The print room

Eleven days after Federalist No. 1 opened the series in New York, Philadelphia read it on the front page. The Pennsylvania Journal of November 7, 1787 sets Hamilton’s introduction in its right-hand column, credited “From the New-York Packet”—the opening question of the whole enterprise, whether good government can be founded on reflection and choice rather than accident and force.

This is issue No. 2215; the very next issue of the same paper, No. 2216 of November 10, carried Federalist No. 2, and both now hang together in this print room.

Ten days after John Jay opened his case for Union in New York, Philadelphia readers met it here. The Pennsylvania Journal reprinted Federalist No. 2 from its first New York appearance while Pennsylvania was fighting over the Constitution in its own ratifying convention—proof, in ink, of how quickly Publius traveled beyond New York.

Jay begins with the question beneath every other question of the debate: whether America should be one nation under one federal government, or several confederacies. Government is indispensable, he argues, and the people must cede some natural rights to give it requisite powers—so the only real choice is what form best protects their safety and interests.

A surviving detail from the issue that printed Federalist No. 8 for the first time anywhere, with No. 7 alongside. Hamilton’s pair imagines disunion honestly: No. 7 counts the quarrels—territory, commerce, the public debt—that would set the states against each other, and No. 8 follows the logic to standing armies and the slow trade of liberty for safety.

Look above the heading: a printers’ note announces that, so the whole subject can be laid before the public as fast as possible, Publius will now appear four times a week—“on Tuesday in the New-York Packet, and Thursday in the Daily Advertiser.” The series had found its audience.

Federalist No. 13 leads page two of Benjamin Russell’s stoutly Federalist Centinel—the essay’s first appearance outside New York. An introductory note signed “Philo-Publius” commends it to the printer: the Constitution’s critics had proposed no substitute beyond carving America into “three great republicks,” and here was the essay that demonstrated the scheme’s ineligibility.

Hamilton’s argument is economy: one Union needs one national civil list, while separate confederacies would each need a government as extensive as the one proposed—plus the customs officers and armies their jealousies would breed.

The last Federalist essay, complete on page two of this issue. Numbers 78 through 85 appeared first in the M‘Lean book edition of May 1788, so the newspapers printed the conclusion months after New York had already ratified—this sheet also reports North Carolina’s initial rejection of the Constitution and a Flushing celebration of the new federal roof.

Hamilton closes the whole enterprise with an argument for adopting the imperfect: amendments will be easier to obtain after ratification than before, and a nation cannot stay suspended between governments while it chases a perfect plan.