The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton (books to read in your 20s .txt) 📕
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In early 1787, the Congress of the United States called a meeting of delegates from each state to try to fix what was wrong with the Articles of Confederation. The Articles had created an intentionally weak central government, and that weakness had brought the nation to a crisis in only a few years. Over the next several months, the delegates worked to produce the document that would become the U.S. Constitution.
When Congress released the proposed Constitution to the states for ratification in the fall of 1787, reaction was swift: in newspapers throughout each state, columnists were quick to condemn the radical reworking of the nation’s formative document. In New York State, a member of the convention decided to launch into the fray; he and two other men he recruited began writing their own anonymous series defending the proposed Constitution, each one signed “Publius.” They published seventy-seven articles in four different New York papers over the course of several months. When the articles were collected and published as a book early the following year, the authors added another eight articles. Although many at the time guessed the true identities of the authors, it would be a few years before the authors were confirmed to be Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, Hamilton and Madison both being delegates at the convention.
Although the articles’ influence on the Constitution’s ratification is debated—newspapers were largely local at the time, so few outside New York saw the articles—their influence on the interpretation of the Constitution within the judiciary is immense. They are a window not only into the structure and content of the document, but also the reasons for the structure and content, written by men who helped author the document. Consequently, they have been quoted almost 300 times in Supreme Court cases. They remain perhaps the best and clearest explanation of the document that is the cornerstone of the United States government.
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- Author: Alexander Hamilton
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IntroductionAmong the most effective of the instrumentalities which were employed in the overthrow of the royal authority within the Thirteen United Colonies of America was the public press; and in the proceedings which led subsequently to the establishment of “The Constitution for the United States” between the several states which assented thereto, the same powerful agent was again brought into action, both by the supporters and by the opponents of that instrument.
In the latter memorable contest, quite as much as in the former, the public newspaper press, in all parts of the Union, teemed with anonymous political papers of great merit, in the preparation of which some of the finest intellects in America had found employment; and at no other period, not even in the memorable days of “The Whig Club,” had the judgment of the people been instructed with more profound ability, or its action directed with greater wisdom.
Among the manifold productions of the press, on the occasion referred to, none were received with more general respect, and none have been preserved and referred to with more satisfaction, than those over the signature of “Publius,” which found their way into the periodical press of the city of New York in the fall of 1787 and during the following winter and spring.
At that time, and on the question of approving and assenting to the proposed “Constitution for the United States,” the State of New York occupied a peculiar position; and on her decision of the question of its acceptance and ratification, to a greater extent than on that of any other state, depended the future welfare of the United States, and the place, if any, which they should occupy in the great family of nations.
Within the borders of New York, and among her members, had originated the greater number of the measures which had led to the War of the Revolution; and, inspired by her example, and encouraged by her success—not unfrequently, also, directed by her popular leaders—her twelve associates had learned, at an early date, to look to her as to a leader, in the assertion of their own political rights, as well as in the more decided opposition which, from time to time, they had made to the representatives and to the measures of the sovereign.
In the protracted struggle for independence which had ensued, her inhabitants had suffered more from the enemy, and during a longer period, than those of any other state; and her territory—which had been held by the Sovereign of Great Britain from an early day, by right of conquest—was the last which had been abandoned by the royal forces—nor, even then, had it been fully and formally surrendered, in the mode which had been prescribed by the military usage of that day.
Of the thirteen members of the sisterhood of states, after the war had been terminated in an honorable peace, New York alone had discharged all her financial obligations to the United States; and when the failure of her sister states to meet the requisitions of the Federal Congress had produced disaster, and had threatened the worst results, she had not hesitated to make still further payments into the Foederal treasury, in anticipation of future requisitions—her people, meanwhile, sustaining her government in its devotion to the Union, and the inhabitants of her extended territory, from the wrecks of their fortunes and from the current fruits of their labors and of their enterprise, as promptly supplying the means for the consummation of her purposes.
At length, wearied with the continued shortcomings of her sister states, and, probably, aroused by the frequent insults and threats of dismemberment which had been freely indulged in by more than one of her immediate neighbors—all of whom had envied her rising greatness, without at any time aspiring to her fidelity to the Federal compact—on the suggestion of one of the most distinguished and most patriotic, but most maligned, of her citizens, New York had been the first to propose measures for a complete revision of the Federal Constitution.
In this hazardous undertaking, however, while she had steadily sought the extension of sufficient authority to the Federal Congress to render the existing government entirely efficient for the purposes for which it had been organized, New York had never lost sight of her own dignity, nor ceased to guard, in the most careful manner, all her rights as a free, sovereign, and independent commonwealth. Accordingly, while she had steadily sought the delegation, by the several constituent states of the Confederacy, of sufficient authority to the Federal Congress to maintain the credit of the United States, to pay their obligations, and, generally, to execute its duties with more efficiency and despatch, she had as
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