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0
- jprd 3y agoAbsolutely not a disservice. Chernow has to play 2nd fiddle, though that audience is leagues larger due to the influence of the generational gem that is the musical. Everyone wins here, especially those who will _never_ read the Chernow bio, let alone finish it. Chernow is his own generational talent, though in a niche most would never look askance at. Lin-Manuel Miranda's nerdy-ass beach book inspiration has now opened a gateway for many more to discover Chernow and hopefully, rediscover the genius of the Federalist Papers and the U.S. Constitution. They wrote in the remedy to their original sin, acknowledged they were imperfect, and fought SAVAGELY to protect us from ourselves. We've haven't yet lived up to the ideal, but we (U.S.) have also not yet let that idea die.
- billfruit 3y agoIsn't Chernow a bit too referential towards his subject? Gore Vidal for example has much more cynical view of George Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and Aaron Burr. I recommend Gore Vidal's "Burr", an account a lot of the early days of the US with Burr as the focal point. "Burr (1973) portrays the eponymous anti-hero as a fascinating and honorable gentleman, and portrays his contemporary opponents as mortal men; thus, George Washington is an incompetent military officer, a general who lost most of his battles; Thomas Jefferson is a fey, especially dark and pedantic hypocrite who schemed and bribed witnesses in support of a false charge of treason against Burr, to whom he almost lost the presidency in the 1800 United States presidential election; and Alexander Hamilton is an over-ambitious opportunist whose rise in high politics was by General Washington's hand." -- from Wikipedia
- calgarymicro 3y agoI wouldn't recommend relying too heavily on an explicitly fictionalized novel for an accurate historical narrative, even if Vidal did attempt to ground it in fact (with some notable exceptions, such as the instigating factor behind the infamous duel).
- Georgelemental 3y agoThat Scalia video is a classic, highly recommended
- WalterBright 3y agoI read Chernow's biography of Rockefeller, "Titan". It's an excellent biography. But it has one amusing flaw. In a chapter he'll present facts about Rockefeller, and then have a summation. The summation is the popular view of Rockefeller, while the facts in the rest of the chapter tend to contradict it.
- arkis22 3y agoIf the summation of the popular view is at odds with the facts of the man, is that a flaw, or perhaps the natural contradiction of Rockefeller as a human being? The title is "Titan", but he dies just like all of us. I can't help but think of the ending of Barry Lyndon or The Seventh Seal
- WalterBright 3y agoSince Chernow never explained this, I suspect he just couldn't break free of the conventional view. For example, in the chapter on the anti-trust trial, Chernow concluded that Rockefeller had an unstoppable monopoly that needed the government to reign it in (the conventional view). Yet in the text he wrote that throughout the trial, Standard Oil's market share steadily declined and Rockefeller was unable to stem the retreat. There was no explanation of the discrepancy. A different take on this is "Nothing Like It In The World" by Ambrose. It's about the building of the first continental railroad. Ambrose writes in it that he fully embraced the conventional view of it, but his research for the book turned everything on its head, and he came out of the experience with a very different view. I do have copy of Chernow's tome on Hamilton, but haven't got around to reading it yet.
- macintux 3y ago> Yet in the text he wrote that throughout the trial, Standard Oil's market share steadily declined and Rockefeller was unable to stem the retreat. The general consensus seems to be that the antitrust trial against Microsoft had a significant impact on the company's behavior long before it concluded, forcing it to stop acting like a bull in a china shop. I don't see the two views on Standard Oil as necessarily being contradictory, but I'll freely admit I'm completely ignorant of the situation.
- banana_feather 3y ago[flagged]
- psunavy03 3y ago"The mirage" of a Supreme Court justice's legal talent? Come on. That's childish, whichever side of the aisle you're on. Might as well also talk about "the mirage" of Elena Kagan's legal talent. Unless what matters isn't their legal talent, but whether they agree with your priors?
- banana_feather 3y ago[flagged]
- jesusofnazarath 3y ago[dead]
- hackernewds 3y agoScalia is fantastically eloquent and objective in this disposition. He's my inspiration for adopting the principle of textualism.
