Earlier this year, the United States of America celebrated its 250th anniversary. It is an important achievement; by some measures, the United States Constitution is the oldest constitution currently in operation, and it is undeniable that the American Revolution was a critical event in the creation of the modern world. At this time, it is worthwhile to reflect on the nation’s founding documents, of which The Federalist Papers is perhaps the least understood. Written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers contain neither the poetics of Thomas Jefferson nor the wit of Benjamin Franklin. Instead, they are a series of dry, didactic, and legalistic arguments. Written as newspaper editorials targeted at state legislators to convince them to ratify the new Constitution, The Federalist Papers articulate the underlying philosophy of the American system of government. Today, they are often misinterpreted, and much of this misinterpretation is related to a mythologized version of the American Revolution and the government that it produced.

Most Americans believe that the American Revolution was fundamentally a struggle between republicanism and monarchism. The Founders—though imperfect people—are thought to be principled republicans. Fortified by their convictions, they stood against the British monarchy and for the idea that governments should rest on the consent of the governed. A more discerning analysis of the revolution reveals that this clear division between republicanism and monarchism is far more complicated and nuanced. Understanding that complication provides a more accurate reading of The Federalist Papers and a more honest assessment of the American Constitution’s framework and its limits for achieving genuine democracy.

Varieties of Republicanism and Monarchism

Leading up to the American Revolution, Great Britain was a monarchy, but an extremely liberal one. The process of constitutionalizing the monarchy, which began in 1215 with the Magna Carta, had transformed the British monarchical system into one that was extremely close to republicanism. Since the Glorious Revolution, Parliament had exercised an unspoken supremacy over the monarch, and the defining feature of the European monarchical order—the feudal class arrangements—had gradually been abolished. By the beginning of the 18th century, British elites had thoroughly traded the power of feudal caste for that of private property. What remained were mostly cosmetic feudal characteristics and ceremonial vestiges of monarchical absolutism. In this way, the American Revolution was successful not because the British system of constitutional monarchy was so discordant with Enlightenment values, but because the liberalism that had emerged under the British system had evolved to the point that it had nowhere else to go but toward republicanism.

Initially, republicanism and explicitly anti-monarchical sentiment were not part of the American revolutionary struggle. Even with the publication of Common Sense at the beginning of the war, Thomas Paine’s editor, Dr. Benjamin Rush, recommended toning down explicit arguments related to republicanism.^[1] Instead, the revolution’s motivating factor was the reclamation of British rights. Colonial discontent was seen as part of the British tradition; hence the somewhat ironic support that the Patriots received from conservatives in Parliament such as Edmund Burke. Republicanism was not desired but settled upon as the last available option for securing rights after the monarchical system had been thoroughly discredited by the ravages of war.

Except for the most radical agitators of the American Revolution—such as Paine—most Founders began their political careers as supporters of constitutional monarchy. Up until the outbreak of war, they believed that their grievances were best addressed through reforms within the British system. Ideas were abound regarding how this would be accomplished; Benjamin Franklin recommended expanding the seats within the current parliament to include representation from the colonies.^[2] Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, recommended that the king form a unique relationship with each of the colonial legislatures, essentially acting as a sovereign over multiple parliaments instead of just one.^[3] The Continental Congress was originally a means to plead with the king, not a revolutionary government designed to overthrow the monarchy. Exactly a year prior to the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress passed the Olive Branch Petition, which affirmed the colonists' loyalty to the monarch and pleaded with the king to find a peaceful resolution to their grievances.^[4]

This initial reluctance to break with constitutional monarchy was theoretically motivated. By the late 18th century, very few people sincerely believed in the divine right of kings, and nearly everyone with some education was aware of the republics of antiquity and the Renaissance. However, these examples were limited to city-states. Montesquieu argued in The Consideration on the Causes of the Roman’s Greatness and Decline that to rule over a large landmass, which was the best means for guaranteeing the blessings of prosperity, some form of monarchy was necessary. Rome degenerated into despotism because, as it expanded, it failed to transition from a republic, which was held together by an egalitarian but fragile sense of civic virtue, to a constitutional monarchy, which was an inherently more stable form of government. In doing so, it ended up with the tyrant Julius Caesar. “Rome lost its liberty because it achieved its distinctive mission (ouvrage) too soon.”^[5] Thus, the American Revolution was less an attack on monarchical superstitions, and more an attack on monarchical impracticality. The events that led to the revolution had proven to the Founders that constitutional monarchy failed to do what it had promised. It could not keep a large landmass, or in this case two landmasses divided by an ocean, populated by people with diverse and varied interests held together within a single political system without sliding towards despotism. 

