Federalist No. 39
Overview
James Madison
James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...
. It is the thirty-ninth of the Federalist Papers
Federalist Papers
The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles or essays promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution. Seventy-seven of the essays were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October 1787 and August 1788...
, entitled "The Conformity of the Plan to Republican Principles." Like all the Federalist Papers, it was published under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Publius. It was published on January 18, 1788.
In No. 39, Madison attempts to describe the nature of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
as proposed by the Constitution. Rather than a strictly national or federal constitution, Publius argues, the government will be a hybrid of both.
