Print Culture and Distribution

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-214
Author(s):  
Peter Pellizzari
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Early American ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

This chapter analyses how the essays that made up the Federalist Papers were distributed and the extent of their circulation in 1787–8. It examines the contingent nature of early American transportation infrastructure within the context of print circulation. Because of the many hazards in transporting newspapers, Publius—the pseudonym under which James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay published their essays—was not a continentwide spokesman for the entirety of the Federalist cause during the ratification debates, but rather a local phenomenon, whose provincial life was limited by countless contingencies. By examining the circulation of the Federalist Papers, this chapter helps clarify the meaning of the term ‘print culture’ and underscores the importance of material culture to the history of ideas.

scholarly journals Rule by the Few in the Federalist Papers: An Examination of the Aristocratic Preference of Publius

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl M. Felice
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
American People ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Federalist Papers

AbstractThe Federalist Papers are a set of eighty-five essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay during the founding era of the United States, with the purpose of persuading the states to adopt the Constitution as the replacement for the Articles of Confederation. The Papers were some of the most impressive political writings of the time, and are still cited frequently today by the United States Supreme Court. The arguments set forth in the Papers attempted to defend the Constitution's aristocratic characteristics against its opponents, the Anti-Federalists, while also attempting to normalize an anti-democratic, representative form of government in the minds of the American people. The clever advocacy and skillful rhetoric employed by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay led to the eventual ratification of the Constitution, and consequently the creation of the most powerful and prosperous nation on the planet. This paper examines the differences between the traditional forms of government, the political philosophies of the Papers’ authors, the anti-democratic, aristocratic nature of the government proposed by the Constitution, and the arguments for and against its adoption, as articulated in the Papers and various other writings.

The Author Problem: Bayesian Inference with Two Hypotheses

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-60
Author(s):  
Therese M. Donovan ◽  
Ruth M. Mickey
Keyword(s):  
Bayesian Inference ◽  
Probability Distribution ◽  
Posterior Probability ◽  
Prior Probability ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Federalist Papers

The “Author Problem” provides a concrete example of Bayesian inference. This chapter draws on work by Frederick Mosteller and David Wallace, who used Bayesian inference to assign authorship for unsigned Federalist Papers. The Federalist Papers were a collection of papers known to be written during the American Revolution. However, some papers were unsigned by the author, resulting in disputed authorship. The chapter provides a very basic Bayesian analysis of the unsigned “Paper 54,” which was written by Alexander Hamilton or James Madison. The example illustrates the principles of Bayesian inference for two competing hypotheses, including the concepts of alternative hypothesis, prior probability distribution, posterior probability distribution, prior probability of a hypothesis, likelihood of the observed data, and posterior probability of a hypothesis.

scholarly journals Testing Delta on the «Disputed Federalist Papers»

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Antonio Miranda García ◽  
Javier Calle Martín
Keyword(s):  
Authorship Attribution ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Crucial Point ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Test Probe ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Federalist Papers ◽  
Traditional Approaches

<em>The Federalist Papers</em> stand out as an excellent proving ground in the field of authorship attribution, being nowadays considered a breaking issue in literary detection. The crucial point of the <em>Federalist Papers</em> is the set of the <em>Disputed Papers</em>, twelve articles traditionally attributed either to Alexander Hamilton or James Madison. This authorial obscurity, together with the existence of undisputed samples, surely explains the proliferation of studies trying to spot the hand responsible for the <em>Disputed Papers</em>, particularly throughout the second half of the 20th century, both with traditional and non-traditional approaches. Since the publication of Mosteller and Wallace’s masterpiece, there has been a consensus as to consider them exclusively Madisonian (Mosteller &amp; Wallace 1963: 300; 1964: 16). Notwithstanding this incessant activity on the <em>Federalist Papers</em> as a test probe for authorial purposes, the use of Burrows’ Delta is still deemed a desideratum in the field, a technique proposing that the salient features which characterize an author’s style can be obtained from the hierarchy of the most common function words (Burrows 2002: 267-87; 2003: 5-32). The present paper then proposes the testing of Burrows’ model in a twofold version: a) modified Delta; and b) simplified Delta. The results come to corroborate the lexical differences between Hamilton and Madison, a fact allowing us to validate the hypothesis of the Madisonian composition of the <em>Disputed Papers</em>, exception being made of Paper 55.

