The argument in one screen
Force is sometimes unavoidable in politics
Hamilton says seditions and insurrections are ordinary political maladies. No serious constitution can assume law alone will always suffice.
This is not a uniquely federal problem
State governments already face the same possibility. Massachusetts and Pennsylvania show that smaller polities may need force too.
Representation is the first security
The power of the proposed government remains in the hands of representatives of the people, which Hamilton calls the only effective security attainable in civil society.
The states and the people still hold counter-power
If either level of government invades rights, the people can use the other as an instrument of redress — and, in extremity, retain the original right of self-defense.
Why Hamilton pushes past the force objection
Federalist 27 argued that the Constitution can usually work through ordinary law. Federalist 28 adds the hard case: what about rebellion, insurrection, or a government that abuses its powers?
Hamilton says force may sometimes be necessary in any real political order. The mistake is to treat that possibility as if it proves the proposed Constitution uniquely dangerous. In truth, smaller states and smaller confederacies would face the same emergencies, often with fewer safeguards and worse prospects.
The essay matters because Hamilton is also drawing a map of resistance. He argues that the states are not erased by the Constitution. They remain organized authorities with local attachment, while the people remain the ultimate source of power and, in extremity, of self-defense.
“THAT there may happen cases, in which the national government may be necessitated to resort to force, cannot be denied.”
Hamilton begins by conceding the hard fact directly. The question is not whether emergencies exist, but how a constitution handles them.
“This is the essential, and after all the only efficacious security for the rights and privileges of the people which is attainable in civil society.”
His immediate answer is representative control. National power does not sit outside the people; it is lodged in their representatives.
“If their rights are invaded by either, they can make use of the other, as the instrument of redress.”
Hamilton's federalism is not just a division of labor. It is a division of power that gives the people more than one institutional base from which to resist encroachment.
How Hamilton builds the case
He normalizes emergency force
Hamilton argues that rebellion and insurrection are not special features of federal union. They are possibilities in any civil society, including state governments and small republics.
He makes representation the first constitutional defense
The whole power of the proposed government is placed in representatives of the people rather than in an independent military caste or hereditary executive.
He turns federalism into a liberty safeguard
Because state and national governments coexist, power checks power. If one level overreaches, the other can become a rallying point for resistance and redress.
Why Federalist 28 matters in the larger Publius argument
Federalist 28 matters because it answers the deepest Anti-Federalist fear behind Hamilton's defense sequence: that a stronger Union must eventually crush local liberty. Hamilton's answer is that the Constitution creates not one irresistible power, but a structured rivalry in which governments can check governments and the people remain the final source of legitimacy.
The essay also pairs naturally with Federalist 51. Madison later gives the institutional formula — ambition must counteract ambition — but Hamilton is already sketching that logic here in more urgent, political terms.
If you want the sequence immediately behind this essay, read Federalist 27 and Federalist 26. Then continue to Federalist 29 and Federalist 30, where Hamilton turns from resistance theory to the militia and then to the revenue power needed to sustain the Union. If you want the broader Hamilton frame, go back to the Hamilton authority page.
What to read next
Primary sources and further reading
- The Federalist No. 28, [26 December 1787] | Founders Online — Hamilton's argument that emergency force may sometimes be necessary, but the states and the people remain effective checks against national usurpation.
Related essays by theme
Use Federalist 28 to see Hamilton's answer on power and resistance
This is the essay where Hamilton says the Constitution does not leave the people helpless before one consolidated authority. Read it if you want the clearest founding case that federalism itself can become a practical protection of liberty.
Hamilton's last-resort case still frames how free peoples think about defending their own government.