In this way, it is more helpful to understand the American Revolution as a melee of various ideological permutations of both republicanism and monarchism rather than a sharp contrast between the two. The Founders were not outside of this. They became republicans because they too were radicalized by the American Revolution. Still, their radicalization had limits. The majority of Founders favored a form of republicanism that was contained within an overall aristocratic structure that protected their class position. The American Constitution—especially as originally written—was an expression of a unique political ideology that sat between democratic republicanism and constitutional monarchy. If anything, the American Constitution arguably created the first federated consociated republic, where various elites—in this case, elites from differing states—defaulted to power-sharing agreements to avoid conflict and strife, rather than because the Founders firmly believed in the democratic values of participation and self-government.^[6]

It is within this context that The Federalist Papers should be understood. According to Quint, the ideology of the authors of The Federalist Papers was a combination of Calvinistic pessimism and Enlightenment optimism.^[7] Unlike Paine, Madison, Hamilton, and Jay did not believe that the character of humanity was fitted for social life, nor that “Society in every state is a blessing.”^[8] Instead, they accepted the Calvinistic outlook that humanity was a deeply flawed creature, prone to egotism and division. Sin was an inevitable occurrence, and like Calvin, they believed the tendency toward sinfulness afflicted both subject and ruler alike. However, this did not mean that no common good was possible. Instead, through an Enlightened calculation of the mechanisms of government, sins could be manipulated to serve holiness, or, in more secular terms, competing forms of private interests could be directed against each other to produce public goods. As explained by Madison in Federalist Papers No.51, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the Constitutional rights of the place.”^[9]

Civil War and Class War

Fundamentally, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was an attempt by American elites to manage two brewing and interconnected wars within the new nation. The first was the civil war between states. Historians refer to the period between the Treaty of Paris and the ratification of the Constitution as the “Critical Years,” and its defining feature was the new nation’s intense economic depression. The colonists had won their War of Independence, but years of going without British goods and the diversion of labor to the war effort had economically devastated the new nation. Lacking a means of national economic planning, or even taxation, the responsibility of rebuilding fell to the states. At the time, the most common means of raising revenue were indirect taxes, or sales taxes, on goods and services. However, since most states were reluctant to tax their own populations, states taxed the importation of goods from neighboring states. This scenario set off an aggressive trade war that had the potential to escalate into an all-out civil war. Despite the Articles of Confederation declaring “The United States of America,” the country was anything but united, and loyalties were still largely local, not national, in character. Even during the revolution, where the common enemy of the British provided a unifying factor, Connecticut and Pennsylvania continued to fight each other over control of the Wyoming Valley.^[10] Vermont, frustrated that it was refused recognition by the Continental Congress due to ongoing land disputes between New Hampshire and New York, flirted with switching sides and considered offering itself as a British outpost in exchange for recognition of its statehood.^[11]

The second was the social war between classes. The event that galvanized a number of Founders to attend a new constitutional convention was Shays Rebellion. Just as the Articles of Confederation lacked the power to regulate interstate commerce, it also lacked the ability to successfully tax. Collection was essentially a system of free association, where states were responsible for collecting revenue on behalf of the Continental Congress. With no means of compelling states that shirked their taxing duties to contribute to the national good, the Continental Congress was perpetually on the verge of insolvency. Lacking any taxing power, it was incapable of paying veterans of the Revolutionary War, nor did it have the fiscal reliability necessary to create a common currency.

