The Federalist Papers

On Federalist No. 25: The Same Subject Continued: The Powers Necessary to the Common Defense Further Considered, a Reading Room essay

On Federalist No. 25: The Same Subject Continue...

Michael Fowler

Hamilton continues on defense, arguing that leaving military matters to individual states would be both unequal and unsafe. National problems, he holds, need national answers, and security is among the...

On Federalist No. 25: The Same Subject Continue...

Michael Fowler

Hamilton continues on defense, arguing that leaving military matters to individual states would be both unequal and unsafe. National problems, he holds, need national answers, and security is among the...

On Federalist No. 24: The Powers Necessary to the Common Defense Further Considered, a Reading Room essay

On Federalist No. 24: The Powers Necessary to t...

Michael Fowler

Hamilton defends the power to keep armed forces in peacetime, answering the fear of standing armies with the reality of frontiers and foreign neighbors. The argument trusts an accountable legislature...

On Federalist No. 24: The Powers Necessary to t...

Michael Fowler

Hamilton defends the power to keep armed forces in peacetime, answering the fear of standing armies with the reality of frontiers and foreign neighbors. The argument trusts an accountable legislature...

On Federalist No. 23: The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to the Preservation of the Union, a Reading Room essay

On Federalist No. 23: The Necessity of a Govern...

Michael Fowler

Hamilton opens the case for an energetic government, arguing that the powers needed for common defense cannot be fenced in by good intentions. If the country expects a government to...

On Federalist No. 23: The Necessity of a Govern...

Michael Fowler

Hamilton opens the case for an energetic government, arguing that the powers needed for common defense cannot be fenced in by good intentions. If the country expects a government to...

On Federalist No. 22: The Same Subject Continued: Other Defects of the Present Confederation, a Reading Room essay

On Federalist No. 22: The Same Subject Continue...

Michael Fowler

Hamilton extends the indictment to trade and treaties, showing how the requirement for near-unanimous agreement let a small minority block the whole. The deeper charge is that the Confederation rested...

On Federalist No. 22: The Same Subject Continue...

Michael Fowler

Hamilton extends the indictment to trade and treaties, showing how the requirement for near-unanimous agreement let a small minority block the whole. The deeper charge is that the Confederation rested...

On Federalist No. 21: Other Defects of the Present Confederation, a Reading Room essay

On Federalist No. 21: Other Defects of the Pres...

Michael Fowler

Hamilton returns to the present, cataloguing the defects of the Confederation with new specificity: no power to enforce its own laws, no fair way to share costs, no guard against...

On Federalist No. 21: Other Defects of the Pres...

Michael Fowler

Hamilton returns to the present, cataloguing the defects of the Confederation with new specificity: no power to enforce its own laws, no fair way to share costs, no guard against...

On Federalist No. 20: The Same Subject Continued: The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union, a Reading Room essay

On Federalist No. 20: The Same Subject Continue...

Michael Fowler

Madison and Hamilton close the historical survey with the Dutch republic, another union undone by the gap between what it claimed and what it could enforce. The accumulated examples make...

On Federalist No. 20: The Same Subject Continue...

Michael Fowler

Madison and Hamilton close the historical survey with the Dutch republic, another union undone by the gap between what it claimed and what it could enforce. The accumulated examples make...