- watwut 3y agoAnd motivated reasoning
- thomasfromcdnjs 3y agoI read the essays, intriguing history, rather difficult to digest, but changed my world view for the better. It is mandatory reading — if you can't be bothered, just read the top five or ten.
- CalChris 3y agoThe original publications were signed Publius and the authorship of each is only statistically inferred. So maybe the LOC should only say that Alexander Hamilton probably wrote Federalist 1.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoThe linked page says that the print edition of 1818 was the first to identify the authors by name, and it was "with revisions and corrections by Madison". Presumably he could tell them who wrote which essay.
- CalChris 3y agoYes and evidently Hamilton would have disagreed except that he was dead.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoWhy "evidently"?
- lolinder 3y ago> The electronic text of The Federalist used here was compiled for Project Gutenberg by scholars who drew on many available versions of the papers. Project Gutenberg is right up there with the Internet Arrive in the pantheon of critical projects for preserving the commons.
- bombcar 3y agoAnd it is significantly smaller if you want to mirror; the text only files is pretty reasonable to download and hoard.
- tastyfreeze 3y agoOne thing I got from reading the Federalist Papers is an understanding the the government we have is what the founders warned about and did their best to prevent/delay. Understanding the reasoning behind the words that are in the Constitution should be required. The Federalist papers show how much thought went into writing the Constitution. Read the Anti-Federalist Papers too. Both sides were part of the public debate. The Federalists "won" but the criticisms from the Anti-Federalists are relevant.
- wslack 3y ago> the government we have is what the founders warned about and did their best to prevent/delay. Can you say more about that? They warned against faction but political parties developed pretty quickly and had the harmful effects Hamilton warned against.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoThe GP may be referring to the federal government being stronger than the states, and therefore most of the power being in Washington DC rather than in the several state capitals. They also intended more power to reside in Congress and less rule by executive order.
- tastyfreeze 3y agoBingo. Congress has dangerously abdicated much of its authority to the Executive. And the federal government as a whole has more power than it was ever granted. The concentration of power has happened slowly over time but nonetheless it has happened. Now we have a federal government that has legal authority to demand compliance on a range of issues that it doesn't have Constitutional authority to demand.
- 23B1 3y agoThey warned of tyranny of the majority, instability and violence from a too-powerful government (thus checks and balances), foreign influence in domestic affairs due to a weak government, and as you mentioned partisanship.
- helmsb 3y agoFun fact: According to famed programmer Brian Kernigan: one day a colleague at Bell Labs was doing textual analysis on *The Federalist Papers* but it was proving challenging due to the full-text of the document being around 1mb—far more memory than most machines at the time. Kernigan mentioned the dilemma To Ken Thompson—of Unix fame. The next day he came to work with a new program that could quickly find strings in a text document without having to load the entire document into memory. It became known as grep.
- vmilner 3y agoPossibly because I’m not from the US, but the first thing I think of when hearing of the Federalist Papers is Mosteller’s work on deciding the disputed authorship using Bayesian techniques rather than the constitutional significance.
- School-Cotton 3y ago> Possibly because I’m not from the US Indeed, the “federalist papers” are well-known to Americans as the documents being discussed in this article. Most Americans will have studied them in history class in school, or at least heard of them.
- oceanplexian 3y agoMost American schools do not teach the federalist papers, or civics at all. I went to high school in New England, where we at least covered the basics like the Boston Tea Party, Revolutionary War, Constitution Convention, etc. However I only read the Federalist Papers after buying a copy as an adult.
- paulddraper 3y agoEven if their contents are not studied, they are well known. Even more so after the Hamilton musical.
- ajkjk 3y ago
- mjklin 3y agoNotable that both Hamilton and Madison both later went against some principles espoused in the Fed Papers, Hamilton in his support for a national bank that overreached the constitution and Madison in his support for the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, which proposed states’ nullification of federal laws.
- calgarymicro 3y agoFor Madison it was entirely a matter of political experience, so he later tried to row back on this quite a bit during the nullification crisis; specifically, he stated[0] that what VA had done was 'interpose' itself between the Federal Government and its citizens in concert with other states, and that it wasn't actually nullification at all. Whether this was what he actually thought, or instead just an attempt to justify his earlier support for the VA and KY resolutions, is for the historians to decide, I guess. [0]https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/99-02-02-3190 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/99-02-02-319...