By 1786, the nation’s economic depression had reached its nadir. Farmers who borrowed heavily during the Revolutionary War to remain afloat could not sell their goods. Instead, crops rotted while lenders demanded repayment for their loans. Economic anxiety produced further economic anxiety, as both lenders and tax collectors insisted that all obligations be paid in hard currencies or specie. Because such currencies were in short supply, and many farmers who were also veterans were never paid for their service in fighting for the nation’s freedom, it was essentially impossible for anyone to climb out of their debt. Additionally, most states still had debtors’ prisons, which meant the unfreedom of indebtedness rapidly escalated to the tyranny of incarceration. In response, uprisings sprouted up throughout the country. Armed farmers surrounded courthouses in Vermont and New Hampshire, and in Rhode Island debtors were able to get elected to the state legislature and passed laws that allowed for debts to be repaid with virtually worthless money.^[12]

However, it was in Western Massachusetts that the uprisings represented the most serious threat to the Articles of Confederation. Led by Daniel Shays, farmers took up arms against their state government after a series of indignities had worsened their economic situation and made their prospects of peacefully seizing political power less possible. The 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, drafted by John Adams, raised property requirements for elections and granted the governor veto power with no means for the state legislature to overturn it. When the protest first began, rather than negotiating with the farmers, local officials seized their assets for repayment of debts, and the celebrated revolutionary Samuel Adams accused the rebelling veterans of being in league with the British.^[13] Undeterred by these actions, Daniel Shays led an army of farmers through Massachusetts that soon grew to over one thousand men. They demanded an end to debtors’ prisons, a cancellation of debts, a reduction in taxes on farmers, and for each state to issue its own paper money.^[14] Eventually they were repressed by militia forces paid for by wealthy Boston merchants.

The demands of the Shaysites were understandable. For the average farmer and anyone among the lower classes, the American Revolution appeared to be a failure. The realization of British rights through American republics meant little if such republics were plagued with poverty and controlled by an elite class of merchants and lenders. Still, a reduction in taxes and each state printing its own paper currency—which had already begun—would have likely intensified the economic competition between the states and, in the long run, further desolated the nation. Being less reliant on domestic taxes would have forced states to rely more heavily on taxing imports from other states, and multiple currencies, especially to pay taxes on imports, would have led to constant currency manipulation and potentially hyperinflation. Inadvertently, attempting to address the class war would mean pushing the nation toward civil war. There was no way to settle these conflicts except on the national level.

The Federalist Papers claimed the Constitution could solve both of these problems simultaneously by rationally organizing the nation’s various and competing interests to serve a common good. In this manner, both civil war and class war could be avoided. The impetus driving both conflicts, that is, the tendency toward factionalism, would be directed into the government, and through the government they would either be resolved through compromises between the various branches or squashed, either peacefully through procedural guardrails or violently through the new nation’s collective might.

The two main themes of The Federalist Papers are that if the new nation was going to survive, the colonies needed to remain united, and that to maintain this unity a strong federal government with multiple checks and balances was necessary. Montesquieu is the most frequently cited source in The Federalist Papers, and his influence, especially his belief that republics were only appropriate for small city-states, is wrestled with throughout the works. Drawing from Montesquieu, the Antifederalists opposed the Constitution because they believed that a government of such power over a large landmass would eventually become a monarchy. The new nation was already approaching the fate of Rome. To avoid this outcome, they argued it was best that the states remained within a loosely affiliated confederacy rather than form a strong national government. More marginal elements of the Antifederalist movement even suggested breaking down the United States into three confederacies, which was aligned with the regional rivalries between the states of New England, Mid-Atlantic, and the South.^[15]

Writing in Federalist Papers No.9, Hamilton countered these arguments. Hamilton argued that federalism made large republics possible, but such federative republics needed certain aristocratic features to survive. Otherwise, they would collapse from the factionalism of competing states. According to Hamilton,

A firm Union will be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of the States as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection. It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.^[16]

Madison elaborated on this idea in Federalist Papers No.10. Cleverly, Madison flips the arguments of the Antifederalists around by claiming that small republics, though more responsive to the people, were more likely to come under the influence of a faction, including majoritarian factions, that would be injurious to the rights of others. According to Madison, “a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischief of faction.”^[17] In contrast, a large and federative republic would dilute the power of the majority and be more capable of protecting rights, specifically in Madison’s mind, the right to property. In a reference to Shays’s Rebellion, Madison warns against “A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it, in the same proportion as such as malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district than an entire State.”^[18]

