The History Book Club discussion

This conversation will cover The Federalist Papers. Periodic syllabi will be posted as we complete each grouping. Start Date was March 4th, 2018 and will go until we satisfactorily cover all of the papers. There is no race to get through the papers and we can revisit them over time.

The Federalist Papers were written primarily by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. There are 85 entries. The first paper was delivered on October 27, 1787 and the concluding paper was delivered on August 13-16, 1788.

Here are some urls which will lead you to the text of these papers: (Choose the version, format, font you like; Gutenberg is downloadable.)

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fe...

Yale Law School: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_me...

http://www.constitution.org/fed/feder...

Emery Law: http://www.law.emory.edu/index.php?id...

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18

Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers on Taxation:

http://www.ucopenaccess.org/courses/A...

Complete Federalist Papers

http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/wp...


by Alexander Hamilton

Here is a good site with all of the Federalist Papers:

http://www.foundingfathers.info/feder...

and another:

http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/wp...

This is a post that has been moved which deals with the above:

Regarding the Federalists versus the anti-Federalists:

One wanted a strong central government (obviously the Federalists) and the other was worried about exactly that point (the anti Federalists).

Because the Federalists could not carry the day and ratify the constitution without the anti-Federalists, they agreed to draft the Bill of Rights.

The Federalists were more organized than the anti- Federalists; but still needed one more state to get the Constitution ratified.

In exchange the drafting of the Bill of Rights was the bargain made and a very useful one at that.

One could also say that the Anti-Federalists were also more concerned with states rights, were still smarting from the skirmishes with the British and the monarchy (strong entities) and were very much against the Constitution to begin with because of their worries about corrupted and unwielding power resulting in an ultimate erosion of personal liberties for the colonists much like they had suffered at the hands of the British.

The Anti-Federalists "denounced the Constitution as a radically centralizing document that would destroy American liberty and betray the principles of the Revolution." The Federalists argued "that the nation's problems were directly linked to the frail, inadequate Confederation and that nothing short of the Constitution would enable the American people to preserve their liberty and independence, the fruits of the Revolution." The differences were stark.

Source: Answer.com: Ratification of the Constitution
Url: http://www.answers.com/topic/ratifica...

Another Source: Thinkquest
Url: http://library.thinkquest.org/11572/c...

Origin of The Federalist by Gordon Lloyd

"The eighty-five essays appeared in one or more of the following four New York newspapers: 1) The New York Journal, edited by Thomas Greenleaf, 2) Independent Journal, edited by John McLean, 3) New York Advertiser, edited by Samuel and John Loudon, and 4) Daily Advertiser, edited by Francis Childs.

Initially, they were intended to be a twenty essay response to the Antifederalist attacks on the Constitution that were flooding the New York newspapers right after the Constitution had been signed in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787.

The Cato letters started to appear on 27 September, George Mason's objections were in circulation and the Brutus Essays were launched on 18 October.

The number of essays in The Federalist was extended in response to the relentless, and effective, Antifederalist criticism of the proposed Constitution.

McLean bundled the first 36 essays together—they appeared in the newspapers between 27 October 1787 and 8 January 1788—and published them as Volume 1 on March 22, 1788.

Essays 37 through 77 of The Federalist appeared between 11 January and 2 April 1788. On 28 May, McLean took Federalist 37-77 as well as the yet to be published Federalist 78-85 and issued them all as Volume 2 of The Federalist.

Between 14 June and 16 August, these eight remaining essays—Federalist 78-85—appeared in the Independent Journal and New York Packet."

Source:

Dr. Gordon Lloyd earned his bachelor's degree in economics and political science at McGill University. He completed all coursework toward a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago before receiving his master's and Ph.D. degrees in government at Claremont Graduate School. The co-author of three books on the American founding and author of two forthcoming publications on political economy, he also has numerous articles and book reviews to his credit. His areas of research span the California constitution, common law, the New Deal, slavery and the Supreme Court, and the relationship between politics and economics. He has received many teaching, research, and leadership awards including admission to Phi Beta Kappa and an appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar for the Oklahoma Scholarship Leadership Program.

Gordon Lloyd's Website at Pepperdine University.

http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/ac...

His work appears:

http://www.teachingamericanhistory.or...

