Mystery Solved: Antifederalist Elbridge Gerry was the “Federal Farmer”
(Uncovering the Federal Farmer – Part 2)
During the debate over the ratification of the Constitution writers routinely used pseudonyms to conceal their identity. The most famous essays promoting ratification are the widely acclaimed Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay under the shared pseudonym Publius. By contrast, the works of the Antifederalists are less well known. Antifederalist writings only became broadly available beginning in the 1960s.[1] Yet, historians invariably agree that one of the most consequential Antifederalist authors was the “Federal Farmer.”[2]
Throughout the ratification campaign, the letters of the Federal Farmer were well respected by Federalists and Antifederalists alike. A Virginian colleague of Thomas Jefferson touted the Federal Farmer as “reputed to be the best of anything that has been written” against the Constitution.[3] Alexander Hamilton acknowledged in Federalist 68 that the Federal Farmer was the “most plausible” of the Antifederalist critics.[4] Federalist praise included the recognition that the Federal Farmer wrote “with more candor and good sense” than other Antifederalists.[5]
After the Constitution was ratified in 1788, the Federal Farmer was cited as an authority during floor debates in Congress.[6] Indeed, the Federal Farmer continues to be regularly cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, along with the Federalist Papers.[7] Yet, the Federal Farmer never publicly identified himself. This blog post, Uncovering the Federal Farmer – Part 2, is the second installment of a multi-part series demystifying the Federal Farmer. Part 1 reported the re-discovery of an unpublished manuscript by Elbridge Gerry which sheds light on the identity of the Federal Farmer.
Part 2 begins with an overview of the letters of the Federal Farmer. After surveying the scholarship about the Federal Farmer, Part 2 continues with a discussion of Elbridge Gerry, the elusive founding father who was one of the Constitutional Convention’s most outspoken and “consistently contrary” delegates.[8] Part 2 concludes with a preview of emerging evidence supporting the attribution that Elbridge Gerry was the Federal Farmer. Part 3 will present the mounting evidence supporting the Gerry attribution. Part 4 (under construction) will summarize – and refute – the conventional wisdom that Antifederalists Melancton Smith or Richard Henry Lee wrote the Federal Farmer essays.
The Federal Farmer
Historians consistently describe the Federal Farmer as arguably the most well-respected and important Antifederalist essayist.[9] His reputation is often associated with the “temperate and learned nature of his commentary.”[10] The Federal Farmer “avoided the shrill alarmism of other Anti-Federalists.”[11] The work of the Federal Farmer was “well written and reasoned,” “one of the more moderate sets of essays criticizing the proposed Constitution.”[12]
Unlike other essayists who routinely appeared in newspapers, the Federal Farmer’s letters were initially published in two consecutively numbered pamphlets.[13] It is curious – and unclear – why the Federal Farmer debuted as a pamphlet. One possible explanation is that the Federal Farmer might have struggled to find printers willing to publish his work. Alternatively, the author might have wanted to minimize backlash resulting from the mass circulation of his essays.
The first pamphlet of Federal Farmer essays, Observations Leading to a Fair Examination of the System of Government Proposed by the Last Convention; and to Several Essential and Necessary Alterations in It. In a Number of Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican (“Observations”) was published in November of 1787. The Federal Farmer’s Observations consisted of five purported letters dated between October 8 to October 13, 1787.[14] A second Federal Farmer pamphlet, An Additional Number of Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican (“Additional Observations”) was published in May of 1788 containing thirteen additional letters dated between December 25, 1787 and January 25, 1788.[15] The Federal Farmer pamphlets went through multiple reprintings, but were not widely printed by Federalist newspaper publishers.[16] Federal Farmer Number 1, a letter dated October 8, first appeared in the Poughkeepsie, New York, Country Journal newspaper in weekly installments from 14 November 1787 to 2 January 1788.[17]
Elbridge Gerry
When the framers of the Constitution arrived in Philadelphia in May of 1787, few delegates had more prestige across America than Elbridge Gerry. With political experience at both the state and national levels Gerry brought a reputation as a “tried-and-true republican” and the credentials of a signatory to both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.[18] Although he ultimately declined to add his name to the final draft, many of the Constitution’s provisions were in fact proposed by Gerry.