This general idea is elaborated in more subtle ways in Federalist Papers No.50, where Madison argues against periodic conventions to amend the Constitution; Federalist Papers No.56, where he argues against making the House of Representatives too large; Federalist Papers No.68, where Hamilton argues in favor of the electoral college; and Federalist Papers No.70, where Hamilton defends the single-person executive, despite its monarchical connotations. In each case, the underlying assumption is that an excess of democracy creates a chaotic and fractured society. In that unpredictability, narrow factions can seize control of the government. To prevent this from occurring, the act of governing needed to be deferred to a wise and discerning class of individuals. In this respect, the Founders thought to establish an aristocracy based on property and culture rather than gentry and tradition.

While this idea appears self-serving given the majority of the Founders’ class position, it was not without coherent ideological justification. To many of the Founders, history demonstrated that a republican form of government that united all the colonies could only survive if it contained some aristocratic features. The Roman Republic, and the city-state republics of Europe, were not republics in the modern sense. Instead, the class hierarchies of their societies were intimately interwoven within their system of government to create a power-sharing arrangement that was designed to diffuse class resentments without resorting to a total upturning of the social order. In Rome, the plebeians had their assemblies, but only the upper class could occupy positions in the Senate. Thus, within the early republican tradition there was a sense that mixed constitutions were only possible with mixed class relations. However, for the Founders, this created a dilemma because the radicalism of the revolution had destroyed the last vestiges of feudal nobility. How could a society that was based on the notion that “all men are created equal” create a stabilizing mixed constitution where separations of powers in government were supposed to correlate with separations of classes in society?

To accomplish this, the Founders did three things. First, they duplicated traditional class divisions through the narrowing and dividing of political options. As originally written, the power of “the people” within the Constitution was supposed to be filtered through a variety of institutions. No single voting constituency had power over the entire system. Instead, each only had domain over a certain branch of government and was presumably compelled into positions of compromise. The population, which, with few exceptions, meant white men who owned property, was able to elect the House of Representatives; the state legislatures elected the Senate, and the electors in the electoral college were responsible for electing the President. In each example, the institution would become exceedingly more deliberative and gentlemanly by the enforced checks from the previous branches. This was by design because the Founders believed that a government which acted as “an actual representation of all classes of the people” was something that “would never take place in practice.”^[19] Instead, each class would filter their interest to another class, specifically “landholders, merchants, and men of the learned professions,”^[20] which would then be represented through distinct branches of government.

It is crucial to recognize the Founders greatly underestimated—to an overly naïve degree—the importance that partisan loyalties would play in creating divisions within their preferred ruling classes. They assumed they were creating a nonpartisan and completely meritocratic society where those “most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the state and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation”^[21] would determine who governs. For them, any exuberant loyalties that did exist would be fundamentally regional rather than ideological, and such regional loyalties could be managed within the federalist structure. Those who ascended to the national level would be of such character and quality as to either be above factionalism or be so easily checked by the ambition of their peers as to render any pursuit of their narrow self-interest ineffectual.

Second, the Founders, except for the truly radical members within their ranks, dismissed all other democratic models—such as the Virginia and Pennsylvania Constitutions of 1776—as a form of “elective despotism.”^[22] Because these systems were based on legislative supremacy, and thus closest to the people, they were believed to have lacked the stabilizing features of traditional republics where mixed constitutions were intended to promote class collaboration. In that instability, one despot, that of a king, was traded for thousands, that of the people. To prevent this, it was necessary to provide the people with “a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions."^[23]

The fact that the American Revolution was a revolution of democratic republicanism but ended up creating an aristocratic republic is the central tension of American politics. Obviously, uninhibited majority rule is susceptible to abuse, but the Founders, and specifically the Federalists, greatly overstated their case. From a contemporary perspective, the governments that they criticized had several essential democratic features that were deficient in the original Constitution.