The Status of The Federalist by Gordon Lloyd

"One of the persistent questions concerning the status of The Federalist is this: is it a propaganda tract written to secure ratification of the Constitution and thus of no enduring relevance or is it the authoritative expositor of the meaning of the Constitution having a privileged position in constitutional interpretation? It is tempting to adopt the former position because 1) the essays originated in the rough and tumble of the ratification struggle. It is also tempting to 2) see The Federalist as incoherent; didn't Hamilton and Madison disagree with each other within five years of co-authoring the essays? Surely the seeds of their disagreement are sown in the very essays! 3) The essays sometimes appeared at a rate of about three per week and, according to Madison, there were occasions when the last part of an essay was being written as the first part was being typed.

1) One should not confuse self-serving propaganda with advocating a political position in a persuasive manner. After all, rhetorical skills are a vital part of the democratic electoral process and something a free people have to handle. These are op-ed pieces of the highest quality addressing the most pressing issues of the day. 2) Moreover, because Hamilton and Madison parted ways doesn't mean that they weren't in fundamental agreement in 1787-1788 about the need for a more energetic form of government. And just because they were written with a certain haste, doesn't mean that they were unreflective and not well written. Federalist 10, the most famous of all the essays, is actually the final draft of an essay that originated in Madison's Vices in 1787, matured at the Constitutional Convention in June 1787, and was refined in a letter to Jefferson in October 1787. All of Jay's essays focus on foreign policy, the heart of the Madisonian essays are Federalist 37-51 on the great difficulty of founding, and Hamilton tends to focus on the institutional features of federalism and the separation of powers.

I suggest, furthermore, that the moment these essays were available in book form, they acquired a status that went beyond the more narrowly conceived objective of trying to influence the ratification of the Constitution. The Federalist now acquired a "timeless" and higher purpose, a sort of icon status equal to the very Constitution that it was defending and interpreting. And we can see this switch in tone in Federalist 37 when Madison invites his readers to contemplate the great difficulty of founding. Federalist 38, echoing Federalist 1, points to the uniqueness of the America Founding: never before had a nation been founded by the reflection and choice of multiple founders who sat down and deliberated over creating the best form of government consistent with the genius of the American people. Thomas Jefferson referred to the Constitution as the work of "demigods," and The Federalist "the best commentary on the principles of government, which ever was written." There is a coherent teaching on the constitutional aspects of a new republicanism and a new federalism in The Federalist that makes the essays attractive to readers of every generation.

Source:

Dr. Gordon Lloyd earned his bachelor's degree in economics and political science at McGill University. He completed all coursework toward a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago before receiving his master's and Ph.D. degrees in government at Claremont Graduate School. The co-author of three books on the American founding and author of two forthcoming publications on political economy, he also has numerous articles and book reviews to his credit. His areas of research span the California constitution, common law, the New Deal, slavery and the Supreme Court, and the relationship between politics and economics. He has received many teaching, research, and leadership awards including admission to Phi Beta Kappa and an appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar for the Oklahoma Scholarship Leadership Program.

Gordon Lloyd's Website at Pepperdine University.

http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/ac...

His work appears:

http://www.teachingamericanhistory.or...

Authorship of The Federalist by Gordon Lloyd

"A second question about The Federalist is how many essays did each person write? James Madison—at the time a resident of New York since he was a Virginia delegate to the Confederation Congress that met in New York—John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton—both of New York—wrote these essays under the pseudonym, "Publius." So one answer to the question is that it doesn't matter since everyone signed off under the same pseudonym, "Publius." But given the icon status of The Federalist, there has been an enduring curiosity about the authorship of the essays. Although it is virtually agreed that Jay wrote only five essays, there have been several disputes over the decades concerning the distribution of the essays between Hamilton and Madison. Suffice it to note, that Madison's last contribution was Federalist 63, leaving Hamilton as the exclusive author of the nineteen Executive and Judiciary essays. Madison left New York in order to comply with the residence law in Virginia concerning eligibility for the Virginia ratifying convention. There is also widespread agreement that Madison wrote the first thirteen essays on the great difficulty of founding. There is still dispute over the authorship of Federalist 50-58, but these have persuasively been resolved in favor of Madison."

