In the previous essay, rivalry was framed as inevitable. Ambition, competition, and human nature—unchecked—were presented as the seeds of conflict. In Federalist No. 6, Alexander Hamilton warned that separate states would not coexist peacefully for long. In Federalist No. 7, he advances the argument further: rivalry does not remain theoretical. It hardens into disputes, and disputes escalate into violence.
Hamilton’s concern in this essay is not ideology, but geography. Borders, rivers, trade routes, and treaties become flashpoints when there is no common authority to resolve disagreements. States argue over boundaries. Commerce breeds resentment. Foreign powers exploit divisions. Arbitration fails. Force steps in to fill the vacuum.
For Hamilton, this is not a moral failing—it is a predictable outcome. Human beings, and by extension political bodies, do not relinquish advantage voluntarily. Where no shared adjudicator exists, the stronger party presses its claim. The weaker resists. Conflict follows.
From this premise, Hamilton draws a stark conclusion: a strong federal government is not merely beneficial, but necessary to prevent interstate war.
This is where the argument is at its most compelling—and most dangerous.
Hamilton’s logic rests on a familiar progression: conflict → insecurity → centralized authority → peace.
But embedded within that progression is a quiet transformation. The federal government is no longer just a referee. It becomes the ultimate arbiter of when disputes have gone too far—and when force is justified to resolve them.
What begins as conflict prevention becomes permission.
Hamilton assumes that consolidating power will reduce violence overall. And historically, the United States did avoid open warfare between states. On its own terms, the argument succeeded. Yet success raises a harder question: at what cost, and to whom?
By shifting disputes upward—to a national authority—the Constitution did not eliminate coercion. It restructured it. Violence did not disappear; it became organized, legitimized, and distant. Decisions once contested locally were now enforced federally, backed by standing armies, courts, and economic pressure.
The logic of Federalist No. 7 echoes forward through American history. The same reasoning used to prevent interstate conflict later justified federal interventions, territorial expansion, and national security doctrines grounded in preemptive force. Stability became the goal. Authority became the tool. Those affected by that authority were rarely the ones consenting to it.
Hamilton does not ask who bears the burden of enforced peace. He assumes that peace, once achieved, is self-evidently just.
But peace for whom?
Entire populations—enslaved people, Indigenous nations, the poor, the disenfranchised—were not protected by this framework. They were managed by it. The Constitution prevented states from warring with one another, while permitting systemic violence within them and beyond them.
Federalist No. 7 exposes a fault line that runs through American governance to this day: the belief that force, properly centralized, becomes ethical.
That belief deserves scrutiny.
If conflict is inevitable, as Hamilton insists, and if centralized power is the answer, then the moral burden does not vanish—it concentrates. The question is no longer whether force will be used, but who decides when it is necessary, and whose suffering counts as collateral.
Hamilton feared chaos more than coercion. In that fear, he helped design a system that prioritizes order over consent, stability over justice, and authority over accountability.
Federalist No. 7 does not merely argue for union. It lays the groundwork for a political tradition that equates peace with control—and treats resistance as a threat rather than a warning.
That legacy is still with us.
The Humane Herald 