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This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one, The Federalist

New York, early fall, 1787.

A new Constitution for America had miraculously come forth from the Constitutional Convention

in Philadelphia. After four months of intense

argument and careful compromise during a historic summer.

But it would not become the basis of a new federal government until ratified by nine of the

13 states. Criticism from opponents of the Constitution began pouring into the

public press even before the Constitution was made public.

These opponents would come to be called anti-federalists.

Alexander Hamilton, who had been a delegate from New York to the Constitutional Convention

recruited fellow New Yorker John Jay and fellow convention delegate James Madison

from Virginia to answer the anti-federalist criticism.

Beginning in October and continuing through May of the following year, under the pseudonym Publius, the three of them,

mainly Hamilton and Madison, published 85 essays in New York newspapers

defending and explaining the proposed constitution.

...