When "The Federalist" was not yet "The Federalist": The Origins of a Classic Work of Political Theory (1788-1865)

This article traces the fortunes of "The Federalist" from its appearance in 1788 to the years after the U. S. Civil War, when the publication became the basic expression of U.S. identity. An analysis of the many editions that followed one another in the first half of the 19th century - and their translations both in Latin America and in Europe, including a 1792 French version - reveals, however, that its success was not immediate. The newspaper was long seen as an instrument of political struggle that postponed the creation of a republican identity to the construction of a new system of power that could control the move toward decentralisation provoked by the Atlantic revolutions.