The term Federalists refers, in the context of the founding era of the United States, to a political faction and later political party that supported ratification of the United States Constitution of 1787 and, in the 1790s, coalesced around the policies of Alexander Hamilton and the administrations of George Washington and John Adams. The term carries two related but distinct senses: (1) the broader coalition of delegates, writers, and citizens who advocated for ratifying the Constitution during the 1787-1788 ratification debates, and (2) the more specific Federalist Party that formed afterward as one of the first two organized political parties in the United States, opposed by the Democratic-Republicans. Some scholars distinguish these two uses more sharply than others; see federalists-terminology-viewpoint.
The Federalists are most closely associated with The Federalist Papers, a series of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the pseudonym “Publius,” published between 1787 and 1788 to advocate for ratification of the Constitution. Their principal opponents in the ratification debate are known as the Anti-Federalists; the relative characterization of each side's conduct during that debate is itself disputed, see federalists-anti-federalists-viewpoint-debate.
Historians broadly agree on the basic chronology and identity of leading Federalist figures, including Hamilton, Madison (in his pre-1791 capacity, before he later aligned with the Democratic-Republicans), Jay, Washington, Adams, and others such as Rufus King, Fisher Ames, and John Marshall. There is also general agreement that the Federalist Party, as a distinct political organization, declined sharply after 1800 and effectively dissolved as a national force following the War of 1812 and the Hartford Convention of 1814-1815, with the “Era of Good Feelings” that followed marked by the temporary absence of organized party competition.
Disagreement persists, however, on several interpretive questions: the degree to which Federalist support for a strong central government reflected genuine constitutional philosophy versus the economic interests of creditors, merchants, and large property holders; the extent to which the Federalist Party's later association with policies favoring centralized authority (e.g., the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798) represents a continuous thread from the ratification-era Federalists or a distinct later development; and how to characterize the Federalists' views on executive power, judicial review, and the proper scope of federal authority relative to the states. These interpretive disputes are treated in federalists-continuity-debate and federalists-motives-debate.
A fuller historical account, including the ratification campaign, the formation of Washington's administration, the Hamilton-Jefferson rivalry, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the party's decline, is available at federalists-history.
1. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, *The Federalist Papers*, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: New American Library, 1961). 2. Gordon S. Wood, *Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 3. Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, *The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800* (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 4. David Hackett Fischer, *The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy* (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). 5. James Roger Sharp, *American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis* (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).