July 2014 Articles

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Founding Fathers

The Founding Fathers As July 4, 2014 approaches, Americans from the Atlantic to the Pacific will celebrate the anniversary of our nation’s independence, our 238 years of unbroken self-rule. Some will celebrate with fireworks; others, with burgers and barbecue. As for myself, I picked up a copy of Founding Brothers (2000), Joseph Ellis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the revolutionary generation. To say I was both moved and astonished by this book would be an understatement. While politicians and TV commentators mouth platitudes about the Revolution and our Constitution, Mr. Ellis has succeeded in transcending the clichés and recovering the fraught and messy origins of our democracy. Founding Brothers restores to life Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and the other revolutionary leaders; it examines their strengths, weaknesses, and contradictory motives; their rivalries and the betrayals that threatened the fledgling republic; and finally, the collaboration, the friendships beyond political differences, that fashioned thirteen fragile colonies into the United States of America. Indeed, to fully appreciate the sacrifices of the Founders, Mr. Ellis suggests that we must remember them, not as marble statues, but as real flesh-and-blood human beings, animated by “the exciting but terrifying sense [ . . . ] that they were making it up as they went along, improvising on the edge of catastrophe” (FB pg. 216).
And improvising they were, particularly in those heady days after the Constitution’s ratification and the inauguration of President Washington in 1789. As Mr. Ellis states, despite America’s “bountiful natural resources provid[ing] [them] with massive advantages and almost limitless potential,” (7) the biggest challenge facing the Founders was that no one in history had ever before “established a republican government on the scale of the United States” (11). Other problems abounded as well: the thirteen colonies had little shared history; African-American slavery divided North and South; and finally, even the Founders themselves disagreed on how strong the federal government should be relative to the states. This leads, per Mr. Ellis, to the “central paradox of the revolutionary era,” namely that the “long-term prospects for the [ . . . ] American nation were extraordinarily hopeful [ . . . . ] but the short-term prospects were bleak in the extreme” (8). The Founders’ great achievement, then, was their navigation of the political trials of the 1790’s, and the establishment of a national government in the face of these problems, a government that could accommodate their radically different views on the Revolution and its meaning.
But what were these radically different views, and which of the Founders most fully embodied them? The answer appears in the early chapters of Founding Brothers, which focus on Alexander Hamilton, the young, resplendent Secretary of the Treasury; and Thomas Jefferson, the charming and enigmatic Secretary of State. Of the first, Hamilton was ambitious, energetic, imposing – he served as President Washington’s closest advisor, as well as the intellectual leader of the New England-based Federalist Party.
He advocated for a strong federal government and an integrated national economy that would enshrine the “urban elite – the merchants, bankers, and business leaders – as the central figures of American society” (64). In Hamilton’s mind, concentrating political power in the federal government, and economic power in Wall Street, would create a dynamic force capable of propelling forward the American republic and spreading economic benefits to all. Certainly, Washington sympathized with this philosophy, with the desire for a strong central government, as he demonstrated during the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, when a few hundred farmers in western Pennsylvania rose up in opposition to Hamilton’s new taxes. In response to this provocation, the President donned his old Revolutionary War uniform and, accompanied by Hamilton, led an army to disperse the uprising. The rebellion collapsed within days, for there was no arguing with Washington – Congress’ laws, legally enacted, must be respected.
Jefferson and his lieutenant, James Madison, on the other hand, were horrified by this show of force. Virginians both, they represented the opposite pole of American political thought, terrified as they were by the specter of a “vastly expanded national government with sovereign power over the states” (54). Instead, they advocated for limited government, for an economy based on agrarian values. As Mr. Ellis states, members of Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party saw “land, not fluid forms of capital, [as] the ultimate measure of wealth” and believed that “investment bankers and speculators [ . . . ] made no productive contribution to society” (65). Naturally, the Virginians’ ideology proved popular as an expression of the liberty for which the Founders had fought, and it won many converts in the South and West; where it struggled, however, was in advancing a solution for the problem of slavery. While both Jefferson and Madison privately loathed slavery, they also knew that any emancipation of the slaves “could only be launched at the national level under [ . . . ] a federal government fully empowered to act on behalf of the long-term interests of the nation as a whole” (108).
