Federalist No. 21

During the 1780s, as the problems of the Articles of Confederation became apparent, two schools of thought emerged. One was the Federalist party, which wanted a strong central government that could unite all of the independent states to protect America from invasion from other countries and from people and groups inside the country who might protest or rebel. With the strong central government of the new constitution, Congress would be able to pass and actually enforce laws and policies around the country. The other party, the anti-federalists, wanted the opposite, a weak central government that had little influence or power over the states, and counted among their supporters Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence.

The Federalist Papers are 85 individual articles written by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison and were intended for the people of New York. The purpose of these papers was to convince the states to ratify the United States Constitution by pointing out the flaws in the Articles of Confederation. Jay, Hamilton, and Madison all addressed various issues in the articles, mainly Hamilton writing the majority of them. One of the articles in the Federalist Papers, Federalist 21, written by Alexander Hamilton, highlights the defects in the Constitution. It was published on December 12, 1787 under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist Papers were published. It is titled, "Other Defects of the Present Confederation." and explains how the Articles of Confederation failed in 3 ways: by not giving the government enough power to enforce its laws, that the states do not have a guarantee of their rights, and how the states can simply ignore the tax quotas set by the government.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the states mainly governed themselves. The central government had little influence on the authoritative role in the United States, though they implemented laws they did not prosecute when those rules were broken. In his essay, Hamilton states “the United States as now composed have no power to exact obedience, or punish disobedience to their resolutions, either by pecuniary mulcts…or by any other constitutional means.”. The enforcement of laws was put on the people in the country, deciding for themselves to submit to the laws the national government enacted or disregarding them due to the lack of repercussions. It is stated, by Justice Story, that calling the form of government they had prior to the adoption of the Constitution a “compact” implied that the states would exclusively govern themselves and could decide to breach the contract among themselves. Confusion between the state government and the people would occur, due to the lack of enforcement of the laws from either the state or central government.

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