Friends of the Constitution: Writings of the 'Other' Federalists 1787-1788 - Softcover

Though The Federalist Papers are rightly renowned as a primary exposition of the principles and purposes of the proposed United States Constitution, there were many writers other than John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton who in 1787 and 1788 argued for the Constitution's ratification. Indeed, as Herbert J. Storing, Jr. once observed, "[t]hese 'other' Federalist writings carried the main burden of the public defense of the proposed Constitution . . . [and] several of them were vastly more influential than The Federalist." In a collection that is certain to make a major contribution to our understanding of the American Founding, Friends of the Constitution brings together forty-nine of the most important of these "other" Federalists' writings. Included are the original texts of pamphlets, speeches, and other pro-ratification writings of George Washington, Benjamin Rush, Nicholas Collin, John Dickinson, James Wilson, Tench Coxe, Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster, Roger Sherman, Fisher Ames, Peletiah Webster, Samuel Tenny, Stephen Hopkins, Oliver Ellsworth, and David Ramsay. Separately they address the underlying themes of the historic Federalist-Anti-Federalist debate: "The Necessity of Union," "Energetic but Limited Government," and "Popular Government and Civic Virtue." The text includes Storing's important assessment of these writings, and the volume includes citations to Storing's monumental seven-volume Complete Anti-Federalist.

Colleen A. Sheehan is a Professor of Political Science at Villanova Univeristy.

Gary L McDowell is Director of the Institute for United States Studies at the University of London.

Colleen A. Sheehan is Professor of Politics and director of the Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good at Villanova University, Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses in American political thought and politics and in literature. She has served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and is currently a member of the Pennsylvania State Board of Education. She is author of James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government (Cambridge, 2009); coeditor of Friends of the Constitution: Writings of the Other Federalists, 1787 1788 (1998); and author of numerous articles on the American founding and eighteenth-century political and moral thought, which have appeared in journals such as the William and Mary Quarterly, the American Political Science Review, the Review of Politics, and Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal.

Gary L. McDowell is a Professor in the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond, where he holds the Tyler Haynes Interdisciplinary Chair of Leadership Studies, Political Science, and Law. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Equity and the Constitution: The Supreme Court, Equitable Relief and Public Policy; Curbing the Courts: The Constitution and the Limits of Judicial Power; Justice vs. Law: Courts and Politics in American Society (with Eugene W. Hickok, Jr.); and Friends of the Constitution: Writings of the 'Other' Federalists (edited with Colleen Sheehan). In addition to his teaching appointments, he has served as the Director of the Office of the Bicentennial of the Constitution at the National Endowment for the Humanities, Associate Director of Public Affairs at the United States Department of Justice and chief speechwriter to United States Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and Director of the Institute of United States Studies in the University of London.