ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

JAMES MADISON, AND JOHN JAY

The document now known as the Constitution of the United States was composed in 1787 by the fifty-five delegates of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. A declared compromise of divergent interests, its authority in the new nation at the time was by no means assured. A national debate on its legitimacy ensued. To the federal Constitution’s defense came James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay; sharing the pen name Publius, the three men argued the new Constitution’s merits in a series of essays that became known as The Federalist.

In the eyes of many Americans, the proposed Constitution was an invitation to tyranny that neglected individual liberties even as it closed gaping holes in the nation’s existing system of governance. The new document seemed most threatened in Hamilton’s state of New York. In response, Hamilton conceived a public relations effort to promote the Constitution, by publishing pro-ratification treatises in the major newspapers. In all, eighty-five essays by the three authors appeared: John Jay authored five, Madison twenty-nine, and Hamilton fifty-one.

Alexander Hamilton (c.1755-1804) was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, the illegitimate son of a married woman and a struggling Scottish businessman. After the death of his mother, Hamilton left the West Indies for New York, where he settled in 1772. Bright and ambitious, he enrolled in King’s College (now Columbia University), intending to become a doctor. Serving as General George Washington’s aide-de-camp during the Revolutionary War, he became a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Hamilton, who believed economic prosperity required a strong government, was an outspoken proponent of centralized government and the architect of the country’s financial institutions. He later served as the first secretary of the Treasury (1789-1795), exerted significant influence over foreign policy, and played a crucial role in shaping the government. His caustic wit earned him many enemies, including Aaron Burr, whose political career suffered under Hamilton’s criticism. Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel and on July 11, 1804, delivered a mortal wound. Hamilton died the next day.

James Madison ( 1751-1836) was the son of a Virginia planter and a member of the southern aristocracy. Though his health kept him from military service, he was active in revolutionary politics in his home state and was chosen for the Continental Congress (1780) and then the Constitutional Convention. Because of his efforts and influence at the convention, he is sometimes called the “father of the Constitution.” Madison served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1789 to 1797 and was secretary of state for eight years under Thomas Jefferson, whom he helped in engineering the Louisiana Purchase. In 1809 Madison succeeded Jefferson and was elected the nation’s fourth president; he won a second term in 1812 and, although a proponent of peace, led the United States to victory in that year’s war with Britain. Madison was the last of the leading founders to die when he passed away on June 28, 1836.

John Jay (1745-1829) was born in New York City. He became an attorney in 1768 and gained early fame with The Address to the People of Great Britain (1774), a tract outlining colonial demands on the mother country, which Jay wrote while representing New York in the First Continental Congress. He drafted New York’s earliest constitution and in 1777 was made the state’s first chief justice. Minister to Spain from 1779 to 1782, he spent much of the Revolutionary War on diplomatic service in Europe, where, along with Benjamin Franklin, he negotiated the Treaty of Paris, which was signed in 1783. Jay did not attend the Constitutional Convention, but his work in foreign affairs in the late 1780s under the encumbering Articles of Confederation shaped his support for a new U.S. Constitution; his five Federalist essays primarily concern foreign affairs. In 1789 President Washington appointed Jay the country’s first chief justice of the Supreme Court, and his measured stewardship helped cement the court’s reputation for impartiality. The unpopular Jay Treaty of 1794 with Great Britain spoiled Jay’s hopes to succeed Washington as president, although he was elected governor of New York the following year. John Jay died on May 17, 1829.