Federalist No.
Primary Source Analysis
On September 17, 1787 the Constitution of the United States was signed by 39 delegates from 12 states in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after spending the summer debating the final form in the first Constitutional Convention. The Constitution represented in part an attempt to prevent the dissolution of the confederacy of states formed by the shared goal of independence, by forming a strong federal government (Rhodenhamel, 1987, p. 6).
Once the Constitution had been signed it had to be ratified by at least nine states before the federal government could be formed. To urge the states to ratify, a series of influential essays were published in New York newspapers by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, under the pseudonym Publius (Rhodenhamel, 1987, p. 45). This collection of essays was called The Federalist Papers (Genovese, 2009).
Historians have since recognized that the most influential of the essays, The Federalist No. 10 (1787), was written by James Madison...
This essay was published in the newspaper New York Packet on November 23, 1787 and presents arguments concerning the emergence of ill-intentioned political factions and how a republican form of government can best control them.
Factions: The Greatest Threat to the Nation
Madison viewed ill-intentioned political factions as probably the greatest threat facing the new nation. The Anti-federalists agreed, arguing that the nation was too large and contained too many opposing opinions to be governable by a federal government. Undaunted in his support of a federal government, Madison describes the value of a Republican form of government in controlling factions while preserving individual liberty in The Federalist No. 10 (1787). On the one hand, a majority in a republican form of government controls the impact of ill-intentioned factions by majority rule. On the other hand, should the majority become ill-intentioned against a minority then the larger and more fractious the Republic is the less likely…
