arty was
the series of eighty-five papers entitled the _Federalist_, printed
during the years 1787-88, and mostly in the _Independent Journal_ of
New York, over the signature "_Publius_." These were the work of
Hamilton, of John Jay, afterward Chief Justice, and of James Madison,
afterward President of the United States. The _Federalist_ papers,
though written in a somewhat ponderous diction, are among the great
landmarks of American history, and were in themselves a political
education to the generation that read them. Hamilton was a brilliant
and versatile figure, a persuasive orator, a forcible writer, and as
Secretary of the Treasury under Washington the foremost of American
financiers. He was killed, in a duel, by Aaron Burr, at Hoboken, in
1804.

The Federalists were victorious, and under the provisions of the new
Constitution George Washington was inaugurated first President of the
United States, on March 4, 1789. Washington's writings have been
collected by Jared Sparks. They consist of journals, letters,
messages, addresses, and public documents, for the most part plain and
business-like in manner, and without any literary pretensions. The
most elaborate and the best known of them is his _Farewell Address_,
issued on his retirement from the presidency in 1796. In {375} the
composition of this he was assisted by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay. It
is wise in substance and dignified, though somewhat stilted in
expression. The correspondence of John Adams, second President of the
United States, and his diary, kept from 1755-85, should also be
mentioned as important sources for a full knowledge of this period.

In the long life-and-death struggle of Great Britain against the French
Republic and its successor, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Federalist party in
this country naturally sympathized with England, and the Jeffersonian
Democracy with France. The Federalists, who distrusted the sweeping
abstractions of the French Revolution, and clung to the conservative
notions of a checked and balanced freedom, inherited from English
precedent, were accused of monarchical and aristocratic leanings. On
their side they were not slow to accuse their adversaries of French
atheism and French Jacobinism. By a singular reversal of the natural
order of things the strength of the Federalist party was in New
England, which was socially democratic, while the strength of the
Jeffersonians was in the South, whose social structure--