A Preview of the Impartial Examiner

The Impartial Examiner was a series of Anti-Federalist Papers published in Virginia during the first half of 1788.

A Story

Over the past five months, I have reviewed the Essays of Brutus each Friday.

Now, it is time to move on to the Impartial Examiner.

Before getting to the essays themselves, I wanted to do a ‘prequel’ article to prepare for the discussion.

After reading for an hour or so, I did a quick Google search to see what comes up.

The first link to appear was this:

The Impartial Examiner Confronts Arbitrary Government

Yeah, that’s an article I wrote last summer.

I had specifically chosen the Impartial Examiner because I hadn’t yet written about it...or so I thought.

Feel free to click the link to get a general summary of the Impartial Examiner while we prepare to dive deeper into its contents and importance.

Preview

With that out of the way, let’s cover the basics.

The Impartial Examiner was printed in five parts in Virginia during the ratification debates.

Virginia had one of the strongest contingents of Anti-Federalists, led by none other than Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry (not to mention Edmund Randolph and George Mason who both refused to sign the Constitution).

While the author of the Impartial Examiner seems to be a total mystery, it’s publication in the first half of 1788 helped turn Virginia’s Ratification Convention into an extremely close vote.

That State approved the Constitution by a tally of 89-79.

Just six votes the other way and the whole Union might have fallen apart.

Next week we take a deep dive into Impartial Examiner I.

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