How IRL Argued the Constitution Into Existence

A special edition note from Ryan & Rae Lambert, co-founders of River.

🎧 Listen to Ryan & Rae Lambert, co-founders of River, read to you:

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Welcome back to The Current, River’s monthly-ish newsletter. This week, we’re trying something different. It’s the Fourth of July weekend—while most folks are manning the grill or hitting the road, Ryan found himself tumbling down a rabbit hole about... The Federalist Papers. Naturally.

Instead of our usual community-building playbook, we’re diving into how in-person debate, conversation, and gathering helped shape American law—and what that tells us about how we organize ourselves today.

If you're more in the mood to listen than read, we’ve recorded this one for ya.

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The Pub Behind the Papers: How In-Person Debate Shaped the American Republic

We love to mythologize the founding of the U.S.: powdered wigs, quill pens, “We the People.”

But the real story? Way messier. And far more human.

After the Constitution was drafted in Philadelphia, it didn’t just become law. It was argued into existence by people in rooms together: in public, with strangers, neighbors, and political enemies packed into taverns, coffee houses, churches, and living rooms. What we now call “IRL.”

And at the center of that chaos? Eighty-five essays signed “Publius.” The Federalist Papers. Written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, these essays weren’t high-minded theory for elites. They were viral content—eighteenth-century Substacks engineered for distribution, reaction, and debate.

And crucially, most rooms were mixed. Federalists and Anti-Federalists argued over the same paragraph because they cared, not because they agreed—a reminder that shared stakes, not shared ideology, turn audiences into communities.

Publius wasn’t preaching. They were provoking.

The ideas? Sharp. Subversive. And timeless.

• People glitch. So build guardrails.

• Structure > savior. Systems beat heroes.

• Conflict isn’t dysfunction. It’s a feature. Power should fight with itself.

The Papers rejected monarchy and inherited power. They built tension into the system. They layered government instead of simplifying it. And they were explicitly designed to scale—a radical concept when most thought democracy could only survive in tiny, homogenous city-states.

The Federalist Papers were meant to be dissected aloud. They weren’t holy writ; they were invitations to spar.

But what really made them work wasn’t just the ideas. It was how they spread.

From print to pints: The original distribution channel

The first Federalist essay dropped in The Independent Journal on October 27, 1787—barely a month after the Constitution was signed. America was fracturing. The Articles of Confederation had failed. The Constitution faced backlash.

Enter “Publius”.

Hamilton ran what can only be called a pre-digital growth hack: 85 essays in 8 months. That's nearly 3 newsletters a week! Each was printed in small batches (~1,800 copies) and passed hand-to-hand until one piece could hit ~100k eyeballs. Think “mid-tier YouTuber week-one views”—on horseback.

The Founders were writing for a nation-in-waiting. But they were also writing for rooms.

Print was just step one. The real distribution? Voice.

It wasn’t just mass media. It was mass proximity.

Reading aloud, arguing together

In 1787, mass literacy wasn’t a given. Most Americans heard political ideas before they read them. At the local tavern or church social, someone read the latest essay out loud. Then the debate began.

A carpenter asks: “Won’t this Constitution crush the states?”

His neighbor replies: “Better that than another war.”

Another quotes scripture. Someone else brings up their time in Washington’s army. It gets heated. But it stays human because these people have to live and work together every day.

We forget: most people weren’t persuaded by reading. They were persuaded by being in a room where someone they respected said, “Here’s what I think and why this matters.”

It wasn’t just content consumption. It was a feedback loop.

The 18th-century comment section

Printers had an exchange network: a New York paper could reach Philadelphia in two days, get reset, and show up in a tavern that weekend. Anti-Federalists writing under pseudonyms like “Brutus” and “Cato” read Hamilton and fired back fast. The cycle looked like this:

• Sep 27: Cato I drops (anti-federalist)

• Oct 18: Brutus I amplification (anti-federalist)

• Oct 27: Federalist No. 1 launches

• Nov–Feb: Rebuttals fly back and forth every 48 hours (in writing!)

Call it early-Twitter with a postal delay. But with fewer dunks, and more actual engagement.

Letters-to-the-editor became the public comment thread. Essayists tracked which fears (standing armies, distant capitals) were catching fire, then tailored their next drop accordingly.

Audience-aware content strategy…in 1787.

That rapid back-and-forth is the 18th century version of fans replying to a creator’s newsletter and seeing their feedback show up in the next drop.

The social layer wasn’t digital. It was proximity.

Cities like Boston, Philly, and New York had multipurpose coffee houses that were part Starbucks, part WeWork, part Capitol Hill. Places like the Merchant’s Coffee House in New York or City Tavern in Philly weren’t just where people grabbed drinks. They were political combustion chambers.

Imagine this: A farmer hears Madison’s takedown of factionalism in Federalist No. 10 and says, “This won’t work in a country this size.” A lawyer next to him quotes Cicero. A baker references a sermon.

No tweet thread replicates that energy.

And the founders knew it. These essays weren’t sermons. They were sparring invitations. They trusted that ideas got sharper when people clashed in person.

Presence was the persuasion layer

We often forget: the Constitution almost didn’t happen. New York was hostile. Virginia was divided. The Constitution could’ve collapsed. Hamilton and Madison weren’t just trying to win arguments. They were trying to win ratification. But it was won, table by table, conversation by conversation.

We focus so much on what was written, but forget what was felt.

The Founders understood something we’ve lost: persuasion is physical. A nod. A pause. A shared joke. A tension break. These things don’t exist in text threads.

They wrote for rooms of common men.

They shipped essays to key allies, knowing they’d go viral the old-fashioned way: around a table.

Community wasn’t built on agreement. It was built on stakes.

We love the term like-minded, but that’s not what created community in 1787.

The Federalists and Anti-Federalists didn’t share the same ideology. But they did share the same stakes. Everyone had skin in the game. That’s what made the debates real. And intense.

Brutus and Cato weren’t trolls. They were legit thinkers who sharpened Publius by forcing better arguments. Their critiques—on rights, representation, and federal overreach—eventually pushed Madison to draft the Bill of Rights. Opposition made the final product stronger.

And many of the most powerful arguments came from people who never signed the Constitution. Mercy Otis Warren. Luther Martin. Robert Yates. They were the conscience, not the cheerleaders.

IRL wasn’t nostalgia. It was infrastructure.

The Founders didn’t have mass media. They had mass proximity. Their platform was the pub. Their growth engine was argument. Their algorithm was word of mouth.

And it worked.

Because people had to show up. They had to sit across from someone, hear a counterpoint, and think. It wasn’t about being right. It was about being heard.

You don’t get that from a post. You get that from a table.

From Publius, with love

At River, we’ve seen this play out again and again. Communities don’t form because everyone agrees. They form when people show up with a shared purpose. Vibes and demographics don’t have staying power. Stakes do.

What the Founders did in 1787 wasn’t perfect. They had massive blind spots. But they nailed something essential: if you want ideas to take root, you have to get people in the same room.

Because friction is where clarity happens. And physical presence is what makes persuasion stick.

Because they cared—not because they agreed—the debates that shaped America unfolded shoulder-to-shoulder around tables, where friction, focus, and patience forged better answers and kept the fire alive.

In 1787, the most powerful tool wasn’t a printing press.

It was a crowded room.

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