Federalist No. 70 contains Hamilton's memorable argument that "energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government," a claim that opens up substantial room for debate about the proper scope of presidential power, both historically and in current political discourse. An essay assignment built around this essay should engage students with both the historical argument and its ongoing relevance.

A strong assignment on this essay should require students to explain not just Hamilton's conclusion (that a single executive is preferable to a plural one) but his actual reasoning, which centers on accountability: a single executive cannot hide behind shared responsibility the way a group of co-equal executives could, making it easier to identify and hold accountable whoever is responsible for a given decision.

Because debates over executive power remain genuinely contested in American politics, this assignment also offers a natural opportunity to teach students to separate historical analysis from present-day political opinion, requiring them to first establish Hamilton's actual argument before evaluating its relevance to current debates about presidential authority.

A well-designed prompt should also push students to consider Hamilton's own caveats and limitations, since even his strong defense of executive energy in Federalist No. 70 does not argue for unlimited or unchecked power, a nuance that students sometimes miss if they only read the essay's most quotable lines.

Essay Prompt Options

These prompts range from purely historical analysis to more applied questions connecting Hamilton's argument to contemporary debates about executive authority.

• Explain Hamilton's argument for why a single executive is preferable to a plural executive
• Explain how Hamilton's accountability argument connects to his broader vision of good government
• Evaluate whether modern presidential power exceeds what Hamilton envisioned in Federalist No. 70
• Analyze how Hamilton balances his defense of executive energy with concerns about potential abuse of power
• Compare Hamilton's vision of executive power to the plural executive structures used in some state governments

Grading Considerations Specific to This Topic

Because executive power remains a genuinely contested topic in contemporary politics, grading criteria should explicitly reward analytical rigor and accurate use of the primary source over agreement with any particular position on modern presidential authority. This distinction matters more for this essay than for some other Federalist Papers topics, given how directly it connects to current political debate.

Watch for essays that conflate Hamilton's specific argument about accountability with a broader, less precise claim that Hamilton simply favored a powerful presidency without qualification. Students who cite the accountability reasoning specifically demonstrate a more careful reading than those who only reference the essay's more general defense of executive energy.

Connecting to Broader Unit Themes

This assignment pairs well with Federalist No. 51's discussion of checks and balances, since a genuinely strong essay on executive power should acknowledge how Hamilton's argument for a strong, energetic executive fits within the broader system of institutional checks described elsewhere in The Federalist Papers, not as an isolated argument for unchecked presidential authority.

Teachers building a full unit around executive power might also pair this essay with contemporary readings on executive orders or emergency powers, giving students concrete modern material to connect back to Hamilton's eighteenth-century argument.

Managing Fair Grading on a Politically Salient Topic

Because this assignment touches on contested current political questions about presidential power, maintaining grading consistency across a large class or across multiple graders matters especially here, to ensure students are evaluated on their analytical rigor rather than which side of a modern debate they ultimately land on. A clear, well-documented rubric, applied uniformly to every essay, helps preserve that fairness across a full class set.

Grading tools that support consistent, criteria-based evaluation across large batches of essays can be particularly useful for topics like this one, where the risk of unconscious grading drift based on a student's political conclusions is genuinely higher than for a more purely historical assignment.