The Federalist Papers And Federalism :: essays research papers fc

The Federalist Papers and FederalismThe Federalist Papers were mostly the product of two juvenility menAlexander Hamilton of New York, term 32, and James Madison of Virginia, age 36.Both men sometimes wrote four papers in a single week. An older scholar, JohnJay, later named as first fountainhead justice of the Supreme Court, wrote five of thepapers. Hamilton, who had been an aide to Washington during the Revolution,asked Madison and Jay to succor him in this project. Their purpose was topersuade the New York convention to ratify the just-drafted Constitution. Theywould individually write a series of letters to New York raw(a)spapers, under thepseudonym, "Publius." In the letters they would explain and defend theConstitution.Hamilton started the idea and outlined the sequence of topics to bediscussed, and addressed most of them in fifty- whiz of the letters. MadisonsTwenty-nine letters pee-pee proved to be the most memorable in their balance andideas of governmental p ower. It is not clear whether The Federalist Papers,written between October 1787 and May 1788 had any government issue on New Yorks andVirginias verification of the Constitution.Encyclopedia Britannica defines Federalism as, "A mode of governmentalorganization that unites independent states within a larger political good examplewhile still allowing each state to maintain its own political integrity" (712).Having just won a revolution against an oppressive monarchy, the Americancolonists were in willing to replace it with an new(prenominal) monarchy style ofgovernment. On the other hand, their experience with the disorganization underthe Articles of Confederation, due to unfair competition between the individualstates, made them a little more receptive to an step-up in national powers. Anumber of Federalist Papers argued that a new kind of balance, never achievedelsewhere was possible. The Papers were themselves a balance or compromisebetween the nationalist ideas of Ham ilton, who wrote more for the commercialinterests of New York, and the qualm of Madison, who shared the skepticismof distant authority widely held by Virginia farmers.In American Government and Politics Today, Madison proposed that,instead of the absolute sovereignty of each state under the Articles ofConfederation. The states would retain a residual sovereignty in all areaswhich did not require national concern. The very make for of ratification of theConstitution, he argued, symbolized the concept of federalism (77). He saidThis assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not asindividuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct andindividual States to which they individually belong... The act, therefore,establishing the Constitution, will not be a national but a federal act (qtd in