To give the federal government the power needed to end slavery was, in Jefferson’s view, a return to monarchy; on the other hand, hadn’t he himself written in the Declaration that all men were created equal? Wasn’t that sentiment incompatible with slavery as well? Jefferson, though, never reconciled this contradiction in his mind, and as for the nation as a whole, only four years of bloody civil war would eventually settle the issue.
In the 1790’s, though, the Civil War lay far in the future, and until then (and indeed, even perhaps to the present day), these two economic and governing philosophies – Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian – would compete for domination of the federal government, evolving into political parties and growing increasingly hostile to each other. President Washington struggled to remain bipartisan – he believed the presidency should represent the entire country, should remain above the political fray and partisan squabbling, and besides, weren’t all of these men his friends? Weren’t they all his compatriots in the fight against England?
In the end, it didn’t matter. As Mr. Ellis illustrates in his chapter, “The Farewell,” the instructions Washington issued to the nation in his famous farewell address were largely ignored by his later political followers. On the issue of partisan infighting, Mr. Ellis summarizes Washington’s advice: “Think of yourself as a single nation; subordinate your regional and political differences to your common identity as Americans; regard the federal government that represents your collective interest as an ally rather than an enemy” (155-156). Such bipartisan cooperation would remain rare, despite Washington’s pleading; indeed, Jefferson spread daily rumors of the President’s senility and incompetence, only to deny them when confronted. Newspapers eventually exposed Jefferson as the source of these allegations, and he and Washington never again exchanged another word.
Washington’s second piece of advice was that the new American republic avoid entangling itself in the disputes of foreign nations. “’Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world” (152), stated Washington. America should avoid unnecessary wars and instead focus its energy on expanding prosperity throughout its territories. Once again, Jefferson led the opposition to Washington’s policy, believing instead that “America’s revolutionary energies should be harnessed to the larger purposes of nation-building” (145), and that the United States should aid all freedom-loving people across the world in throwing off the tyranny of monarchical oppression. Washington, though, had held firm as president, refusing to intervene on either the British or the French side in the wars raging across Europe. By 1796, however, he had served eight years as president and felt the need to retire; he voluntarily relinquished the presidency, setting an important precedent for later American leaders. When he died from pneumonia on December 14, 1799, his last words were “’Tis well.” Self-sufficent as always, his last act was to feel his own pulse at the moment he expired (161).
The final story in Mr. Ellis’ Founding Brothers, and perhaps the most touching, occurs in the last two chapters entitled “the Collaborators” and “The Friendship.” These chapters tell of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams’ rivalry and friendship, of the political campaigns that pushed them apart, and of the years it took to reunite them. The two had been friends since the days of the Revolution; indeed, Adams had selected Jefferson to write the Declaration, and later, the two had served together as ambassadors to France and Britain. As Ellis writes: “They were an incongruous pair, but [ . . . ] history had made them into [one . . . .] Adams, the short, stout, candid-to-a-fault New Englander; Jefferson, the tall, slender, elegantly elusive Virginian; Adams, [. . . ] ever combative, whose favorite form of conversation was an argument; Jefferson, always cool and self-contained [ . . . ] who regarded debate [ . . . ] as violations of the natural harmonies he heard inside his own head [ . . . . ] They were the odd couple of the American Revolution” (163), but they were also “charter members of the band of brothers who had shared the agonies and ecstasies of 1776 [ . . . . ] They knew and trusted each other for reasons that required no explanation” (164). This trust would be shattered, however, upon Washington’s retirement in 1796, as the nation readied itself for its first contested presidential election, with candidate Adams for the Federalists, and Jefferson for the Democratic-Republicans. Though Adams won narrowly and was inaugurated as America’s second president, his governing plans were immediately foiled by his close friend. After his election, Adams extended to the defeated Thomas Jefferson an invitation to serve closely with him in the administration, to help him run the country as a kind of co-president, preserving the bipartisan nature of the presidency that Washington had embodied. Jefferson, however, declined the invitation, recognizing that “whereas Washington had been able to levitate above the partisan factions, the next president [ would be . . . ] only the president of a party” (182). This answer greatly disappointed Adams, but worse was to come. Jefferson and his party turned on Adams, opposing him on every issue, savaging him at every opportunity.