The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 did not contain property requirements for eligibility to vote. Instead, voting rights were extended to all “taxpayers” and children of taxpayers if they were over the age of twenty-one. Voting was also not explicitly restricted to members of the white race but extended to all “freemen” regardless of race, color, or ethnicity. Unlike the original United States Constitution, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 contained a bill of rights, which was the first thing listed. Such rights that were guaranteed included freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly, to be secure in one’s home, movement, and to petition the government for grievances. Later in the Pennsylvania Constitution, freedom from cruel punishments, a right to a jury, and a right to a speedy trial are protected. An indication that the Pennsylvania Constitution was a document for farmers and laborers, the Constitution limited debtors’ prisons and excessive fines, mandated the creation of public schools, and guaranteed that all people had the right to secure a livelihood through hunting and fishing on the state’s commons.^[24]

In structure, the democratic character of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 was even more radical, and superseded contemporary expectations. The government of Pennsylvania was referred to as a “simple” republic, which meant it had a large unicameral legislature that was given greater powers than the other two branches. The legislature included 72 representatives; each was elected from individual districts and was only allowed to serve for one year. Each legislator could only serve four terms within a seven-year timeframe. Rather than a singular governor, the executive branch was a collegial body made of 12 members. The executive branch had no power to veto legislation. Local judges were directly elected by the people of their jurisdiction and only served seven-year terms, while appellate and supreme court judges were appointed by the executive council but also only served seven-year terms and could be removed by the legislature at any time for bad behavior. The remarkable nature of these democratic structures was heightened by the fact that Pennsylvania at this time had a population of fewer than 300,000 people, creating a highly intimate form of representation that straddled the line between republicanism and anarchism.^[25]

While there are several inspiring aspects of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, it also had notable defects that ensured it could not withstand the backlash against its radical democratic features. The government was highly participatory for its time, but it was not energetic. All laws passed by the legislature had to wait for the following session to be enforced. The purpose of this provision was to give the population necessary time to reflect and criticize laws before their enactment, but it proved to stifle governmental responsiveness. Even more critically, the Pennsylvania Constitution created a Council of Censors, which was a quasi-judicial body elected every seven years. The Council of Censors had no legislative powers, but it could issue censures, impeachments, call for changes to the Constitution, and produce reports on the activities of the government. The movement to repeal the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 came from the Council of Censors when the wealthy of Pennsylvania realized that if they could get elected to the Council, they could convince Pennsylvanians to replace their democratic republic with one that was more aristocratic.^[26] After its ratification, they used the acceptance of the United States Constitution to undermine the character of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Not surprisingly, in Federalist Papers No.48, Madison relies on reports from the Council of Censors to dismiss the Pennsylvania Constitution as a government where “the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.”^[27]

Third, the Founders believed that governing over a large and diverse territory would generate economic prosperity for all classes and could ameliorate the discontent of farmers and laborers without having to resort to leveling measures. In Federalist Papers No.11, No.12, and No.13, Hamilton argues that the new Constitution provides opportunities for commerce by creating a massive free trade zone throughout the states. This large free trade zone ensures that the states will be able to cooperate against European powers and achieve economies of scale to lessen tax burdens. If economically divided, there was a strong possibility that European nations would be able to play one state against another, leading to the mutual ruin of both. In the worst case, this could mean a recolonization of the states by Britain or another European power. However, if the states remain united under a strong central government, one that prevented them from taxing each other, they would be better positioned to negotiate trade agreements with Europe, would not need to oppress “that valuable class of the citizens who are employed in the cultivation of the soil”^[28] with taxes, and be better able to manage economic downturns. According to Hamilton, “Commercial enterprise will have much greater scope from the diversity of productions of different States. When the staple of one fails from bad harvest or unproductive crop, it can call to its aid the staple of another.”^[29] Thus, the solidarity between the states, and the economic growth it was supposed to unleash, was meant to compensate for the lack of solidarity between upper and lower classes.

The Contradictions of Aristocratic Republicanism

The legacy of The Federalist Papers contains several significant contradictions. First and foremost is the fact that despite the longevity of the American Constitution, its arguments for aristocratic republicanism have been strenuously challenged, including during the ratification process. In many ways, the Constitution that was ratified in 1788 would not have survived without immediate changes, specifically regarding its lack of a bill of rights. In Federalist Papers No.84, Hamilton strenuously argues against adding a bill of rights to the Constitution, declaring that not only was it unnecessary but dangerous because putting any limit on governmental power suggests that the government has such a power to begin with. Of course, Hamilton simultaneously undermined his own argument by trying to convince his readers that the Constitution already protected rights by guaranteeing access to a jury, protecting habeas corpus, prohibiting the ex-post facto laws and bills of attainder, and denying Congress the power to grant titles of nobility.

