In the first part of this series, we looked at the Constitution. But writing it was only half the battle. Before it could become the law of the land, nine of the 13 states had to vote yes, and plenty of Americans were not sold. The fight to win them over produced one of the greatest pieces of political writing in history: the Federalist Papers.
In 1787, as soon as the Constitution was finished, the country began arguing about whether to accept it. New York was an especially tough holdout, and if a state that big said no, the whole plan could fall apart. So three supporters decided to make their case the way arguments were made back then, in the newspapers.
Alexander Hamilton came up with the idea and pulled in two others, James Madison and John Jay. Starting in the fall of 1787, they cranked out 85 essays explaining what the Constitution meant and why the country needed it. Hamilton wrote the most, Madison wrote a big share, and Jay wrote only a few because he got sick partway through.
Strangely, they never signed their own names. All 85 essays ran under a single pen name, "Publius," borrowed from a hero of the ancient Roman republic. Everyone could tell "Publius" knew his stuff, but the real authors stayed hidden, and for more than a hundred years afterward, historians argued over exactly who wrote which essay.
What did they actually say? They walked readers through the new government step by step: why the states were stronger united, and how splitting power among the three branches would keep any one of them from taking over. The most famous essay, Federalist No. 51, is where Madison wrote that line about men not being angels that we quoted in part one. The writing was patient and plainspoken, meant to calm people's fears one worry at a time.
The other side fought back, by the way. Writers who opposed the Constitution published their own newspaper essays under names like "Brutus" and "Cato," warning that the new government would grow too strong. It was a real public debate, argued in print in front of the whole country.
In the end, the Federalists won. New York voted yes, the new government got underway, and the essays were later gathered into a book people still read today.
One last thing almost nobody knows: the Federalist Papers carry no legal power at all. They were never part of the Constitution, and nobody ever voted on them. Yet because they explain what the Founders were thinking, the Supreme Court still quotes them when it decides what the Constitution means, more than 230 years later. Not bad for a stack of newspaper columns written under a fake name.