On October 30, 1787, the New-York Packet printed a copy of the Constitution of the United States—a 4,400-word document that attempted to describe the functions of the new republic’s branches of government and the separation of their powers. After decades of historical unpredictability, the document tried to make history predictable, in addition to forming a government that would be determined by reason and choice. The delegates to the constitutional convention in Philadelphia had argued and toiled in secrecy all summer. By mid-September, they had “drafted a proposal written on four pages of parchment” (xi). Some who read the document feared that the new system gave the federal government too much power.

The second page of the New-York Packet featured an essay entitled “The Federalist No. 1,” which had been written anonymously by the 30-year-old lawyer Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton noted that the United States was “an experiment in the science of politics” (xiii). The results of the experiment, according to Hamilton, would answer an important question: Are people capable of establishing good government based on choice or will they allow chance to determine their political outcomes, which could lead them down the paths of corruption and demagoguery? This question rests at the center of this text, which deals with the “origins, course, and consequences of the American experiment over more than four centuries” (xiv).