Nonetheless, the political reality of having to prevent another constitutional convention led Madison—one of the main opponents of a bill of rights—to become its reluctant author. Today, the American Bill of Rights has so thoroughly seeped into the American consciousness that “For many Americans, the Bill of Rights is the Constitution.”^[30] Few Americans know the meaning of Article 2, but nearly everyone understands the protections guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. However, what is less known is that this exaltation of the American Bill of Rights has also been a long historical process. It was won through hard struggle, specifically by socialists and other advocates of working people, and did not truly begin until the early part of the 20th century with the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Gitlow v. New York (1925).^[31]

Other major provisions of the Constitution have been amended in the face of democratic opposition. In Federalist Papers No.62, Madison defended the indirect election of senators by state legislators. Despite this, it did not take long for the practice to be criticized, as reformers began advocating for the direct election of senators early in the 19th century. Far from guaranteeing that wise and prudent representatives were elected, the indirect election of senators promoted corruption, as some candidates received their position through party negotiations and legislative paralysis. If state legislatures could not agree on who would fill a seat, which might be stalled due to political divisions or legislative horse trading, the seat would just go vacant. By the time of James Madison’s death in 1836, a robust movement to amend the Constitution was already underway, and it would finally succeed during the Progressive Era with the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913.

Similarly, in Federalist Papers No.72, Hamilton argued against imposing any term limits on the president. As with previous arguments, Hamilton appealed for the need to have wise individuals in public office and believed that the experience of holding office was the best inculcator of political wisdom. The idea of limiting the president’s terms was intensely debated during the Constitutional Convention. Since then, the issue has been raised by various parties, including at times by both Democrats and Republicans. It was only after the four consecutive election victories of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that a sufficient super-majority, this time spearheaded by Republicans, coalesced around the issue. While Republicans and southern conservative Democrats led the passage of the 22nd Amendment in Congress, the amendment’s adoption by the states was bipartisan. Only two states— Massachusetts and Oklahoma—outright rejected the amendment, while only five—Arizona, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Washington, and West Virginia—took no action on it.

By far, the most significant shortcoming of the American Constitution defended within The Federalist Papers is the protection of the institution of slavery. In Federalist Papers No.54, Madison argues in favor of the 3/5th clause of the Constitution that counted enslaved individuals as partial persons in the national census. Quoting a southern delegate, Madison approves of the notion that “representation relates more immediately to persons, and taxation more immediately to property, and we join in the application of this distinction to the case of our slaves. But we must deny the fact that slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as person. The true state of the case is that they partake of both these qualities: being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects as property.”^[32] With the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments, the idea that anyone within the United States could be considered both person and property was negated, but the lessons of the Civil War and Reconstruction challenged the entire basis of the aristocratic republic that the Founders sought to establish.

The promise of the American Constitution was that it would prevent the country from devolving into a civil war or class war by manipulating factionalism to either serve the nation or dispersing it to the point of ineffectualness. What the Founders failed to consider was that the classes that they had empowered—merchants, landholders, and learned professions—had their own interests and could become factional sects within the government that would threaten the republic. The southern slavocracy—or “landowners”—which was part of the founding coalition, would eventually come into conflict with the Constitution, especially as democratic forces used its republican features to threaten the institution of slavery. Slavery created an impossible test for the Founders’ political logic. Since slavery is antithetical to liberty, it could never serve any republican notion of the public good, and, since it was so thoroughly protected by the Constitution, its influence would never simply dissipate within the federal structure. For the republic to survive, the Constitution would eventually need to be amended to abolish it.

In this regard, the southern slavocracy had no choice but to secede. They were protected by the Constitution but lacked the majoritarian means to further that protection. The only option for them was to forsake the lesson of Jay, that a federated union “guaranteed the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed”^[33] and plunge the country into civil war. In doing so, the civil war and class war that the Founders sought to avoid at the nation’s founding was realized in full brutality. Even though the Constitution survived in an amended form, the Civil War and Reconstruction were a refutation, at least partially, of the thesis of The Federalist Papers. Aristocratic republicanism was not a stabilizing system, but rather a political system in constant contradiction.

