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The Federalist Papers

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to Chromatic Conflux! Today we have more of a light anecdote than anything else. It'll probably be fairly brief–that's the direction my posts seem to be trending in at the moment. Let's get right into it:


If, as I did, you stumbled upon the Wikipedia article for The Federalist papers on July 12, 2020, you would have been greeted with the following opening paragraph:


The Federalist Papers is a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the collective pseudonym "Publius" to promote the ratification of the United States Constitution. The collection was commonly known as The Federalist until the name The Federalist Papers emerged in the 20th century. The original plan was to write a total of 25 essays, the work divided evenly among the three men. In the end, they wrote 85 essays in the span of seven months. John Jay wrote 5 essays, James Madison wrote 29 essays, and Hamilton wrote the remaining 51 essays.


Now, you might not notice anything wrong with this paragraph. But to me it felt suspiciously like a song I'd heard. Here is an except from the Hamilton song "Non-Stop":


Alexander [Hamilton] joins forces with James Madison and John Jay to write a series of essays defending the new United States Constitution, entitled The Federalist Papers. The plan was to write a total of 25 essays, the work divided evenly among the three men. In the end, they wrote 85 essays, in the span of 6 months. John Jay got sick after writing 5. James Madison wrote 29. Hamilton wrote the other 51!


Which raised the question: did Lin-Manuel Miranda copy Wikipedia, or did a random Wikipedia editor copy Hamilton?


To answer this question, we need to journey far back in the edit history of this Wikipedia article.


The article for The Federalist papers was originally created back in 2001 as a meager paragraph and change. By 2004, the article had solidified, with its first paragraph reading simply:


The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles about the United States Constitution, first published serially in New York City newspapers (the Independent Journal, the New-York Packet and the Daily Advertiser) between October 27, 1787 and May 28, 1788. A compilation, called The Federalist, was published in 1788.


By 2006, some additional sentences were added, but about a year later they were moved to the second paragraph. Over this period, the text was undergoing some minor changes, but it remained generally the same. On May 5, 2020, here was the first paragraph:


The Federalist Papers is a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the pseudonym "Publius" to promote the ratification of the United States Constitution. The collection was commonly known as The Federalist until the name The Federalist Papers emerged in the 20th century.


However, the following day, an anonymous user made a change to the page, labelling their edit as "added content." These were the added sentences, made in two edits:


The original plan was to write a total of 25 essays, the work divided evenly among the three men. In the end they wrote 85 Essays in the span of 6 Months. John Jay got sick after writing 5. James Madison wrote 29. Alexander Hamilton wrote the other 51.


On May 11, user Axeman89 noticed the Hamilton quote. They modified the grammar a bit, but the essence of the sentences remained. They underwent no significant changes until the first of July, when Libertybison changed "John Jay got sick after writing five" to "Jay wrote five," saying that "Jay only wrote 4 articles before he fell ill, he wrote his 5th article later."*


And then it just stayed like that.


Enter Me (He Says In Parentheses)

I couldn't resist taking the joke to the extreme when I figured all of this out. I added some of the lyrics afterward:


How do you write like you're running out of time? Write day and night like tomorrow won't arrive? Every day you fight like you're running out of time, and keep on fighting in the meantime.


That was immediately reverted, so I tried a milder edit. I put in the Genius lyrics page for Non-Stop as an inline citation. So a little [1] appeared at the end, linking to Hamilton lyrics. Eventually, a kind editor removed the citation as well as the plagiarism from the musical. Wikipedia was free from vandalism, even if it was slightly fun vandalism.


I'm counting that as a win.

Title page of the first collection of The Federalist (1788). This particular volume was a gift from Alexander Hamilton's wife Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton to her sister Angelica. Also, the cover image on the Wikipedia article.

–beautifulthorns


*I will note that many historians believe Jay wrote all five of his essays at the start, but the fifth one was simply published later.

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