Of course, Jefferson did not regard his behavior as unethical; rather, he believed Adams’ Federalist government had captured the presidency from the American people. Essentially, the Jefferson-Adams dispute would become the imprimatur for all future presidential administrations to come, with one side opposing the other on every issue and attacking its accomplishments at every turn. The age of bipartisanship had ended forever, and in the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson defeated his friend, John Adams, becoming the third president of the United States. Adams returned to Massachusetts, nursing his defeat, wounded less by his political loss, than by the hurt suffered at the hand of his former friend.
The story does not end there, however – gradually, Adams and Jefferson began to correspond. The first disastrous attempt at reconciliation ended with a note from Adams’ wife, Abigail, to President Jefferson. In it, she stated that she now saw Jefferson “in a light very different from what [she had] once viewed him in” (208). Jefferson had “libeled Adams with outrageous charges: Adams was mentally deranged; Adams intended to have himself crowned
[. . . king]” (209) and more. When Jefferson tried denying the charges, Abigail saw through him. “His [opponents] had always accused him of being a man of party rather than principle,” and Abigail concluded, “Pardon me, sir, if I say that I fear you are” (210).

Eight years then passed without a word between the two men. Finally, though, with the help of a mutual friend, Adams and Jefferson began to reconcile. It started with a simple note from Adams in 1812, and would lead to a “fourteen-year exchange of 158 letters” which represents the “most impressive correspondence between prominent statesmen in all of American history” (223). In the letters, the two men discussed their roles in the Revolution and the events of their presidencies, debated their differing political views, discussed their dreams and memories. They came to laugh at the old insults and injuries they’d incurred against each other, and as they aged, began to discuss how history would remember them and the trying events of which they were a part. As Ellis states, “One would like to believe, and there is some basis for the belief, that each man came to recognize in the other the intellectual and temperamental qualities lacking in himself; that they, in effect, completed each other; that only when joined could the pieces of the story of the American Revolution come together to make a whole.” But, he continues, “the more mundane truth is that they never faced and therefore never fully resolved all their political differences; they simply outlived them” (244).
In my opinion, Adams and Jefferson serve as a lesson for all of us Americans today – we do not have to fully resolve our political differences to share in friendship, to share in the glorious bounty with which we have been blessed as American citizens. Certainly, Jefferson and Adams were no strangers to political fighting and cruelty, to disagreements and outrage; in the end, however, they recognized that they were first and foremost Americans, not Democrats or Republicans, Americans – a true band of brothers. The simultaneous death of Adams and Jefferson on July 4, 1826, only underscores this brotherhood, and bears remembering as we approach the July 4th holiday. As Mr. Ellis concludes, at the end of Founding Brothers:
“On the evening of July 3, 1826, Jefferson fell into a coma. His last discernable words, uttered to the physician and family gathered around the bedside, indicated he was hoping to time his exit in dramatic fashion: “Is it the Fourth?” It was not, but he lingered in a semiconscious condition until shortly after noon on the magic day. That same morning, Adams collapsed in his favorite reading chair. He lapsed into unconsciousness at almost the exact moment Jefferson died. The end came quickly, at about five-thirty that afternoon. He wakened for a brief moment, indicated that nothing more should be done to prolong the inevitable, then, with obvious effort, gave a final salute to his old friend with his last words: “Thomas Jefferson survives,” or, by another account, “Thomas Jefferson still lives.” Whatever the version, he was wrong for the moment but right for the ages” (248).
May we all remember our shared brotherhood as Americans – E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many, One
Cody Bennett