Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 1, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature: Early National Literature: Part I
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

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[148] James Sullivan of Massachusetts, with his eleven letters of Cassius; Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, with thirteen letters of A Landholder; Roger Sherman of the same state, who contributed five letters of A Countryman and two of A Citizen of New Haven; and John Dickinson, in his Letters of Fabius. The opposing views of the Anti-federalists were vigorously set forth by Agrippa, whose eighteen letters are probably to be ascribed to James Winthrop of Massachusetts; by George Clinton of New York, who published seven letters under the name of Cato; by Robert Yates, in two letters of Sydney; and in seven letters by Luther Martin.¹

The pamphlet literature was equally important. Noah Webster, best known to later generations as a lexicographer, came to the support of the new instrument in An examination into the leading principles of the Federal Constitution; as did John Jay, in An address to the people of the state of New York; Pelatiah Webster of Philadelphia, in The weakness of Brutus exposed, a reply to the first of a series of sixteen essays ascribed to Thomas Treadwell of New York; Tench Coxe, in An examination of the Constitution, written over the pseudonym of “An American Citizen” ; and David Ramsay, in An address to the Freemen of South Carolina. The opposition was represented by Elbridge Gerry's Observations on the New Constitution; Melanchthon Smith's Address to the people of the state of New York, and preeminently by Richard Henry Lee, in his Observations leading to a fair examination of the system of government proposed by the late Convention, and by George Mason of Virginia, in his Objections to the proposed Federal Constitution, to the latter of whom James Iredell of North Carolina made an elaborate rejoinder.²

Incomparably superior, whether in content, or in form, or in permanent influence, to all the other political writing of the period are the eighty-five essays known collectively as The federalist. The essays, the joint work of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, appeared in the New York Independent journal during the seven months beginning October, 1787. They had been preceded, and to a considerable extent called out, by a series of attacks upon the new Constitution contributed by Governor