Claimed by Alexander Hamilton
Serves 4 · 2 of 5 items checked · 3 aisles
Meat & Poultry
Dairy & Eggs
- Checked by Alexander Hamilton
Spices & Seasoning
- Checked by James Madison
Gathering
Publius at table
1788 · New York, New York
Hamilton gathers Madison, Adams, and Washington as the Federalist essays appear and New York's ratification hangs in the balance.
The Federalist essays are appearing in the newspapers two or three a week, and Hamilton is writing at a furious pace. He has asked Madison, his collaborator under the name Publius, to dine, and Adams and Washington have come to hear how the ratification fight is going.
Hamilton is confident and exhausting; Madison is precise and quietly corrects him; Adams is skeptical of the whole project of a strong central government, and says so. Washington, who has been reading the essays with approval, lets them argue. They eat oyster stew, fried oysters, and johnnycake, finish with election cake, and drink madeira punch, while Hamilton talks about the union as if its survival depended on the next issue — which, he believes, it does.
The table
Host: Alexander Hamilton
James Madison — Co-author of the Federalist essays and a delegate to the Virginia convention.
John Adams — Skeptical of concentrated power, though a supporter of the new frame.
George Washington — Reading the essays with approval and lending his prestige to ratification.
The menu
Everything you need to host this menu, sorted aisle by aisle:
The menu
11 of 32 items checked
Claimed by James Madison
Serves 4 · 2 of 7 items checked · 5 aisles
Claimed by John Adams
Serves 8 · 2 of 5 items checked · 4 aisles
Claimed by George Washington
Serves 12 · 3 of 9 items checked · 3 aisles
Claimed by Alexander Hamilton
Serves 12 · 2 of 6 items checked · 4 aisles
The conversation
Alexander Hamilton
A government that cannot tax cannot defend. The union needs a bank, and the Constitution grants what is necessary to its ends.
James Madison
Necessary — or convenient? The words must be read narrowly, or the states will find themselves subjects.
John Adams
I care less for the bank than for the balance. A single assembly is a dagger pointed at the people's liberty.
George Washington
Then let us write it carefully, and let the argument be public. I have no wish to be a king, and no wish to be a cipher.
A reconstruction — imagined from the figures' own writings.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.