An imagined gathering
1788 · New York, New York
Hamilton gathers Madison, Adams, and Washington as the Federalist essays appear and New York's ratification hangs in the balance.
The Federalist essays are appearing in the newspapers two or three a week, and Hamilton is writing at a furious pace. He has asked Madison, his collaborator under the name Publius, to dine, and Adams and Washington have come to hear how the ratification fight is going.
Hamilton is confident and exhausting; Madison is precise and quietly corrects him; Adams is skeptical of the whole project of a strong central government, and says so. Washington, who has been reading the essays with approval, lets them argue. They eat oyster stew, fried oysters, and johnnycake, finish with election cake, and drink madeira punch, while Hamilton talks about the union as if its survival depended on the next issue — which, he believes, it does.
Host: Alexander Hamilton
James Madison — Co-author of the Federalist essays and a delegate to the Virginia convention.
John Adams — Skeptical of concentrated power, though a supporter of the new frame.
George Washington — Reading the essays with approval and lending his prestige to ratification.
First course
a period dish
Side
a period dish
Drink
a period dish
Alexander Hamilton
The eighty-five essays Hamilton, Madison, and Jay wrote to persuade New York to ratify the Constitution.
Alexander Hamilton
Hamilton's doctrine that the Constitution grants the means necessary to carry out its enumerated ends, and the loose construction that followed.
Alexander Hamilton
Hamilton's financial program: federal payment of state war debts, a national bank, and a mint, built to give the new government credit and a stake in commerce.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.