Federalist, The, a series of 85 essays written in 1787 and 1788 explaining the U.S. Constitution, which had been drafted during the summer of 1787, and urging the states to ratify it. The essays appeared under the pen name “Publius,” and were first published in the New York Independent Journal and other New York newspapers. Alexander Hamilton wrote 51 of the essays, James Madison 29, and John Jay 5. For more than a century and a half, there was dispute over the authorship of some of the papers, but it was resolved by scholars using computer-assisted textual analysis. The essays were influential in bringing about ratification of the Constitution and give an authoritative exposition of the Constitution.