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smacktoward · 2019-11-05 · Original thread
You keep saying "peer review" but I'm not sure how it applies here. The main way information was distributed in the era of the Federalist Papers was through newspapers, and at the time newspapers were almost entirely enterprises set up by political activists to advance the line of their particular faction. The Federalist Papers were written by several prominent members of the Federalists (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Party), a movement that would go on to become the first real American political party, and published anonymously in Federalist-leaning newspapers. There was no "peer review" in the sense of any of their opponents reviewing them before publication.

If you want a good sense for what newspapering was like in the early American republic, I highly recommend Richard Rosenfeld's book American Aurora (https://www.amazon.com/American-Aurora-Democratic-Republican...), the story of a newspaper that opposed the Federalists and the price its editor paid for that opposition.

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