Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers are among the most important documents of U.S. constitutional history. In them, three men who had played major roles in the development of the Constitution—James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay—explained the thinking that had led to the different aspects of the founding charter and sought to persuade the American people to adopt it as the cornerstone of a new nation.

A copy of the first Federalist paper published. (Source: Senate Historical Office.)

The Federalist Papers were originally published as a series of eighty-five newspaper articles that appeared under the pseudonym “Publius.” We now know that Hamilton wrote about fifty of them, Madison twenty-five, Jay five, and Hamilton and Madison jointly three. They were reprinted and disseminated widely through the states as the debate raged over ratification of the product of the Constitutional Convention.

The presidency as it was established in Article II of the Constitution posed a major political problem to Federalists seeking its adoption. Not only was the presidency the most obvious innovation in the new plan of government, but it raised fears of the worst thing many citizens could imagine—a return to an all-powerful monarchy like the British one they had overthrown only a few years before. Moreover, Anti-Federalists opposed to adoption of the Constitution did their best to encourage fears that the new chief executive would soon become a king.

Proponents of the Constitution at the state ratifying conventions emphasized both the virtues of the presidency and the restraints that the Constitution placed on the office. In doing so, they frequently relied on the arguments put forward in The Federalist Papers. The presidency is covered in Nos. 69–77, which were written by Hamilton.

In his articles Hamilton squarely addressed the charge that the presidency could become a monarchy. He tried to show how far a president would be from a king by contrasting the office with the British monarchy. Unlike the British king, who serves for life, the president serves for a limited term. The president can be impeached by the legislative branch, but the king cannot. Moreover, Hamilton pointed out, the king has an absolute power to veto legislation approved by Parliament, while the president's veto can be overridden by a two-thirds majority of Congress.

In developing those and other contrasts Hamilton was not always entirely accurate, because his picture of the British monarchy was in some ways already out of date. Nevertheless, his arguments proved effective in countering the Anti-Federalists' threatening picture of the presidency.

Hamilton also praised the virtues of the presidency. He argued that the office would have “energy,” a crucial element of good government. Energy, he said, “is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.”

Hamilton believed that the presidency could provide energy because it is held by only one person at a time and therefore can have “decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch … vigor and expedition.” A committee or multimember executive, by contrast, could be split by disagreements that would make it slow to act and would be liable to create factional strife. The nation also would find it hard to hold a multimember executive responsible for failure, Hamilton argued, because each member of the executive could blame the others.

Hamilton also defended the presidency as having other qualities that are indispensable to energy. The presidential four-year term, for example, gives the president enough time to act with firmness and courage but is not so long as “to justify any alarm for the public liberty,” Hamilton wrote.

Another important aspect of the presidency, Hamilton contended, was the incumbent's eligibility for reelection. He argued that eligibility for more than one term acknowledges that “the desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct.” Without the prospect of another term, Hamilton said, presidents might either neglect their duties or be tempted to seize power violently.

“Adequate provision for its support,” Hamilton noted, is yet another quality of the presidency that ensures its energy in governing. The Federalist author argued that the constitutional prohibition against Congress's raising or lowering an incumbent president's salary was a vital protection, because without it Congress could “reduce him by famine, or tempt him by largesse,” and thus “render him as obsequious to their will as they might think proper to make him.”