After the Constitution was written, it still had to be ratified (or approved) by the states. This meant that the people in each state had to vote in favor of (or for) the Constitution. The Federalists were a large group of people who supported the Constitution. The Antifederalists were a large group of people who did not like the Constitution. These two groups tried to influence (or affect) people’s opinions, trying to get them to vote for or against the Constitution.

  One of the main ways that these groups tried to influence public opinion (or the way that most people think about something) was by writing essays (or short written documents or articles) and publishing them in newspapers. The Federalists wrote some very well-known essays called the Federalist Papers. These were 85 essays that were published (or printed) with the pseudonym (or the fake name that a writer or a group of writers use) of Publius.

  Actually, Publius was a pseudonym for three people: James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. James Madison became the fourth U.S. president and he is often called the father (or creator) of the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton was the United States’ first secretary of the treasury, which is the part of the government that handles the country’s money. And John Jay was the country’s first chief justice, which is the most important judge in the United States. All three men strongly believed that the Constitution would be able to solve (or fix) the country’s problems.

  The Federalist Papers are powerful (or strong) essays that describe the Constitution in detail (or with a lot of information). The essays also present (or show) many reasons why people should vote to ratify the Constitution. Today many people still refer to (or look at) the Federalist Papers when they need to interpret the Constitution (or to understand what it means). That is because the people who wrote the Federalist Papers participated in the Constitutional Convention (or the meeting where the Constitution was written), so they had an intimate (or very close) knowledge of why the Constitution was written the way that it was.

 

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