Abstract

Another early series of articles criticizing the proposed Constitution were published in the New York Journal under the pseudonym "Cato", in honor of the Roman defender of republican virtue and liberty against the usurpations of Julius Caesar, familiar to eighteenth-century Americans both from Plutarch's classic biography and from Jospeh Addison's popular 1713 play, "Cato". Most scholars think the author was New York Governor George Clinton, but there is no conclusive evidence of that.