Source:

Dr. Gordon Lloyd earned his bachelor's degree in economics and political science at McGill University. He completed all coursework toward a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago before receiving his master's and Ph.D. degrees in government at Claremont Graduate School. The co-author of three books on the American founding and author of two forthcoming publications on political economy, he also has numerous articles and book reviews to his credit. His areas of research span the California constitution, common law, the New Deal, slavery and the Supreme Court, and the relationship between politics and economics. He has received many teaching, research, and leadership awards including admission to Phi Beta Kappa and an appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar for the Oklahoma Scholarship Leadership Program.

Gordon Lloyd's Website at Pepperdine University.

http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/ac...

His work appears:

http://www.teachingamericanhistory.or...

Outline of The Federalist by Gordon Lloyd

"A third question concerns how to "outline" the essays into its component parts. We get some natural help from the authors themselves. Federalist 1 outlines the six topics to be discussed in the essays without providing an exact table of contents. The authors didn't know in October 1787 how many essays would be devoted to each topic. Nevertheless, if one sticks with the "formal division of the subject" outlined in the first essay, it is possible to work out the actual division of essays into the six topic areas or "points" after the fact so to speak.

Martin Diamond was one of the earliest scholars to break The Federalist into its component parts. He identified Union as the subject matter of the first thirty-six Federalist essays and Republicanism as the subject matter of last forty-nine essays. There is certain neatness to this breakdown, and accuracy to the Union essays. The fist three topics outlined in Federalist 1 are 1) the utility of the union, 2) the insufficiency of the present confederation under the Articles of Confederation, and 3) the need for a government at least as energetic as the one proposed. The opening paragraph of Federalist 15 summarizes the previous fourteen essays and says: "in pursuance of the plan which I have laid down for the pursuance of the subject, the point next in order to be examined is the 'insufficiency of the present confederation.'" So we can say with confidence that Federalist 1-14 is devoted to the utility of the union. Similarly, Federalist 23 opens with the following observation: " the necessity of a Constitution, at least equally energetic as the one proposed… is the point at the examination of the examination at which we are arrived." Thus Federalist 15-22 covered the second point dealing with union or federalism. Finally, Federalist 37 makes it clear that coverage of the third point has come to an end and new beginning has arrived. And since McLean bundled the first thirty-six essays into Volume 1, we have confidence in declaring a conclusion to the coverage of the first three points all having to do with union and federalism.

The difficulty with the Diamond project is that it becomes messy with respect to topics 4, 5, and 6 listed in Federalist 1: 4) the Constitution conforms to the true principles of republicanism, 5) the analogy of the Constitution to state governments, and 6) the added benefits from adopting the Constitution. Let's work our way backward. In Federalist 85, we learn that "according to the formal division of the subject of these papers announced in my first number, there would appear still to remain for discussion two points," namely, the fifth and sixth points. That leaves, "republicanism," the fourth point, as the topic for Federalist 37-84, or virtually the entire Part II of The Federalist.

I propose that we substitute the word Constitutionalism for Republicanism as the subject matter for essays 37-51, reserving the appellation Republicanism for essays 52-84. This substitution is similar to the "Merits of the Constitution" designation offered by Charles Kesler in his new introduction to the Rossiter edition; the advantage of this Constitutional approach is that it helps explain why issues other than Republicanism strictly speaking are covered in Federalist 37-46. Kesler carries the Constitutional designation through to the end; I suggest we return to Republicanism with Federalist 52."

Source:

Dr. Gordon Lloyd earned his bachelor's degree in economics and political science at McGill University. He completed all coursework toward a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago before receiving his master's and Ph.D. degrees in government at Claremont Graduate School. The co-author of three books on the American founding and author of two forthcoming publications on political economy, he also has numerous articles and book reviews to his credit. His areas of research span the California constitution, common law, the New Deal, slavery and the Supreme Court, and the relationship between politics and economics. He has received many teaching, research, and leadership awards including admission to Phi Beta Kappa and an appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar for the Oklahoma Scholarship Leadership Program.

Gordon Lloyd's Website at Pepperdine University.

http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/ac...

His work appears:

http://www.teachingamericanhistory.or...

