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Book Review
| Michael I. Meyerson, Liberty's Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World, New York: Basic Books, 2008. Pp. xiv + 309. $26.95 (ISBN 0-465-00264-1).
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| The Federalist papers have served as an essential tool for understanding the genius of the American political system as well as its shortcomings. Cited by the Supreme Court more often than any other historical document, The Federalist is the authoritative gloss on the Constitution. |
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University of Baltimore legal scholar Michael I. Meyerson has written a study of The Federalist that seeks to counter recent scholarship that downplays the impact of the essays of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. According to Meyerson, the essays of Publius "not only serve as the single most important resource for interpreting the Constitution." They provide "a wise and sophisticated explanation for the uses and abuses of governmental power from Washington to Baghdad" (ix). What Akhil Amar has done for the Constitution, Michael Meyerson sets out to do for the essays drafted to explain it. |
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Liberty's Blueprint, a book conceived for a popular audience, was written in response to increased public interest in the subject as well as the varying and often seemingly partisan uses of The Federalist in Supreme Court opinions, especially in matters dealing with separation of powers and federal-state relations. Meyerson notes that "justices sometimes cherry-pick The Federalist, citing as gospel the sections which support their conclusions while ignoring the inconvenient essays which point in the opposite direction" (184). |
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Meyerson lays out his agenda about mid-way through his book in an insightful chapter entitled "Why and How to Read The Federalist." Meyerson seeks to counter the work of Douglass Adair, Forrest McDonald, Clinton Rossiter, Albert Furtwangler and Larry Kramer. These scholars have all argued that the essays did little to convert any Anti-Federalist in New York City or around the country. Moreover, the greatest impact of the essays, in this analysis, was to bolster support among already committed Federalist delegates. |
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While Kramer has argued, for example, that only twelve newspapers outside of New York re-printed any of the essays, he ignores, according to Meyerson, the ways in which it was distributed. Meyerson notes that copies were mailed all over the country. He has found evidence that delegates to the Massachusetts, North Carolina, and New Hampshire ratifying conventions were aware of Publius's views on the Constitution. In Meyerson's analysis, it was in its printed two-volume book form, which appeared in early January 1788, that The Federalist had its "greatest impact" (138). |
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In his introduction, Meyerson reviews the long-standing historical controversy surrounding authorship of The Federalist. In Part I, Meyerson chronicles the political thought of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the critical period of the 1780s. Meyerson synthesizes recent historical scholarship on the calls for a convention to amend the Articles of Confederation, the drafting of the Constitution, and the development of partisan politics in the 1790s. Chapter Four, "Producing The Federalist," is perhaps the best in the book. Meyerson demonstrates how the opening essays, at least through Federalist 22, were all drawing, sometimes verbatim, from prior research by Hamilton and Madison. Meyerson deserves considerable credit for his lucid explanation of the connection between Madison's "Ancient and Modern Confederacies" and "The Vices of the Political System of the United States" and his contribution to The Federalist. |
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The focus of Part II is how to "read" The Federalist. While only twelve pages, Meyerson's chapter on the famous tenth installment of The Federalist is first-rate. Meyerson makes an interesting connection to an argument made by Madison at the Convention in relation to slavery and majoritiarian governance. In Meyerson's view, "the ability of the white majority to impose the institution of slavery was a prime example of the destructive power of factions" (169). |
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This is a lively, informative study, which undoubtedly furthers our knowledge of The Federalist. However, Meyerson's work would have been better if it had a clearer focus and organizational structure. He rarely makes connections from The Federalist to specific clauses in the Constitution. Moreover, Meyerson at times claims more for his thesis than his evidence can sustain. More than two pages of evidence were needed in order to redirect the historical scholarship on the impact of The Federalist on the ratification process. Trish Loughran's important new book, The Republic in Print: Print Culture in the Age of U.S. Nation Building, 1770–1870, contradicts Meyerson's argument in regard to the impact of The Federalist on ratification. |
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Moreover, the simple fact that the Constitution had already been ratified by nine states, and was in effect when New York and Virginia finally joined the Union in the summer of 1788, remains a powerful point to overcome. Meyerson highlights the Anti-Federalists' arguments, but he gives them only limited attention. The adoption of the Bill of Rights and the Jeffersonian triumph in the Election of 1800 attests to the influence of anti-federalism in the early republic. Non-specialists will certainly find Liberty's Blueprint to be a useful introduction to The Federalist, but scholars will likely be disappointed. |
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| Erik J. Chaput
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| Syracuse University |
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