The success or failure of countries, and politicians for that matter, are an often studied subject. Studies have been ongoing for centuries.
James Burgh, an English Whig, wrote: “Almost all political establishments have been the creates of chance rather than of wisdom. Therefore it is impossible to say what would be the effect of a perfect commonwealth” as there was no precedent in history. James Burgh, Political Disquisitions, Vol. 1, 23. (more…)
John Adams had strong opinions about federalism. He believed that the government should be structured similarly to the British Empire, given the British Empire’s extraordinary success.
At the time of the signing of the Constitution, Adams firmly believed that the Constitution had secured a national government, as opposed to a government dividing its sovereignty into states and a federal government. Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, 191. (more…)
For many of the Founding Fathers, the biggest threat to the stability and success of the United States was tyranny. Tyranny was a force that could bring down the most free and just societies. Underlying much of the creation of the institutions that now define the American government, the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive, are precautionary and prophylactic measures to prevent tyranny. (more…)
John Adams was amongst the most hopeful about America’s prospects for the future. At the time of the Declaration of Independence and the years of the American Revolution, he believed America could avoid the pitfalls of the European nations.
But just ten years later, Adams was of a different mind. In 1787, he wrote his Defence of the Constitutions, where he concluded that “his countrymen were as corrupt as any nation in the world.” Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, 181. (more…)
In 1790 and 1791, Alexander Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury, proposed the creation of a financial system in four reports, which covered the topics of a national bank, a mint, and manufactures. Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, 133. (more…)
The effects of the American Revolution throughout the world were not immediately clear, but Thomas Jefferson opined that it would be “a movement on behalf of the rights of man.” Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, 110. (more…)
George Washington, to some, is revered as a brilliant general. To others, he is to be remembered because in his will drafted in the summer of 1799, he freed all of his slaves and took the extra step of ensuring that the slaves would be taught to read and write and be prepared for “some useful occupation.” Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, 40. (more…)
The Founding Fathers have a complicated legacy, and that legacy is constantly undergoing change. While the reverence of the Founding Fathers fluctuates generation-by-generation, certain questions emerge about the Founding Fathers’ effectiveness in setting the foundation for the United States.
Gordon Wood, in Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, presented the Founding Fathers’ legacy as: “If it was the intense commitment of this generation of founders to new enlightened values that separates it from other generations, why, it might be asked, and indeed, as it has been asked by recent critical historians, did these so-called enlightened and liberally educated gentlemen not do more to reform their society? Why did they fail to enhance the status of women? Eliminate slavery entirely? Treat the Indians in a more humane manner?” Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, 26.
It has become popular, glamorous even, to question the principles and integrity of the Founding Fathers in recent years, for their lack of ridding the country of its most foul traits. The Founding Fathers lived in a much different world than contemporary Americans.
To be fair to the Founding Fathers, accomplishing any of the goals similar to abolishing slavery, ensuring equality of men and women, and treating Indians in a humane manner, must have come after ensuring the creation of a government that would last ages. As Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and James Madison drafted the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers came to sign and approve those documents, their priority was creating an environment and a country that would facilitate future successes and ensure equality in for future generations.
The Founding Fathers were not in a position to contemplate every injustice and inequality, amidst the Revolutionary War, the tumultuous years of the early Republic, and the rapid growth of the country.
To expect them to have addressed and resolved every issue that was perhaps foreseeable at the time of the Revolution is to ignore their extraordinary accomplishments. The Founding Fathers collectively deliberated what the best form of government should be. They created the most extraordinary government that has thrived for over two centuries and has been a model for successful government.
While it is popular to question the Founding Fathers’ accomplishments, the context of their work must be remembered. We remember each American icon for their accomplishments, given the circumstances that existed during their respective times. The Founding Fathers’ time was perhaps the most tumultuous and contentious in American history, and yet they devised a system that has allowed one of the most free and just societies known to the world.
The political spirit of the colonies in the 1700s, while unfamiliar in many respects, has parallels to the modern political landscape in America. The colonies political thought was closer to Niccolo Machiavelli and Montesquieu, rather than John Locke.
The colonists generally “did not conceive of society in rational, mechanistic terms; rather society was organic and developmental.” Gordon Wood, Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787, 29. One of the common views at the time was: “It is with states as it is with men, they have their infancy, their manhood, and their decline.” Id. quoting Stow Persons, “The Cyclical Theory of History in Eighteenth-Century America,” American Quarterly, 6 (1954), 147-63.
This theory of nations and people presented “a variable organic cycle of birth, maturity, and death, in which states, like the human body, carried within themselves the seeds of their own dissolution,” with the speed of dissolution “depending on the changing spirit of the society.” Gordon Wood, Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787, 29 quoting Stow Persons, “The Cyclical Theory of History in Eighteenth-Century America,” American Quarterly, 6 (1954), 147-63.
In contemporary America, these beliefs regarding the cyclical nature of nations would resonate with many. Even if most modern Americans do not think in terms of analogizing nations with men, the rise and fall of nations is still a popular subject.
Notably, Americans, and their immediate predecessors, have always been painfully aware of the seemingly temporary nature of prosperity in the strongest of nations. Optimistically, Americans have always hoped to devise a system of government and a culture that was capable of avoiding what seems to be inevitable decline.
Whether that is possible or not, this American hope fuels an insecurity of decline and a desire to study history so as not to repeat it. Perhaps this insecurity can prevent or mitigate the most common causes of decline and even significantly delay decline, but can it stop decline from happening altogether? It is doubtful.
Benjamin Franklin, one of the most well-known and most revered Founding Fathers, had a more controversial history than most modern Americans realize.
In the late 1750s and early 1760s, Franklin was a “complete Anglophile.” Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, 79. He made “disparaging comments about the provinciality and vulgarity of America in contrast with the sophistication and worthiness of England.” Id. He also believed that America, not England, was “corrupt and luxury-loving.” Id.
While living in England, Franklin was becoming more influential and had become a deputy postmaster. Id. at 84. In 1772, Franklin came into possession of some damning letters that would change his life. In the late 1760s, Thomas Hutchinson, the then-lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, had written letters to an Englishman advocating taking away liberties from the colonists so as to “maintain the colonies’ dependency on Great Britain.” Id. at 83. Franklin sent these letters to Massachusetts, prompting a crisis that would result in Franklin being terminated as deputy postmaster. Id.
In March 1775, he came back to America a changed man: a passionate patriot. Some of this passion was feigned, so as to show his fellow colonists that he was not an Englishman masquerading as a revolutionary. Id. at 84. He would become one of the most popular and widely respected Americans in the world, with only George Washington outshining him.
By the time of his death in 1790, Benjamin Franklin had created a legacy that lasts to this day. In the early Republic, that legacy was predicated on him showing that being self-made in America was not only possible, it was downright glamorous. Often forgotten or lost after those years of the early Republic, however, is that Franklin was not the same as the other Founding Fathers.
While Alexander Hamilton was not a full-blooded American and Thomas Jefferson spent a significant amount of time in Europe, Franklin so fully affiliated himself with England that it is difficult to draw a parallel to a contemporary American figure. In modern times, such an affiliation would certainly spell doom to a legacy.
Nonetheless, Franklin is remembered for his genius, his relatable nature, and his embodiment of the most American of ideals. Modern Americans’ forgiveness is likely warranted, but some may wonder: What if Franklin had not sent those letters? What would his legacy be then?
Last Best Hope of Earth 