The contradictions of aristocratic republicanism have continued up through the contemporary era. With industrialization, the preferred classes of merchants, landowners, and learned professions have been replaced by capitalists, military officials, and middle-class professionals. As before, this contemporary aristocracy becomes a faction unto itself and attempts to utilize the government for its own ends, but finds itself limited by the Constitution’s republican features, including those democratic characteristics that were vigorously defended by the Founders.

Whatever limitations the Founders possessed, they were prescient in recognizing the dangers of the executive branch. While the singular executive suggested monarchical characteristics, it was also restrained by its four-year term, its obligation to share certain powers with the Senate, and the fact that Congress was given power to override its veto. Most significantly, unlike the constitutional monarchy of the British system, the executive was stripped of the power to declare war.^[34] Debating Hamilton, Madison insisted on a strict interpretation of this provision:

In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture of heterogeneous powers: the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man: not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.^[35]

Furthermore, they also recognized that for federalism to function, the federal government needed to have certain exclusive responsibilities.^[36] Among these were immigration laws. Hamilton argued that if immigration policy was not uniform, the country would continue to experience the dysfunctions of the Articles of Confederation.^[37] Further strengthening the exclusivity of certain federal responsibilities, the Bill of Rights contained the 10th Amendment, which states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Despite the caterwauling from xenophobic reactionaries, the Founders were clear that any immigration system within the United States needed to be both designed and enforced by the federal government. States, as part of their reserved rights, are not obligated to participate.

Additionally, while many of the Founders were suspicious of the majoritarian power of the people, they insisted on majority rule by elected legislators. The Articles of Confederation’s legislature operated through a super-majoritarian system where no law could be passed unless it had approval of nine of the 13 states. Hamilton argued that such super-majoritarianism, indicative of our current senatorial filibuster, “contradicts that fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail.”^[38] In our contemporary politics, super-majoritarian provisions have stifled the power of Congress. In that paralysis, power has been deferred to the executive or devolved back to the states. In both scenarios, the unity that the Constitution was supposed to guarantee has started to fray.

Between Power and Privilege

What the legacy of The Federalist Papers demonstrates is that American republicanism is still evolving. The Founders developed a sense of freedom that went beyond the bounds of constitutional monarchy. For that achievement, they should be celebrated. However, they left following generations with a chimerical institution that is not entirely republican, nor monarchical, but something in between. They assumed that their new creature would be a paragon of stability, but rivalries between its aristocratic and republican characteristics have been the defining feature of American politics and caused the country to explode into civil war.

In Federalist Papers No.26, Hamilton writes, “It was a thing hardly to be expected that in a popular revolution the minds of men should stop at that happy mean which marks the salutary boundary between power and privilege, and combines the energy of government with the security of private right.”^[39] For Hamilton, the “happy mean” between power and privilege is achieved when certain privileged classes have taken the reins of government. Republicanism is preferred not because it is a mechanism for empowering the population, but because it is a tool for resolving conflicts between elites without having to resort to violence.

In contrast to Hamilton, there was Mercy Otis Warren. According to Warren, equality—and specifically equality of wealth—was foundational to republican government. Republicanism was merely the practical expression of democracy, and democracy could not exist unless all the inhabitants of a nation had a shared condition of equality. Anything other than that eventually ended in an aristocracy that threatened liberty. In the introduction to her History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, she wrote that “Democratic principles are the result of equality of condition. A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in aristocracy.”^[40]

The division between Hamilton and Warren is the tension of the American Constitution. If the vitalities that were released during the American Revolution were necessary to break free from the confines of constitutional monarchy, then arguably a similar revolution is equally necessary to finally transition the United States away from an aristocratic republic to a form of republicanism that is fundamentally more democratic. Doing so would be a double negation of the American Revolution, simultaneously undoing its outcome while also living up to its highest ideals.  

1. Rosenfeld, Sophia. “Benjamin Rush’s Common Sense.” Early American Studies 15, no. 2 (2017): 252–73.

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2. Gipson, Lawrence Henry. “Thomas Hutchinson and the Framing of the Albany Plan of Union, 1754.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 74, no. 1 (1950): 5–35.

