This Week in History

October 27, 1787, the first in a series of eighty-five essays by “Publius,” a pen name used by the real authors, Alexander Hamilton, James Mason and John Jay, appeared in the Independent Journal of New York. Those essays are known as the Federalist Papers.

The essays, in part, addressed a widespread concern, that a national government, distanced from the people, would grow despotic (i.e. dictatori...