<P> Both Hopkins's and Gideon's editions incorporated significant edits to the text of the papers themselves, generally with the approval of the authors . In 1863, Henry Dawson published an edition containing the original text of the papers, arguing that they should be preserved as they were written in that particular historical moment, not as edited by the authors years later . </P> <P> Modern scholars generally use the text prepared by Jacob E. Cooke for his 1961 edition of The Federalist; this edition used the newspaper texts for essay numbers 1--76 and the McLean edition for essay numbers 77--85 . </P> <P> The authorship of seventy - three of The Federalist essays is fairly certain . Twelve of these essays are disputed over by some scholars, though the modern consensus is that Madison wrote essays Nos. 49--58, with Nos. 18--20 being products of a collaboration between him and Hamilton; No. 64 was by John Jay . The first open designation of which essay belonged to whom was provided by Hamilton who, in the days before his ultimately fatal gun duel with Aaron Burr, provided his lawyer with a list detailing the author of each number . This list credited Hamilton with a full sixty - three of the essays (three of those being jointly written with Madison), almost three - quarters of the whole, and was used as the basis for an 1810 printing that was the first to make specific attribution for the essays . </P> <P> Madison did not immediately dispute Hamilton's list, but provided his own list for the 1818 Gideon edition of The Federalist . Madison claimed twenty - nine numbers for himself, and he suggested that the difference between the two lists was "owing doubtless to the hurry in which (Hamilton's) memorandum was made out ." A known error in Hamilton's list--Hamilton incorrectly ascribed No. 54 to John Jay, when in fact, Jay wrote No. 64--provided some evidence for Madison's suggestion . </P>

Who wrote the most essays in the federalist papers