The Founders and their adversaries.
The Federalist Papers are written by three men playing one role. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay are the authors; Publius is the voice; the People of New York are the audience. The cast also includes the opponents: George Clinton writing as Cato, and the Anti-Federalist tradition arguing for a weaker federal government and a bill of rights. Six figures, two positions, one argument that has shaped every subsequent debate about American constitutional government.
New York lawyer, former aide-de-camp to Washington, delegate to the Philadelphia Convention. Wrote the largest share of The Federalist — fifty-one papers, by the standard attribution — focused on the executive, the judiciary, taxation, and military and commercial powers. Killed in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804. First Secretary of the Treasury.
Virginia delegate to the Philadelphia Convention, keeper of its most detailed notes. Wrote twenty-nine papers including Federalist 10, 39, 47–51, and 62–63. Later co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party with Jefferson and served as the fourth President of the United States. The last surviving Framer; died 1836.
New York lawyer, former president of the Continental Congress, Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the Articles of Confederation. Wrote five papers on foreign affairs and the union (Nos. 2–5 and 64), limited by illness to that contribution. Became the first Chief Justice of the United States in 1789.
The political reason The Federalist had to be written. Governor of New York, writing as Cato in the same newspapers, marshalling the Anti-Federalist case: too much power at the federal level, a monarchical presidency, the absence of a bill of rights. The Federalist is an argument against Clinton as much as it is an argument for the Constitution.
Publius Valerius Publicola, the Roman credited with refounding the Republic after the kings. The three authors wrote as one voice, and the pseudonym gave the essays their characteristic public quality — addressed not from one citizen to another but from a republican guardian to the people of New York.
The actual addressee of every essay. The sixty-five-member New York ratifying convention met at Poughkeepsie in June 1788; these essays were aimed at influencing both the delegates and the public that constrained them. New York ratified 30–27 on 26 July 1788, after ten states had already made the new union a fact.