Reflecting on Federalist Fridays - A Review of the First 34 Papers
Every Friday for the past seven months I’ve reread and written about the Federalist Papers...one at a time.
Over this time I’ve learned much about how I, and other people, understand the Federalists.
Today I’m going to take a glance back at the course of these reviews and many of the lessons along the way. We’ll get back to the usual reviews next week.
Federalist Fridays
When I began writing Federalist Fridays back in October 2018, I was trying to break up the monotony of daily biographies about members of the Founding Generation.
Federalist Fridays seemed like a way to expand the discussion while helping people get closer to one of the most important series of essays in American history.
Over these last seven months, much has been learned and changes have happened along the way.
Writing
Originally, the articles were in-depth reviews of each paper.
These publications always seemed to run long and I was often informed that casual readers felt like the reviews went ‘over their heads.’
Over time, I have taken up the habit of writing the reviews similar to my usual articles. By this I mean I’ve attempted to present them more as a story...attempting to communicate the author’s message to a modern audience.
This has made them much shorter, but also more entertaining.
Titles
Perhaps the most important change is that of how I title the Federalist Friday articles.
At first, the title would consist of the Paper number, author name and FEDERALIST FRIDAYS.
Unfortunately, that did not communicate what I was writing about, nor was it ‘clickbait.’
I have learned it is extremely important to make eye catching titles to get anyone to read. In hindsight, this should have been obvious. I have always done my best to make the other article titles fun and the Federalists should have been no different.
I mean, if I don’t read articles by my favorite bloggers if the title isn’t catchy, why would I expect my readers to?
They’re Repetitive!
OK, this one isn’t so much my fault.
My articles have become fairly repetitive. But this is because the Federalist Papers themselves are repetitive.
We need to keep in mind, the Papers were intentional propaganda written to sway the opinions of the ‘People of New York’ to accept the Constitution. Therefore, they had a tendency to cover the same points.
Additionally, Hamilton, Madison and Jay were writing several times a week. Sometimes, multiple articles were published on the same day!
I, however, only cover one article a week.
Therefore, you might be reading and think ‘this is the one from last week’ but the truth is they just overlap a great deal of the same subject matter.
Conclusion
I have, at times, considered no longer writing Federalist Fridays. This is primarily due to a severe drop in readership each week.
However, this website has always been an attempt to take new information I learn and share it with you, dear reader. Writing these Federalist Fridays has taught me a lot and, therefore, I intend to see it through.
They may be a bit repetitive, and even a little boring, but the Federalist Papers are extremely important.
I encourage you to join me each week. I promise to make each review as informative and exciting as possible.
Do you want to catch up on the Federalist Fridays articles?
Every home should have a copy of the Federalist Papers.
The Dover Thrift Edition is printed well and easy to read.
Pick up a copy through the Amazon affiliate link below (you’ll support this site, but don’t worry, Amazon pays me while your price stays the same).
Want to get fun American Revolution articles straight to your inbox every morning?
Your in luck!
You can subscribe to my email list here.
You might also want to support Founder of the Day on Patreon.
