The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers—85 essays published in the winter of 1787-8 in the New York press—are some of the most crucial and defining documents in American political history, laying out the principles that still guide our democracy today. The three authors—Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay—were respectively the first Secretary of the Treasury, the fourth President, and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in American history. Each had played a crucial role in the events of...