ABSTRACT
Alexander Hamilton was the first secretary of the United States Treasury, John Jay was the first chief justice of the US Supreme Court, and James Madison later became fourth president of the United States. Hamilton and Madison were delegates at the Constitutional Convention, which drafted the new Constitution in 1787. These three important figures wrote The Federalist Papers under the pseudonym Publius, a reference to an ancient Roman politician who overthrew the monarchy in favor of a Roman republic. The Federalist Papers are a collection of 85 essays, published in eighteenth-century New York, that together argue for a strong and active central government. The Federalist Papers argue in favor of ratification and against the status quo under the Articles of Confederation. From the perspective of the authors of The Federalist Papers, however, the Articles of Confederation had failed to achieve political and economic security and would likely fail to hold the union together.
