The words and the politics of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay came alive again when Bernard Bailyn, Adams House Professor Emeritus of History at Harvard University, delivered a lecture on the Federalist papers to an overflow crowd in the Great Hall of the Northwest Pavilion of the Library's Jefferson Building.
Dr. Bailyn, who has taught at Harvard since 1949, is an acknowledged authority on early American history. The winner of two Pulitzers for history (The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution in 1968 and Voyagers to the West in 1987), as well as the National Book Award, he has authored or co-authored more than 25 books and numerous essays and articles.
Dr. Bailyn began his March 21 lecture by observing that many generations have believed that the 85 essays written between October 1787 and 1788, which make up the Federalist, are the finest expositions ever on the virtues of a federal system of government. He added - in what was to be a major focus of the discussion - "The Federalist papers are not a theoretical, but a practical, commentary on political power." Thomas Jefferson proclaimed the Federalist papers the best commentary on the history of government, superior to the writings of Aristotle, Machiavelli and Edmund Burke, among other political philosophers. (The Library holds Jefferson's annotated copy of the collected essays.)
This lecture, sponsored by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Library's Rare Book and Special Collections Division, was the second in the Library's series on great books that influence Western thought.
According to Dr. Bailyn, the Federalist papers were the result of a collaborative effort initiated by Hamilton, who was later joined by Madison and Jay. Because each man worked on his own treatise independently, there was no overall design for the papers or even an allocation of topics, so some repetition was inevitable. The authors' original purpose was to print the essays in a New York newspaper in an attempt to persuade the state of New York to approve the federal Constitution. Of the 85 papers that numbered 592 pages when published in two volumes, Hamilton wrote 51; Madison, 29; and Jay, 5.
These three writers were neither political theorists nor philosophers, said Dr. Bailyn. "They were busy politicians" eager to push their political agenda. Ever on the go, Hamilton wrote some essays while traveling on a Hudson River sloop to Albany. Because each piece appeared in a New York newspaper almost as soon as it was written, Hamilton and Madison had to come up with an essay every three or four days, which meant each man was responsible for about 1,000 words per day. Under these tight deadlines, it is no wonder that some of the material came from other writings. Madison copied one essay directly from an earlier letter to Jefferson and from some notes he had made. Some essays printed as separate pieces were really parts of one long discourse. If read as a complete unit, for example, the 21 consecutive papers of Madison - 150 pages - are sequential pieces in a single work.
Despite such an unorthodox inception, generations of lawyers and scholars have approached the papers with near religious veneration. Although its authors lived in a much simpler, preindustrial world, the Federalist is a unique 18th century document that has remained instructive and prescriptive for the 21st century. In 59 cases, the Supreme Court has cited the Federalist in its decisions.
Dr. Bailyn explained that when public debate on ratification of the Constitution began, after its adoption by the Philadelphia convention on Sept. 17, 1787, the Federalist was only one of a multitude of political tracts and pamphlets on the scene. Many were polemical diatribes written in the heat of the moment. When the Federalist articles appeared over the pseudonym "Publius," they were challenged by other pieces written by anti-Federalists, including those by a powerful and intelligent essayist using the pseudonym "Brutus."
The central issue and, indeed, the overriding theme of the debate on the Constitution, according to Dr. Bailyn, was fear - fear of a tyrannical power. It was the 1780s, soon after the American Revolution, and some citizens felt that any unconstrained central power would impair their new freedoms. Many American revolutionaries believed the Constitution, if ratified, would reverse the dynamics of the revolution. They thought a Constitution would result in the creation of a national government that would raise a standing army that might one day be used against them. In North Carolina, people even said that there was nothing in the Constitution to prevent a Roman Catholic pope from becoming president. Federalists responded that it was foolish to suppose an American citizen would go to Rome, be elected pope by the College of Cardinals and then decide to give up the job to become president.
However, Dr. Bailyn commented, some critics showed "an eerie prescience." "Brutus" predicted that the federal power to tax would permeate every phase of life - even to a tax on food on the table. Predicting the creation of a crushing national debt, "Brutus" lashed out against the federal government's borrowing authority. He opposed the Constitution's treaty-making power because it permitted a president to enter into secret treaties.
The anti-Federalists also feared that a six-year term of office for a senator would encourage a federal aristocracy. In addition, since the Constitution created a federal district whose residents would not have a vote but would be directly governed by Congress, such a district would become a "sanctuary of the blackest crimes," the headquarters of the national army and the home of federal workers who would use their power to trample on the rights of free men.
With such opposition, the great achievement of the Federalist, said Dr. Bailyn, was that its authors did not merely reply to the fears of their critics, but that they did so without repudiating their past and the American Revolution. The Federalists both embraced their revolutionary heritage and modernized it.
They wrote that the creation of a central government did not betray the revolution; rather it was the best means of assuring the nation's survival and protecting the people's liberty. Their arguments overcame the fear of a strong central power. They said the federal government originated as a creature of the states, and the states still retained many powers, including the power to elect their representatives. Responding to worries over a military threat, the Federalists argued that an official state militia could overwhelm a standing army.
Hamilton also made the point that all military appropriations must be voted on by Congress, and the individual lawmakers would remain loyal to their state constituents.
The Federalists explained that under the Constitution neither the federal government nor the states would be sovereign, and such a balance of tensions offered the best protection from tyrannical rule and for individual freedom.
Dr. Bailyn said that Hamilton, Madison and Jay were successful in explicating the Constitution to a dubious nation because "they went beyond their basic range of thought to reach a level deeper and more original that what had come before. Although their purpose was not to create a formal treatise, in order to present their case, they devised new formulations and fresh visions regarding the use of political power."
Their goal was to convince the populace that the Constitution was the best means of preserving private rights. And they proved that two levels of power - state and national - could co-exist.
"The Constitution, for all its imperfections, is a sensitive instrument," possessing detail, clarity and a shrewd awareness of the dangers of power, concluded Dr. Bailyn. The Federalist remains relevant today because its authors "sought to preserve national rights within a stable society." These men were "conservators of radical principles, and we share their cautious optimism."
