Who wrote The Federalist Papers?

The authorship of the work in question was a secret at the
time.  Historical scholarship reveals that work originally entitled The Federalist was
the combined effort of James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton.  Each of them
wrote different articles, or "papers," that later became known as "The Federalist
Papers."  As the title indicates, the combined effort of the men was to espouse the
Federalist position that the new national Constitution should assume.  At the time of
writing, the schism that gripped the political framers rested between the federalists
and the antifederalists.  The latter favored a decentralized form of government, or at
the least a central government without a great deal of power.  They preferred the state
governments possessing power that could act as a check against a rogue centralized
government.  For the federalists, this was a recipe for disasters like Shays'
Rebellion.  The federalist position was one whereby the federal government was needed to
avoid crises in the nation's political governance.  Strong and meaningful federal
government could avert disasters like Shays' Rebellion and allow the proper execution of
governmental affairs better than a series of state governments, something that caused
the nation's first constitution, The Articles of Confederation, to
fail.