The Federal Farmer

The Federal Farmer was the pseudonym used by an Anti-Federalist who wrote a methodical assessment of the proposed United States Constitution that was among the more important documents of the ratification debate.

On November 8, 1787, the New York Journal began to advertise a new pamphlet entitled Observations Leading to a Fair Examination of the System of Government Proposed by the Late Convention; and to Several Essential and Necessary Alterations in It.

The letters also began to appear in newspapers; on November 14 the Poughkeepsie County Journal started publishing the series, finishing on January 2.

Also printed by Thomas Greenleaf, this pamphlet, entitled An Additional Number of Letters From the Federal Farmer to the Republican Leading to a Fair Examination of the System of Government Proposed by the Late Convention; To Several Essential and Necessary Alterations in It; And Calculated to Illustrate and Support the Principles and Positions Laid Down in the Preceding Letters, was first advertised in the Journal on May 2.

[10] Many contemporary writers admitted the author's identity was unknown to them, including Noah Webster, Timothy Pickering, and Edward Carrington, who was in New York with Lee at the time the pamphlets were composed.

Lee is not known ever to have written an extended piece for public consumption, and Wood concludes that the production of 181 pages of pamphlets in less than half a year was not his style.

[16] Wood identifies differences in style and content between the Federal Farmer pamphlets and a letter from Lee to Edmund Randolph that was published in various newspapers.

[17] While the Federal Farmer's style displays "moderation, reasonableness, and tentativeness," the letter known to be Lee's contained "exclamatory statements" and "charged phrases.

"[18] The Federal Farmer makes references primarily to the New England states and New York, while Lee focuses particularly on the ways in which the proposed Constitution would be harmful to the South.

Finally, Lee's letter and the Federal Farmer pamphlets recommend significantly different measures for remedying the problems with the proposed Constitution; Lee was particularly interested in limiting Congressional control over commerce while the Federal Farmer was most concerned with the threat posed to the states by excess consolidation of national power.

At about the same time as Wood, Herbert Storing, who was working on his 1981 collection The Complete Anti-Federalist, came to the same conclusion that the case for Lee's authorship was weak, the only original evidence being the Courant article.

Walter Bennett, editor of a 1979 edition of the Federal Farmer, disagrees with Wood on many points but concludes that the evidence for Lee is not "sufficient to justify continuing this attribution.

Webking speculates that Smith might have kept his authorship of the Federal Farmer pamphlets a close secret so as not to jeopardize his future as a politician in heavily Federalist New York City.