Talk:The Federalist Papers

Table of Contents

There is a large table in the middle of this article: in the external links section there are two links to a similar table but also with links to each paper. I would suggest that this table takes up a lot of space, maybe should be made it's own article with each line formign a link to a stub. What do you think?--68.121.144.176 03:04, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The TOC for this was listed under VfD. I moved it here in case anyone wants to do anything with it (such as link it to a series of articles) in the future.

This is a listing of the Federalist Papers.

1	General Introduction
2-7	Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence
8	The Consequences of Hostilities Between the States
9-10	The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection
11	The Utility of the Union in Respect to Commercial Relations and a Navy
12	The Utility of the Union in Respect to Revenue
13	Advantage of the Union in Respect to Economy in Government
14	Objections to the Proposed Constitution from Extent of Territory Answered
15-20	The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union
21-22	Other Defects of the Present Confederation
23	The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to the Preservation of the Union
24-25	The Powers Necessary to the Common Defense Further Considered
26-28	The Idea of Restraining the Legislative Authority in Regard to the Common Defense Considered
29	Concerning the Militia
30-36	Concerning the General Power of Taxation
37	Concerning the Difficulties of the Convention in Devising a Proper Form of Government
38	The Same Subject Continued, and the Incoherence of the Objections to the New Plan Exposed
39	The Conformity of the Plan to Republican Principles
40	The Powers of the Convention to Form a Mixed Government Examined and Sustained
41-43	General View of the Powers Conferred by the Constitution
44	Restrictions on the Authority of the Several States
45	The Alleged Danger From the Powers of the Union to the State Governments Considered
46	The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared
47	The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts
48	These Departments Should Not Be So Far Separated as to Have No Constitutional Control Over Each Other
49	Method of Guarding Against the Encroachments of Any One Department of Government by Appealing to the People Through a Convention
50	Periodic Appeals to the People Considered
51	The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments
52-53	The House of Representatives
54	The Apportionment of Members Among the States
55-56	The Total Number of the House of Representatives
57	The Alleged Tendency of the Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many Considered in Connection with Representation
58	Objection that the Number of Members Will Not Be Augmented as the Progress of Population Demands Considered
59-61	Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members
62-63	The Senate
64-65	The Powers of the Senate
66	Objections to the Power of the Senate To Set as a Court for Impeachments Further Considered
67-77	The Executive Department
78-83	The Judiciary Department
84	Certain General and Miscellaneous Objections to the Constitution Considered and Answered
85	Concluding Remarks

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Cecropia (talk • contribs) 02:53, 21 June 2004 (UTC)

• The page is still there, at List of Federalist Papers — Preceding unsigned comment added by JW1805 (talk • contribs) 20:00, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that it would be beneficial to have the table of contents available when anyone opens the page, so it should be placed on the left side for easy access. If the TOC is moved, the image of the inside cover which currently resides on the right side of the page should either stay in its place or be lowered if the text looks too cramped. Mattweiss (talk) 01:03, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Title

I move that since the TRUE title of the work is "The Federalist" and NOT "The Federalist Papers" the title of this article should be changed to "The Federalist" with searches for "(The) Federalist Papers" redirected to it. "The Federalist Papers" is a later title: Hamilton, Madison, and Jay very specifically wanted the work to be called "The Federalist" because a federalist was the type of man whose virtues they wanted to promote, a man like Publius--The title "The Federalist" refers to a type of PERSON, not a collection of papers. Calling them "The Federalist Papers" very much changes the authors' intent. --70.30.91.76 (talk • contribs) 11:48, December 26, 2010‎ (UTC)

Change of title to The Federalist Papers

I agree with with the anom author of the section above entitled "Title" - the title of this page, if Wikipedia is to be historically correct, should be The Federalist papers (or The Federalist Papers if capitalizing Papers makes it more familiar). The authors of the papers called the overall project The Federalist, indicating that they were articles being written by one man but actually going under a shared alias of three of America's Founding Fathers - Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. This change feels appropriate to me, and might to readers and historians, so I'm seconding anom's idea, above, in favor of a name change. If so, we can set off fireworks and sign this change with a virtual pen from the Syng inkstand (I really like that page and artifact!) Randy Kryn 21:08 19 September, 2014 (UTC)

Bolding the long form of the title

@Randy Kryn: I see nothing in MOS:BOLD, MOS:BOLDTITLE, or WP:Superfluous bolding explained that requires or even supports the boldfacing of The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution, as Agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787 in the third sentence of the lead paragraph. It's not the title of this article. It's not the title of a redirect to this article. It's not a form of the article title that we would expect a user to be searching for. It doesn't appear in the first sentence. It's merely the title (and the lengthy subtitle) of the first edition of the collected papers. Please explain: what's your rationale for boldface, and what's the support for it in WP:MOS? Lwarrenwiki (talk) 18:14, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi. I know it's a good faith edit, but you said it yourself, it's the title of the first edition of this seminal and historic work of American history. Your reasoning in the edit summaries and here that it is 'lengthly' has nothing to do with boldfacing the original title and significant alternate title of the book which has been common-name reduced to the title of the article. Randy Kryn (talk) 18:19, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

p.s., thanks for pointing out it's not a redirect, done. Randy Kryn (talk) 18:21, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

• Randy, it seems to me that WP:Manual of Style/Lead_section tells us exactly where boldface is to be used in the lead paragraph, and "original title of the book which has been common-name reduced to the title of the article" doesn't justify the use of boldface. The section Bold title indicates that boldface is to be used in the first sentence of the lead paragraph, but provides no support for using it in the third sentence. That section goes on to say (at MOS:BOLDSYN) this:

  Only the first occurrence of the title and significant alternative titles (which should usually also redirect to the article) are placed in bold

  (emphasis mine). The phrase "alternative titles" refers to alternative titles of the article, not to any particular title of a book that is the subject of the article. And there's really no good reason to create a redirect for this article that will never conceivably be used. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 18:49, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

The reason the original book title is in the third sentence is that the original publication of the papers were in newspapers, and only later collected into the book which was reduced to the common name, The Federalist Papers, long after the original book publication. So the first two sentences concern the history and publication of the original articles. Since this article's name is The Federalist Papers (recently fully italicized) and not The Federalist, the summary must include its full original title which is appropriately placed after the concise historical summary contained in the first two sentences. Many alternate titles aren't placed in the first two sentences due to historic summaries such as this. A redirect created for the original name of a work is appropriate no matter the length of the title. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:01, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

The Federalist Papers

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • GAN review not found

Result: Delist per consensus. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:17, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

There are numerous uncited sentences, a bloated lede and missing information in the "Judicial use" and "Popular culture" sections. Z1720 (talk) 02:05, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Agreement with Z1720 above on the poor condition of the main article for this important book of papers. The article appears to have suffered significantly from over-edits over the past 15-20 years, when previously it did achieve peer reviewed status. At present, without significant effort from editors, then the article looks like it should be de-listed. ErnestKrause (talk) 23:38, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Missing end number for "The conformity of the proposed constitution to the true principles of republican government"

It states 37 as the first of the essays covering this topic, but the end No. is missing. the next item lists 85, the final essay, it seems likely that the missing number is 84. looking for confirmation. RarinRictus (talk) 00:35, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Other authors in support

As we know, papers in opposition to the Constitution were written and published by many people. Did anyone other than Publius write in support of the Constitution? J S Ayer (talk) 16:46, 3 October 2023 (UTC)