The Federalist Papers: Book 16 of 2022

 

During the past year and a few months I have been reading The Federalist Papers, 85 essays by Alexander Hamilton (51 essays), James Madison (29) and John Jay (5). They were published in the state of New York under the pseudonym Publius in 1787-88 to convince New Yorkers and the rest of the United States to adopt the Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation.

The work was successful. The Constitution was adopted. George Washington became

the first American President. Convincing people an executive branch was necessary was at the center of the argument of the Federalist.

“Those politicians and statesmen who have been the most celebrated for the soundness of their principles and for the justice of their views, have declared in favor of a single Executive and a numerous legislature. They have … considered energy as the most necessary qualification of the former, and … the latter as best adapted to deliberation and wisdom….” (Hamilton, #70) 

Restraining the power of the executive was built into the Constitution:

“[A]ccumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” (Madison, #47)

“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” (Madison, #10) 

The rationale for the Constitution and central government is in Federalist 51:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” (Madison, #51) 

“[W]hatever fine declarations may be inserted in any constitution respecting it, must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government.” (Hamilton, # 84) 

“The house of representatives .. can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together … but without which every government degenerates into tyranny.” (Madison, #57) 

Government by the people is part of the argument:

”The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid bases of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.” (Hamilton, #22; his emphasis) 

“The danger from legislative usurpations, which, by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpations.” (Madison, #48) 

”We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape…? (Madison, #45) 

”An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy so that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.” (Madison, #58) 

And the reason our Constitution is relatively brief:

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” (Madison, #62) 

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those that are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” (Madison, #45) 

And the need for a national army is part of the argument:

“The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” (Madison, #46) 

“A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.” (Hamilton, #11) (Does the world view our present foreign policy as robust?) 

“[The] danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men…” (Madison, #63)

During the time I was reading this book, I also read a biography of Thomas Jefferson, the book 1776 about that fateful year in American history, Prisoners of Geography about the incredible blessings of the America's place on the globe, and Civilization which describes America's path to becoming a superpower from its founding. Links to these books are below.

Learning about Hamilton and Madison as I read The Federalist changed my view of the essays in the book.  Hamilton had strong royalist tendencies.  During most of Washington's Presidency, Hamilton was involved in intrigues against Jefferson.  Hamilton wanted a strong connection between America and the English and also wanted the American nation to have a monarchial elite.  Jefferson fought against Hamilton. 

The matter was decided in fact when Washington refused to run for a third term and refused all the trappings of monarchy.  Since Washington's Presidency was followed by John Adams, Jefferson and Madison, there was no way monarchy could take hold. And then Hamilton was killed by Aaron Burr, ending the royalist faction.  

It is also strange to think that at its founding, America was a place where dense and logical argument would affect public opinion. 

First fifteen books of 2022:

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas Ricks Book 15 of 2022

 The very long title and subtitle of this book comprise a good summary of its content from beginning to end.  The founders of America were deeply influenced by the Greece and Rome, by the examples of their leaders, by their culture and by their writings.  

Thomas Ricks shows how the classical world shaped the lives and leadership of the first four American Presidents.  Each of these Presidents:  George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison took very different lessons from the classical world, but that influence was evident throughout their lives and especially in their Presidencies.  

For George Washington, the only one of the first four Presidents who did not attend college, the classic world, especially the Roman Republic, was his example for how to live. He carried himself with dignity in every situation and rarely showed emotion. Only a few times during the Revolutionary War did he allow himself a public display of anger. Even fewer during his Presidency. Although he did not study the classics, the classical world was in him from his teens to the end of his life.  Even his final great act of leaving the Presidency amid a clamor for him to run again was guided by the example of Cincinnatus returning to his plow.

John Adams was vain and contrary and acerbic with little of the quiet dignity that guided Washington, but the Roman Republic guided his thinking and actions. He read and re-read Cicero and thought his times the most well-document period of ancient history:   

The period in the history of the world the best understood is that of Rome from the time of Marius to the death of Cicero, and this distinction is entirely owing to Cicero’s letters and orations. There we see the true character of the times and the passions of all the actors on the stage . . . Cicero had the most capacity and the most constant as well as the wisest and most persevering attachment to the republic. Almost fifty years ago I read Middleton’s Life of this man . . . Change the names and every anecdote will be applicable to us (the Founders). 