- riow 3y agoAnyone looking for a quick guid to the Constitution? Highly recommend this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dnZYnyYlrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dnZYnyYlrw
- neom 3y agoAmusing that title came from a government agency.
- throwawaycities 3y agoA year or so ago I published the Federalist Papers on IPFS and connected the hash to an ENS accessible on native web3 browsers at https://federalistpapers.eth https://federalistpapers.eth or legacy browser gateway https://federalistpapers.eth.limo https://federalistpapers.eth.limo
- nabogh 3y agoSee also https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/alexander-hamilton_john-jay_james-madison/the-federalist-papers https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/alexander-hamilton_john-ja... for a high quality ebook version
- beefman 3y ago"Putting the Federalist Papers on the Internet will eventually provide free access to all, but to have this great collection of arguments be slightly more accessible in the 21st century than it is today in public libraries will make no change in how many decide to read its difficult but worthwhile prose." –Alan Kay
- Animats 3y agoThe Federalist Papers may be the most successful trolling operation of all time. They were published anonymously, intended to provoke, and changed the world.
- harimau777 3y agoI find myself questioning the value of studying documents like the Federalist Papers. I'd certainly learn a lot, but I don't have any power to use what I learn to change how society operates; so what good is it? Knowledge that can't be utilized doesn't seem meaningfully different from a lack of knowledge.
- nvy 3y agoTo varying degrees, one could say the same of studying philosophy, ethics, music, history, economics, etc. Knowledge doesn't have to be directly applicable to have value.
- nabogh 3y agoIf you universalize that then if nobody reads the papers or educates themselves on these topics then society will be worse off. You may not have sweeping powers but you do form part of a society that can enact change
- refurb 3y agoEver heard of applying ideas from from one realm to another?
- dmvdoug 3y agoFun experiment to run: go through the Federalist Papers and find places where they make psychological observations/predictions about how people in government/politics do, should, or will act. Note that these observations/predictions typically underlie, or provide justification for the structure of the Constitution they are advocating for. Also note that these observations/predictions are completely wrong in the modern world.
- zaphar 3y agoAre they? Based on my observations of the modern world they seem to have been remakably accurate actually. Scarily accurate in fact. What observations/predictions did you note that are completely wrong?
- dmvdoug 3y agoTry looking at what they say about how the Senate will work. Or about how a president would respond to impeachment, and how impeachment would work as a check.
- portmanteur 3y agoWeren't they describing a Senate that was appointed by state legislators? They weren't describing what a government with Direct Election of Senators would look like. Or, if that's not what you're talking about, why not just quote a relevant portion of the FP instead of being so deliberately cryptic?
- jxramos 3y agoI’d love for them to publish a ePub of this material.
- nabogh 3y agoI mentioned this in another comment but Standard Ebooks has a great copy https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/alexander-hamilton_john-jay_james-madison/the-federalist-papers https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/alexander-hamilton_john-ja...
- mem0r1 3y agoI'm not from the US and I am not a native English speaker. The federalist papers are, in my opinion, a true work of art. I find the linguistic elegance and finesse of these texts highly admirable. Unfortunately, to my dismay, the usage of such "complex" language is discouraged nowadays. Or to express it in the appropriate linguistic style: Our modern era seems to espouse a predilection for accessibility and brevity, often at the expense of the stylistic grandeur and intellectual richness that was once the hallmark of our written and spoken discourse.
- andrewmg 3y agoFor those interested in such things, ConSource has a wonderful collection[0] of historical materials relating to the U.S. Constitution, including contemporaneous state constitutions, notes from states' ratification debates, and records from the Constitutional Convention. [0] https://www.consource.org/library/ https://www.consource.org/library/ On the Federalist Papers, my current obsession is Federalist 36, on the taxing power: "Let it be recollected that the proportion of these [direct] taxes is not to be left to the discretion of the national legislature, but is to be determined by the numbers of each State..., a circumstance which effectually shuts the door to partiality or oppression."