Quick! Name as many of America’s Founding Fathers as you can.
Most educated Americans, and most historians, would probably name Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton. After that, we’d either run out of names, or else there would be vigorous arguments over who deserved to be ranked with such distinguished company.
But why so few? And why these few, rather than others? The Declaration of Independence had 56 signers, and the convention that drew up our Constitution had 55 delegates. And that is to say nothing of the many other patriots who contributed heroically to making us a nation. Why do we really know only a handful of them?
This question is explored in a fascinating essay published in the fall issue of The Intercollegiate Review. The essay is, “Founders Famous and Forgotten”, by Daniel L. Dreisbach, Professor of Justice, Law, and Society at American University in Washington, D.C.
According to Professor Dreisbach, there are a variety of reasons why so many of America’s founders have been neglected. Age is one. Some founders were older than the ones we remember, and died before they could play starring roles in the new republic they helped to create. Of the five famous founders, only Franklin, who died in 1790, did not go on to hold high federal office, whereas Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison were respectively the first, second, third and fourth presidents of the United States, and Hamilton was the first secretary of the treasury.
Other founders didn’t leave enough of a paper trail for historians to follow. One signer of the Declaration of Independence, John Witherspoon of New Jersey, was doubly disadvantaged in this respect. A native of Scotland and an eminent theologian, Witherspoon served as president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). Many of his private papers were burned when the college and his home were sacked by the vengeful British after the Battle of Princeton. Witherspoon himself completed the holocaust by ordering the destruction of many of his papers upon his death.
Still other founders took unpopular stands that diminished their reputations. John Dickinson refused to sign the Declaration of Independence, because he considered it premature and intemperate. Notwithstanding the fact that he later fought in the Revolution and served as elected chief executive of both Delaware and Pennsylvania, his reputation never recovered.
Similarly, George Mason of Virginia fiercely opposed the ratification of the Constitution –- which he helped to draft -- because the finished document contained no Bill of Rights. It was largely because of Mason’s insistence that a Bill of Rights was soon added to the Constitution and, when it was, it was based on the earlier Virginia Declaration of Rights, which Mason had authored. But Mason’s enormous contribution to our civil liberties remains forever overshadowed by his earlier fight against ratification.
Having strong religious opinions, either pro or con, is another way that certain of our founders unwittingly courted obscurity. Liberal historians like to think of the Founding Fathers as men of the Enlightenment; that is, as deists and rationalists. So they have given short shrift to those founders –- such as Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Roger Sherman, John Jay and the aforementioned John Witherspoon -- who were motivated by deep religious convictions. At the other extreme, Tom Paine was damned by Teddy Roosevelt and other orthodox believers as that “filthy little atheist.”
Finally, some of our founders were forgotten because they were embarrassing. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, who is credited with writing the Preamble to the Constitution (“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union …”) was a notorious rake and lecher. So history swept him under the carpet. Much the same fate befell James Wilson of North Carolina. Wilson was a brilliant lawyer and speaker who, after Gouverneur Morris, made the greatest number of speeches at the Constitutional Convention. Wilson went on to become a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. But he unwisely speculated in land and died disgraced in 1798, while fleeing from his creditors after the real estate bubble burst. Aaron Burr lives on in our national memory, but we take no pride in him.
So the Muse of History is fickle in her favors. John Hancock, who was an early advocate of American independence and later governor of Massachusetts, is remembered primarily because of his flashy signature. The man who signed the Declaration of Independence immediately after him, Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire, achieved a strange sort of fame over two centuries later, when his name was used for a fictional president of the United States in the TV series, The West Wing. But the screenwriters spelled “Bartlet” with only one “t.”
Professor Dreisbach concludes that we are very much the poorer for our neglect of so many of our founders. He writes: “The demands of honest scholarship require scholars to give attention to the thoughts, words and deeds of not only a few selected demigods but also an expansive company of men and women who contributed to the founding of the American republic.”
Given the fact that so many of the issues that the founders wrestled with –- such as the checks and balances between our three branches of government, state-federal relations, the separation of church and state, and the nature and extent of individual rights –- are still very much with us, a better understanding of our past may help us to make wiser policy decisions today.
