Cs 635 Project

The Federalist Papers were written in 1787-1788 by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison to persuade the citizens of the State of New York to ratify the U.S. Constitution. As was common in those days, these 77 shorts essays, about 900 to 3500 words in length, appeared in newspapers signed with a pseudonym, in this instance, “Publius”. In 1778 these papers were collected along with eight additional articles in the same subject and were published in book form. Since then, the consensus has been that John Jay was the sole author of five of a total 85 papers, that Hamilton was the sole author of 51, that Madison was the sole author of 14, and that Madison and Hamilton collaborated on another three. The authorship of the remaining 12 papers has been in dispute; these papers are usually referred to as the disputed papers. It has been generally agreed that the disputed papers were written by either Madison or Hamilton, but there was no consensus about which were written by Hamilton and which by Madison.