Entering into the Convention, one of Gerry’s primary concerns was the risk of an “excess of democracy” and the anarchy of mob rule. In the aftermath of Shays’ Rebellion, Gerry worried that “the people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots.”[19] In his first Convention speech Gerry objected to portions of the Virginia Plan which would replace the federal government with a national government.[20] The following day, Gerry admitted that he has been “too republican heretofore,” but he was still a republican who had been taught by recent experience of “the danger of the levilling spirit.”[21] Thus, Gerry balanced his fear of democracy with “an equally strong suspicion of elites,” making him warry of both aristocracy and mob rule.[22]
Notwithstanding his reservations, Gerry actively participated in the Convention’s deliberations. As one of the most prolific speakers, he proposed fifty-five motions, the fourth highest of the Convention delegates.[23] Gerry consistently expressed concerns during the Convention about excessive power which he felt was being vested in the proposed new government. As a New Englander intimately familiar with the Spirit of ’76, Gerry was “driven by a nearly pathological fear of the misuse of power.”[24] Among his Convention peers, Gerry was one of the most outspoken in denouncing the evils of concentration of power in the hands of the “few.”[25] Gerry has been described as the “most consistently contrary” of his peers and the Convention’s most “ornery delegate.” A fellow delegate described Gerry as a “man of sense, but a Grumbletonian,” who objected to “every thing that he did not propose.”[26]
In mid-August, Gerry became disillusioned with the emerging draft of the Constitution.[27] While he began the Convention as a “mild nationalist,” he began parting ways with the co-delegates over a number of concerns that he openly communicated to his colleagues. As described in letters to his wife Ann, Gerry decided in the last month of the Convention that he would likely not be supporting the Constitution without amendments. For example, on August 26 Gerry wrote to Ann that:
I am exceedingly distrest at the proceedings of the Convention being apprehensive, and almost sure they will if not altered materially lay the foundation of a civil War.… I never was more sick of any thing than I am of conventioneering: had I known what would have happened, nothing would have induced me to come here. I am and must be patient a little longer.
On September 9, Gerry confided in Ann that, “I am myself of opinion that Thursday will finish the Business to which I have every prospect at present of giving my negative.” Click here for a discussion of Gerry’s letters to Ann, including Gerry’s recently re-discovered “11th letter” which committed to “leave no stone unturned” to prevent the Constitution’s adoption.
In the final days of the Convention Gerry identified a list of his objections which forced him to “withhold his name” from the Constitution.[28] Nonetheless, Gerry expressed the hope that the Constitution would be amended during a “second general Convention.” The day the Constitution was signed, September 17th, Gerry, George Mason and Edmund Randolph were the only attending dissenters. Of these three, Gerry was the only non-signer from New England.
During the ratification campaign, historians classify Gerry as a moderate Antifederalist from the “well-to-do wing of Antifederalism,” an influential but relatively small portion of the Antifederalist opposition.[29] Favoring ratification with amendments, “Gerry was not a die-hard rejectionist.”[30] Indeed, it was Gerry who chaired the “grand” committee that gave rise to the critical compromise between large and small states, the so called “Great Compromise,” without which the Convention may have failed.[31]
Identity of the Federal Farmer
Until the 1970s historians believed, without hard evidence, that Antifederalist Richard Henry Lee was the Federal Farmer. Lee was a well-respected member of Congress from Virginia who had been appointed as a delegate to the Convention. Unfortunately for Elbridge Gerry, Lee declined to attend the Convention along with a handful of other early Antifederalists. Most famously, Patrick Henry also refused to attend, smelling a rat.[32] In Lee’s case, he felt that it was improper to help prepare a document that he would be called upon to approve as a member of Congress. He also cited health concerns.[33]
In late September Lee helped lead the opposition when Congress began deliberating what to do with the proposed new Constitution. For Lee, the Convention had committed “constitutional impropriety” by attempting to set aside the Articles of Confederation. Lee would become a vocal Antifederalist leader, who presented a detailed set of proposed amendments.[34] But was Lee in fact the Federal Farmer?
In a 1974, Gordon Wood and other historians began questioning the long-standing Lee attribution. While Wood convincingly demonstrated that Lee was not the Federal Farmer, Wood did not offer an alternative attribution. Wood merely suggested that the Federal Farmer was likely from New York.[35] Over the past fifty years many historians have come to believe that New Yorker, Melancton Smith, was the Federal Farmer. Sadly many contemporary writers continue to list Lee and/or Smith as the Federal Farmer.
In 1988, John P. Kaminski floated an alternative. Although Kaminski set forth a compelling case that Gerry was the Federal Farmer, too many authors continue to rely on outdated Lee and Smith attributions, rather than citing Kaminski and his authoritative Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution. In Part 1 Statutesandstories uncovered Elbridge Gerry’s unpublished “11th letter,” which provides additional evidence supporting Kaminski’s attribution.
This blog post continues in Part 3 which will explore a growing body of evidence supporting the Gerry-Federal Farmer attribution. For example, emerging genealogical evidence indicates that Elbridge Gerry was related to Thomas Greenleaf, the New York publisher of the Federal Farmer pamphlets. Although it is commonly assumed that Gerry was only a merchant, he in fact became a gentleman farmer prior to the Convention, after the purchase of a working farm and sprawling estate in 1787. Moreover, Federal Farmer letter 4 quotes John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, which was well known by the founding generation. Thus the choice of the Federal Farmer pseudonym comes into sharper focus.
