Hamilton had assumed that one of his collaborators on The Federalist Papers, James Madison, would support him on these controversial proposals. During the Constitutional Convention three years earlier, the two had even discussed the necessity of assumption. But now, as a congressman from Virginia, Madison decided to side with his state’s interests rather than the economic needs of the federal government, and he denounced the plan. It was the beginning of the political divide that would soon consume the country as rancor and partisanship quickly rose to the fore in the House and the Senate.
