The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton - John Jay - James Madison - Unabridged (ePub)

Following the end of the American Revolutionary War (but prior to the establishment of the US Constitution) three of the Founding Fathers - Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison - prepared 85 articles in support of ratifying the Constitution and published them under the collective pseudonym "Publius" to try and rouse the public's support for ratification.

The first seventy-seven of these essays were published between October 1787 and April 1788 in three separate papers: the Independent Journal, the New York Packet, and The Daily Advertiser. These were published collectively as "The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution, as Agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787" in two volumes by J. & A. McLean in March and May 1788. The final eight of these essays appeared between June and August of 1788.

In these articles, Hamilton, Jay and Madison make the case for the Constitution they supported, though not everything they advocated actually came to be. (Hamilton, for example, argued against including a "Bill of Rights," claiming that it would be redundant and that these rights were already enumerated in the Constitution itself.) But most of what they endorse in these essays, including the establishment of a republic, judicial review, the system of checks and balances, and a one-man executive were all a part of the final Constitution which became the law of the land on June 21, 1788 when New Hampshire becames the ninth and last necessary state to ratify the Constitution.