Outline of the Federalist as documented by Gordon Lloyd

I have collapsed all of the segments to the outline without all of the links which I will also provide in the source segment at the bottom of this post.

Professor Lloyd has outlined the Federalist Papers in the following way:

Part I
Federalist 1: "The Challenge and the Outline"

Part II
Federalist 2 - Federalist 14: "The Utility of the Union"

Part III
Federalist 15 - 22: "The Insufficiency" of the Articles of Confederation

Part IV
Federalist 23 - 36: The Minimum "Energetic" Government Requirement

Part V
Federalist 37 - 51: "The Great Difficulty of Founding"

A. Federalist 37 - 40: "The Difficulty with Demarcations and Definitions"

B. Federalist 41 - 46: "The Difficulty of Federalism"

C. Federalist 47- 51: "The Difficulty of Republicanism"

Part VI
Federalist 52 - 84: "The True Principles of Republican Government"

A. Federalist 52 - 61: The House of Representatives

B. Federalist 62 - 66: The Senate

C. Federalist 67 - 77: The Presidency

D. Federalist 78 - 82: The Judiciary

E. Federalist 83 - 84: Five Miscellaneous Republican Issues

Part VII
Federalist 85: Analogy to State Governments and added Security to Republicanism

Source:

Dr. Gordon Lloyd earned his bachelor's degree in economics and political science at McGill University. He completed all coursework toward a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago before receiving his master's and Ph.D. degrees in government at Claremont Graduate School. The co-author of three books on the American founding and author of two forthcoming publications on political economy, he also has numerous articles and book reviews to his credit. His areas of research span the California constitution, common law, the New Deal, slavery and the Supreme Court, and the relationship between politics and economics. He has received many teaching, research, and leadership awards including admission to Phi Beta Kappa and an appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar for the Oklahoma Scholarship Leadership Program.

Gordon Lloyd's Website at Pepperdine University.

http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/ac...

His work appears:

http://www.teachingamericanhistory.or...

Here is the link to the full listing, etc.

http://www.teachingamericanhistory.or...

I included some links to the discussion threads on both the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation but I could try to include some discussion on it as well.

Here is the link to the glossary:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Also, this is the introduction thread you are on which is fine - but remember that this is not the week one thread.

Here is the discussion thread for week one - just in case you had any issues finding it.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

What Alexander Hamilton could teach Trump and May
By Laura Beers
Updated 5:28 PM ET, Tue January 29, 2019



CNN)Last week, I took my 7-year-old to see "Hamilton: An American Musical" in London.

We both know the soundtrack nearly by heart, but watching the play live less than a mile from the Palace of Westminster threw the revolutionary success story into new relief.

Several members of the audience laughingly groaned when King George III lamented that fighting with France and Spain was making him blue.

But the comparison that stood out most pointedly to me was not between the politically isolated King George and the current Prime Minister, but between Theresa May and Alexander Hamilton.

Remainder of article:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/29/opinio...

Source: CNN

I agree with this I really do - what do the others of you think about this? Keep the filibuster and stop the nuclear option - we need to pass bills that reflect the populace of America and not a limited view - bipartisanship is important - and of course reflection and putting the country first over a political party.

Conservatives Need to Love the Filibuster Again
It matters. It really does.
by CHARLES SYKES FEBRUARY 4, 2019 4:01 AM


Huey Long, after his record-breaking filibuster in 1935

Link: https://thebulwark.com/conservatives-...

Source: The Bulwark

It appears that Attorney General William Barr is trying to channel Madison and Hamilton but in a Trumpian way - maybe also not in a terribly amicable way if judged by the founding fathers; but I thought it would be interesting to post the article and Barr's presentation to the Federalist Society so that you can judge for yourself and appropriately comment. It is interesting how polarizing viewpoints can be and how each party can interpret what the founding fathers are saying in order to try and bolster their viewpoint while ignoring other topics about the perils of foreign influence. Interesting to view his presentation because it certainly gives one an insight as to Barr's mindset and viewpoints on the executive branch and power. Viewpoints anyone - remember we respect and are civil no matter what anyone's viewpoint happens to be.

Here is the link to the article:
https://www.city-journal.org/william-...

The Transcript:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/at...

Slate"s Reaction:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2...

C-Span Video:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?466450-...