The Federalist Papers

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
National Unity ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Federalist Papers

The Federalist is widely considered to be one of the most influential political writings in the early United States. Consisting of eighty-five essays in total, the first seventy-seven essays were originally published in New York newspapers between October 1787 and April 1788, and the final eight appeared in the first collected edition of The Federalist in 1788, although they were later republished in New York newspapers as well. The Federalist was written collectively by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to promote the ratification of the newly drafted Constitution. In keeping with the conventions of 18th-century public political debate, The Federalist was published under the pseudonym “Publius” to present its arguments to the public in anonymous terms, focusing attention on the content of the essays rather than the personal views or personalities of the authors. Although Hamilton, Madison, and Jay would not be formally identified as the authors of The Federalist until the publication of a notice in The Port-Folio on 14 November 1807, their collective authorship was widely known by the 1790s, and their reputations as respected statesmen and innovative political thinkers brought considerable attention and credibility to their arguments. Through the voice of Publius, The Federalist explains and defends the core principles and structure of the new government outlined within the Constitution, while also identifying the flaws and weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. In doing so, The Federalist provides substantive critical and philosophical discussions of federal governance and its relationship to the principles of plural sovereignty, national unity, republican representation, citizenship, national security, commercial interests, and the separation of powers, all of which had a profound influence, not just on the ratification debates, but also on subsequent interpretations of constitutional language and authority, from the founding period to the present. While scholars have endlessly debated the political, historical, philosophical, literary, and cultural impact of The Federalist, these essays continue to serve as foundational texts for studying the politics and culture of the early United States, as well as contemporary interpretations and revisions of constitutional principles in legal, legislative, and cultural spheres.

IS THERE AN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF EARLY AMERICAN WOMEN?

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE WINTERER
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
John Adams ◽  
James I ◽  
Early American History ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
Early American ◽  
History Of

Catherine Kerrison, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005)Susan Stabile, Memory's Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004)Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America's Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2006)Consider Abigail Adams. Known to us mostly through over one thousand letters that she exchanged with her husband, John Adams, she was a woman of redoubtable intelligence and energy. Wife of the second president of the United States, she was mother to its sixth. She traveled to France and England, rubbing elbows with dukes and diplomats; she read deeply in history and literature; she supported the literacy of black children; she was a conduit for the American reception of Catharine Macaulay's republican-friendly History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line (1763–8). The letters between John and Abigail fly so fast and furious, are so full of learned banter and palpable yearning, that their marriage appears strikingly modern, a union of equals. Let us not be deceived. Abigail Adams, like other women of her generation even in the social stratosphere, had no formal schooling, and her erudition was dwarfed by the massive learning bestowed upon John. He had a Harvard BA and read law for three years. He took for granted a vast public arena in which to unleash his colossal, if tortured, political ambitions. Abigail never published a word.

scholarly journals Book Review | George Will’s Conservatism and Democracy in Crisis

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
The United States ◽  
James Madison ◽  
American Government ◽  
Federalist Papers ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Federalist Papers

Americans typically view the United States as a democracy and are rightly proud of that. Of course, as those of a more precise nature, along with smug college students enrolled in introductory American government classes, are quick to point out, the United States is technically a republic. This is a bit too clever by half since James Madison, in The Federalist Papers, defined a republic the way most people think of a democracy—a system of representative government with elections: “[The]… difference between a Democracy and a Republic are, first the delegation of the Government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.” What the framers thought of as democracy is today referred to as direct democracy, the belief that citizens should have more direct control over governing. The Athenian assembly was what the framers, Madison in particular, saw as the paragon of direct democracy—and as quite dangerous. While direct democracy has its champions, most Americans equate democracy with electing officials to do the business of government.

Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean D. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
British Literature ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
British Identity ◽  
Atlantic Studies ◽  
Early American ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
History Of

Early American libraries stood at the nexus of two transatlantic branches of commerce—the book trade and the slave trade. Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries bridges the study of these trades by demonstrating how Americans’ profits from slavery were reinvested in imported British books and providing evidence that the colonial book market was shaped, in part, by the demand of slave owners for metropolitan cultural capital. It makes these claims on the basis of recent scholarship on how participation in London cultural life was very expensive in the eighteenth century, and evidence that enslavers were therefore some of the few early Americans who could afford importing British cultural products. In doing so, this work merges the fields of the history of the book, Atlantic studies, and the study of race, arguing that the empire-wide circulation of British books was underwritten by the labor of the African diaspora. This book, accordingly, is the first in early American and eighteenth-century British studies to fuse our growing understanding of the material culture of the transatlantic text with our awareness of slavery as an economic and philanthropic basis for the production and consumption of knowledge. In studying the American dissemination of works of British literature and political thought, this book claims that Americans were seeking out the forms of citizenship, constitutional traditions, and rights that were the signature of that British identity. Even though they were purchasing the sovereignty of Anglo-Americans at the expense of African-Americans through these books, however, some colonials were also making the case for the abolition of slavery.

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