Non-Stop
From Hamilton the Musical (2020 Broadway; Act 1)
Categories:
Run time: 6:27
Clip Description: The song runs from the Constitutional Convention through the writing of the Federalist Papers. Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay published eighty-five essays under the pen name Publius to argue New York into ratifying the Constitution, and Hamilton wrote fifty-one of them.
American Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: This clip provides a useful complement to discussions about the importance of the Federalist Papers for gaining support from both other politicians and the citizens for the crafting of the new US Constitution.
Possible Uses in Classroom: This clip can be useful to teach about the crafting of the US Constitution along with the support gained while writing the document.
Discussion Questions
- The Federalist essays were campaign literature: written fast, under a pseudonym, to win ratification votes in a state that was not going to ratify on its own. Lawyers and judges now cite them as evidence of what the Constitution means. What is the argument for treating a persuasion document as authoritative evidence of original meaning, and what is the argument against it?
- Publius was three men writing in one voice, and readers did not know which one was speaking. Anonymity takes the author’s reputation out of the argument on both sides: it means nobody can discount you for who you are, and nobody can trust you for it either. Would the essays have done more work with the authors’ names on them, and what does your answer imply about anonymous political argument now?
- Hamilton wrote the larger share of the essays for a simple reason: he would sit down and write them. Name a decision in your own life, on campus or at work, that went the way it did because one person cared enough to keep showing up. Is that a defect in a democratic process or the thing that makes one function?
Assignment
Read Federalist No. 10 and the Anti-Federalist essay Brutus No. 1. Both are short, both are free online, and both argue about the same thing: whether a republic can hold together across a large and diverse territory. Write a two-page memo making the best case for whichever one you found less convincing on first reading, using the America you actually live in as the evidence. The difficulty is that Brutus turned out to be right about several things, and Madison’s answer depends on assumptions about communication and distance that no longer hold.
For AP Students
AP U.S. Government and Politics
Unit 1: Foundations of American Democracy
Topics: 1.4 and 1.5, on the failure of the Articles of Confederation and the ratification debate
Skill: Source Analysis (4.A): describe the argument, evidence and reasoning in a source
Anchors: Federalist No. 10; Brutus No. 1; Articles of Confederation
The song runs from the Constitutional Convention through the writing of the Federalist Papers, with Hamilton, Madison and Jay producing eighty-five essays to argue New York into ratifying. It is the only clip in the library that puts students inside the ratification fight itself, which is where two of the required documents were written and what they were written to do.
Discussion questions
- Federalist No. 10 argues that a large republic controls the effects of faction better than a small one. Brutus No. 1 argues the opposite, that a republic that large cannot stay free. Summarize each argument in one sentence.
- The Federalist Papers were written to win a ratification vote, not to describe the Constitution neutrally. Does knowing they are campaign documents change how much weight you give them as evidence? Explain.
- Hamilton writes fifty-one of the eighty-five essays, at speed, under a pen name. What does it tell you about the Constitution’s prospects that the case for it had to be made this hard and this fast?
Short activity
The two-document chart (15 minutes). Students build a three-row chart comparing Federalist No. 10 and Brutus No. 1: the size of republic each prefers, the danger each is most worried about, and the remedy each proposes. One phrase per cell, nothing longer. Then one sentence underneath: which of the two better predicts the country that actually developed? The argument essay requires evidence from at least one required document, and this gives students two they can hold in opposition rather than one they have merely read.
Clip hosted on Critical Commons.