Thomas Jefferson, the third President, was more influenced by Ancient Greek history and culture.  For him, Athenian democracy provided the guide to all of his leadership from the writing of the Declaration of Independence to his two terms as President.  The Declaration of Independence would be an amazing document in any era or any place, but as a statement of a fledgling nation rebelling against the greatest military power of their time and saying all men have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--that was amazing.  (The end of slavery was in Jefferson's first draft, taken out by the Continental Congress.)

Throughout Washington's Presidency and into Adam's term, Jefferson fought against those within the government who wanted America to be a monarchy. Hamilton was first among those who wanted America closer to England and led by a hereditary monarch. 

Compared with the iron will of Washington and the combative Adams, Jefferson was a more affable. He was a lover of parties, at home in France, and enjoyed life. 

James Madison, the fourth President, was by far the most bookish and studious of the first four Presidents.  The Declaration of Independence was a singular act of rhetorical genius from Jefferson, whom John F. Kennedy thought the most brilliant of the Founders. The Constitution grew out of a year in which Madison studied everything he could find from the ancient world and contemporary sources. He wrote a document that became the beginning of the Constitution, was instrumental in the work of creating the final document, and then he wrote of the one-third of the essays  that explained and defended the Constitution. The 85 essays that he, Hamilton and John Jay wrote became the Federalist Papers.   

While the book focuses primarily on the first four Presidents, other founders come in and out of the story.  Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and Ben Franklin are important to the story Ricks is telling.  

Seeing how America began and how the first Presidents saw the world helped me to better understand where we are now.  On one hand, reading this book shows the almost infinite distance in character from dignity of Washington, the firm resolve of Adams, the brilliance of Jefferson, and the reasoned determination of Madison to malignant stupidity of the 45th President.  If is almost impossible to believe a list with those four and Abraham Lincoln and both Roosevelts and Harry Truman could also contain Trump.  I have trouble believing they are of the same species.

Read the book and enjoy where we came from. It gave me a glimmer of hope for where we could be going. 

First fourteen books of 2022:

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Thomas Jefferson and the First Draft of History

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham

There is only one actual version of the past, but there are endless interpretations of events that already happened.  

In the past year, when Thomas Jefferson was getting attacked for what he did wrong, and not celebrated for what he did right, I  told myself I had to learn more about the writer of the Declaration of Independence.  

Recently I read about the protesters in Prague reading Jefferson aloud in 1989 as they protested communism.  So I started reading both Jon Meacham's biography of Jefferson and The Federalist Papers. Alexander Hamilton wrote most of the weekly articles that comprise the case for the Constitution. But I thought it important to read them together to see what Hamilton thought so important about keeping the slave states in the union that he did not propose two Americas in 1787. 

I knew that Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence at just 32 years old. What I did not know was that the first statesman to make a public declaration for the abolition of slavery was Thomas Jefferson in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence.  

Jefferson wrote the first draft of that document, but it had to be approved by the Continental Congress. It was largely approved but about a quarter was struck out, including the anti-slavery passage. The original text is here.  

Before the Declaration of Independence, the divine right of kings was taken for granted. The Declaration of Independence said America would not follow the track nearly all of humanity followed for all of previous history.  

The freedom that Christianity promised and fucked up so badly in state churches began to become real in 1776.  It took nearly 200 years to extend freedom to all even in law, but unless the Trump Republicans throw away democracy and end what Jefferson began, America will continue to be the place the world looks for freedom. 

Without America and the people who risked their lives to found America, freedom would never have become a dream and a goal and a reality for large parts of the world.   

From 1776 to 2016, the trend in America was toward more freedom for more people.  Every other country in the world that in the same period was ruled, at oleast some of the time, by a monarch or a tyrant or totalitarian horror.  America had a peaceful transfer of power from Washington to Obama until the Trump broke the tradition.  No other country has ever done that.  

Jefferson started the 240-year march to more freedom for more people here in America and around the world.