Daniel Slate's paper traces the influence of Hebraic republicanism throughout the debates on whether the States should ratify the federal Constitution. It documents a heretofore unexplored chapter of the history of American constitutional thought, whose dramatis personae include both famous and obscure participants in the ratification conventions and the pamphleteering debates surrounding them. Both Antifederalists and Federalists, including Melancton Smith and Benjamin Franklin - in his only published intervention during the ratification debates - deployed the political discourse of Hebraic republicanism as part of the founding constitutional moment.

Daniel is a graduate student in the Political Science Department at Stanford.