Letters of Brutus

Summary

On October 18, 1787 the New York Journal published the first of sixteen letters by the New York Antifederalist who signed himself “Brutus” (presumably after the Roman Marcus Junius Brutus who had attempted to save the republic by assassinating Julius Caesar). Three days later James Madison wrote with some trepidation that “a new Combatant … with considerable address & plausibility, strikes at the foundation [of the proposed constitution].” Madison's view was seconded by “A Citizen of Philadelphia” (Peletiah Webster) who observed that

The long piece signed brutus … is wrote in a very good stile; the language is easy, and the address is polite and insinuating; but the sentiments, I conceive, are not only unsound, but wild and chimerical; the dreary fears and apprehensions, altogether groundless; and the whole tendency of the piece, in this important crisis of our politics, very hurtful.

Madison's and Webster's early assessments of Brutus's impact soon proved correct. Brutus became one of the most formidable of the Antifederalist foes of the proposed constitution, and in New York state he was arguably the most formidable of all. Time and again Publius refers directly or indirectly to the letters of Brutus, and vice versa.