One of the reasons for the Melancton Smith attribution as the Federal Farmer is the author’s citation to provisions of the New York Constitution. It turns out, however, that a close examination of the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution reveals an equal affinity by the Federal Farmer for Gerry’s home state. Part 3 will identify scores of Gerry fingerprints and other evidence, proving the adage, “tanquam ex ungue leonem,” that a lion can be recognized by his claws.[36]
Endnotes
[1] Historian, Paul Leicester Ford, began the process of compiling Antifederalist works in the nineteenth century. Ford assembled fourteen ratification era essays in his Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States (Brooklyn, 1888). Ford added another seventeen works into the Antifederalist canon with his Essays on the Constitution (Brooklyn: Historical Printing Club, 1892). In 1965, Morton Borden published The Anti-Federalist Papers (1965), eighty-five Antifederalist essays intended to illustrate Antifederalist responses to each of the eight-five Federalist Papers. While some historians considered Borden’s organization of The Anti-Federalist Papers to be “overly contrived,” Borden succeeded in bringing attention and scholarship to overlooked Antifederalist sources. Cecilia M. Kenyon also shined light on the subject with The Antifederalists (1965). Historians Jackson Turner Main and Forrest McDonald further bolstered Antifederalist scholarship. Jackson T. Main, The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781-1788 (Chapel Hill, 1961); Forrest McDonald, “The Anti-Federalists, 1781-1789,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, 46 (1963), 206-214. In 1981 Herbert J. Storing published seven volumes of Antifederalist materials under the ambitious title, The Complete Anti-Federalist. Starting in 1976, Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski and Gaspare J. Saladino began the monumental process of assembling into over 40 volumes the authoritative Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (hereinafter the DHRC).
[2] According to the editors of the DHRC, the Federal Farmer represented “[t]he best Antifederalist writing on the Constitution.” 19 DHRC 203. Other editors have agreed that “[t]he Constitution’s most sustained critique came from the Letters from the Federal Farmer.” Robert J. Allison & Bernard Bailyn, eds., The Essential Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches and Writings (New York: The Library of America, 2018). Similarly, for Herbert J. Storing the Observations of the Federal Farmer “are generally, and correctly, considered to be one of the ablest Anti-Federal pieces…” The Complete Anti-Federalist, 2:214.
Political scientist, Michael J. Farber, suggests that the essays of Brutus were the “most effective and direct response to Publius and other Federalist writers….” Nevertheless, Farber argues that “the most elegant and compelling case against ratification was made by the Federal Farmer,” who offered “a cogent and concise critique of the Constitution.” Michael J. Farber, An Anti-Federalist Constitution: The Development of Dissent (University Press of Kansas, 2019), 37.
[3] Edward Carrington to Thomas Jefferson, 20 DHRC 978.
[4] Federalist No. 68.
[5] In an unsigned contemporaneous review in the American Magazine, Noah Webster is believed to have opined that the Federal Farmer wrote “with more candor and good sense” than most other Antifederalist authors. Webster also complimented the Federal Farmer’s “many judicious remarks,” notwithstanding fatiguing repetitions. Similarly, 18thcentury jurist James Kent agreed that the Federal Farmer illustrated the Constitution’s defects in a “candid & rational manner.” James Kent to Nathanial Lawrence, 19 DHRC 206.
[6] Federal Gazette, 23 March 1796 (containing the March 18 debate in the House of Representatives and identifying the Federal Farmer as “a writer of considerable celebrity”); American Intelligencer, 10 May 1796 (describing the Federal Farmer as a “distinguished writer of the day).
[7] See e.g., SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109, 148 (2024), Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 271 (1985).
[8] Joseph C. Morton, Shapers of the Great Debate at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 (Greenwood Press, 2005), 107; Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men (New York: Random House, 2009), 356.
[9] David J. Siemers, The Antifederalists: Men of Great Faith and Forbearance (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 192.
[10] Siemers, 192.
[11] Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: Knopf, 1996), 229.
[12] Bruce Frohnen, The Anti-Federalists: Selected Writings and Speeches (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2001), 141.
[13] 19 DHRC 203. Publication by pamphlet may have been intended to result in a broader circulation than newspaper publication.
[14] 19 DHRC 203.
[15] 20 DHRC 976.
[16] 19 DHRC 203-206.
[17] 19 DHRC 206.
[18] Clinton Rossiter, 1787 The Grand Convention (New York: Macmillian, 1966), 86.
[19] Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men (New York: Random House, 2009), 113-114.
[20] Farrand,1:34, 42.
[21] Farrand, 1:48.
[22] Klarman, 142.
[23] https://csac.history.wisc.edu/2025/04/01/identifying-the-federal-farmer-unravelling-the-mystery-of-an-antifederalist-treasure/
[24] Beeman, 113.
[25] Beeman, 113.
[26] Farrand, 3:104.
[27] 4 DHRC xliv.
[28] Farrand: 2, 632.
[29] Jackson Turner Main, The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution (1961), 177.
[30] Michael Allen Gillespie & Michael Lienesch, eds., Ratifying the Constitution (University of Kansas, 1989), 148.
[31] Michael J. Klarman, The Framers’ Coup (Oxford University Press, 2016), 142; Morton, 110.
[32] Storing, 2:111.
[33] Storing, 111.
[34] Beeman, 372.
[35] Gordon S. Wood, The Authorship of the Letters from the Federal Farmer. WMQ 3rd ser. 31 (1974): 299–308.
[36] In 1697 Isaac Newton anonymously submitted a solution to a math competition. Upon reviewing Newton’s solution, Jean Bernoulli is believed to have exclaimed, “tanquam ex ungue leonem” (we recognize the lion by his claw).