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3. Hedges, William L. “Telling off the King: Jefferson’s ‘Summary View’ as American Fantasy.” Early American Literature 22, no. 2 (1987): 166–74.

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4. Dickinson, H. T. “The Failure of Conciliation: Britain and the American Colonies 1763-1783.” The Kyoto Economic Review 79, no. 2 (167) (2010): 2–20.

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5. Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat. Select Political Writings, edited by Melvin Richter (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1990). 102.

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6. Charles Beard provided an early analysis of the class position of the Founders. A problem with Beard’s conclusion is that while he explains what the Founders were trying to protect, he does not explain why they needed a republic to protect it. A more nuanced analysis explains that they resorted to republicanism as a means of resolving disputes so that no specific faction of the upper class could claim total control over the government. See Beard, Charles. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (New York: The MacMillian Company, 1921).

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7. Quint, Peter E. "The Federalist Papers and the Constitution of the United States." Kentucky Law Journal, no. 84 (1995–1996): 839–77.

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8. Paine, Thomas. Common Sense (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1997). 3.

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9. Madison, James. "Federalist No. 51." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999), 290.

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10. Fisher, Sydney George. The Making of Pennsylvania: An Analysis of the Elements of the Population and the Formative Influences That Created One of the Greatest of the American States. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1896.

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11. Sherman, Michael, Gene Sessions, and P. Jeffrey Potash. Freedom and Unity: A History of Vermont (Barre: Vermont Historical Society, 2004).

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12. Lens, Sidney. Radicalism in America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company), 1969.

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13. Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States 1492-Present (New York: Harper Collins, 1995).

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14. Smith, Jonathan. “The Depression of 1785 and Daniel Shays’ Rebellion.” The William and Mary Quarterly 5, no. 1 (1948): 77–94.

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15. Main, Jackson Turner. The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781-1788 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1961). Main notes that while this idea did exist, it was extremely fringe but nonetheless used by the Federalists to strengthen their argument for a strong federal government.

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16. Hamilton, Alexander. "Federalist No. 9." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 39.

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17. Madison, James. "Federalist No. 10." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 49

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18. Ibid., 52

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19. Hamilton, Alexander. "Federalist No. 35." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 182.

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20. Ibid., 184.

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21. Hamilton, Alexander. "Federalist No. 68." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 380.

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22. Madison, James. "Federalist No. 48." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 279. Madison quotes page 195 from Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virigina.”

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23. Madison, James. "Federalist No. 63." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 352.

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24. Selsam, J. Paul. “The Political Revolution in Pennsylvania in 1776.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 1, no. 3 (1934): 147–57.

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25. For more on the relationship between anarchism and republicanism see Leipold, Bruno. “Anarchists and Republicans: Bedfellows?” openDemocracy, April 22, 2026. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/anarchists-and-republicans-bedfellows/.

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26. Williams, Robert F. “The Influences of Pennsylvania’s 1776 Constitution on American Constitutionalism during the Founding Decade.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 112, no. 1 (1988): 25–48.

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27. Madison, James. "Federalist No. 48." 277.

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28. Hamilton, Alexander. "Federalist No. 12." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 64.

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29. Hamilton, Alexander. "Federalist No. 11." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 57.

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30. Hickok, Jr., Eugene W. “Introduction,” The Bill of Rights: Original Meaning and Current Understanding, edited by Eugene W. Hickok Jr. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991). 1.

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31. Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925).

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32. Madison, James. "Federalist No. 54." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 304-305.

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33. Jay, John. "Federalist No. 1." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 1.

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34. Hamilton, Alexander. "Federalist No. 69." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999).

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35. Madison, James. “Helvisdius IV.” Letters and Other Writings of James Madison Volume 1: 1769-1793, edited by R. Worthington (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1865). 643

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36. Madison, James. "Federalist No. 39." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999).

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37. Madison, James. "Federalist No. 42." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999).

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38. Hamilton, Alexander. "Federalist No. 22." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 114.

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39. Hamilton, Alexander. "Federalist No. 26." The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1999). 136.

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40. Warren, Mercy. The History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution (Boston: Manning and Loring, 1805). 22.

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