His decision to write the essays may have been made before he left Albany, for according to tradition he wrote the first number of The Federalist in the cabin of his sloop on the return trip to New York. 3 He must, nevertheless, have concluded that if it were to be adopted, convincing proof of its merits would have to be placed before the citizens of New York.
Having gone to Albany early in October to attend the fall session of the Supreme Court, he was not in New York City during the early weeks of the controversy over the Constitution. Both the reasons for his decision and the date on which he conceived the project are conjecturable. The decision to publish a series of essays defending the Constitution and explaining in detail its provisions was made by Alexander Hamilton. 1 The proposed government also had its defenders, but their articles were characterized by somewhat indignant attacks on those who dared oppose the Constitution rather than by reasoned explanations of the advantages of its provisions. During the last week in September and the first weeks of October, 1787, the pages of New York newspapers were filled with articles denouncing the Constitution. The Federalist, addressed to the “People of the State of New-York,” was occasioned by the objections of many New Yorkers to the Constitution which had been proposed on September 17, 1787, by the Philadelphia Convention.
They are available in many editions, and they do not, after all, properly belong in the writings of Alexander Hamilton. The essays written by John Jay and James Madison, however, have not been included. They have, nevertheless, been reprinted in these volumes because no edition of his writings which omitted his most important contribution to political thought could be considered definitive. The Federalist essays have been printed more frequently than any other work of Hamilton.
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