This is lecture 16; in this lecture I want to talk a little bit about the founding fathers.
I’ve got us into the Revolutionary War, before we go further, I thought it would be
beneficial to you if we at least discussed some of these prominent figures in a little
detail, not much.
This is a survey class, so we have limited time, and I have to be very selective here.
I’m only going to talk about maybe a half a dozen people.
I just want to give you a sense of who they are, why they’re significant, sort of where
they fit into these large events in the founding of the United States.
We’ll start with George Washington.
Of course, he’s a Virginia planter.
Washington is one of the older of the founding fathers, born in 1732, and of course, he dies
in 1799.
The first President of the United States, he served 2 terms, trained as a land surveyor.
I mentioned earlier that he served in the French and Indian War.
He married into a “good family” as they say, Martha Dandridge, and served in the Virginia
House of Burgesses as a younger man.
He is chosen, as I mentioned in our last lecture, to command the Continental Army in 1775.
Washington’s career as a military commander is a mixed one.
His initial combat with the British was successful in driving them out of Boston Harbor.
But then he is caught in the battles around New York City and is driven, by the British
Army, out of New York City.
He flees across the Hudson down into New Jersey and Pennsylvania, trying to keep the Continental
Army intact.
He will revive both his reputation and the Revolutionary cause during Christmas of 1776,
when he launches a surprise attack against hired Hessian mercenaries on the Delaware
River.
This successful attack will revive the spirits of the American people, the Continental Congress,
and of Washington and his army.
Washington fought a series of set-piece battles against the British.
These were usually unsuccessful, or at best draws.
His greatest success as military commander will come in the Southern theatre of the War,
on the York-James Peninsula, as he traps a large British army there – under Lord Cornwallis.
Cornwallis’ surrender here at Yorktown in 1781; this will be the beginning of the end
of the Revolutionary War.
This defeat signals to the British Parliament that perhaps this ongoing Revolution is going
to be too expensive, too long in duration, and is going to cost too much blood for the
British to continue.
So the Battle of Yorktown is significant because it begins to turn the British away from prosecuting
the War to a way of ending the War.
Of course, George Washington serves as our first President by acclamation; he is the
one guy that everyone trusts.
He is the one man who is viewed as incorruptible and he established as the first President
of the United States in 1789.
Now just prior to that, in 1787, he presided over the Constitutional Convention, the original
government of the United States.
The so-called Articles of Confederation had been revealed to be too weak to hold this
union of states together.
So delegates from the various states gathered at Annapolis, in Maryland, and they sought
someone to preside over this convention, someone that had the requisite authority and the trust
of all the delegates.
And that, of course, is Washington.
Washington’s government was comprised of Alexander Hamilton as the first Secretary
of the Treasury; Thomas Jefferson as the first Secretary of State, a fellow Virginia planter;
and of course, General Knox as the first Secretary of War.
Perhaps the greatest thing that Washington did as President, besides his maintenance
of this government, this first government under the Constitution, is how he exited public
life.
Remember, Washington leaves and goes home to Mount Vernon to resume his chores as a
farmer and a planter in 1796.
At the same time in France, of course, we have the emergence of Napoleon.
It’s difficult to imagine Napoleon ever sort of voluntarily giving up power and walking
away from it.
In our own century, we have seen great and powerful men who simply cannot be removed
from office other than by death, and it’s very unusual for a man to reach the stature
of George Washington, to have the authority that he has, the respect and admiration of
his fellow citizens, and then to simply walk away from power.
This is most unusual in human history, and it sets a wonderful precedent for how power
is to be relinquished in this country in the future.
We will in time, of course, establish term limits on the President.
But Washington’s two terms set a precedent that is followed all the way up until the
middle of the 20th century, when Franklin Roosevelt ran and was elected 4 times to the
Presidency.
We’ll get into that later.
Washington dies in 1799.
He apparently caught pneumonia while doing chores on the farm there at Mount Vernon,
and passed in 1799.
I want to talk about a few other figures here.
John Adams – Someone once said that if Washington fought the Revolution, that John Adams thought
the Revolution, and there’s some truth to this.
Washington in the field with a Continental Army, while Adams is theorizing about government,
trying to secure loans for the new country, trying to create alliances for the new United
States.
Adams, of course, is an attorney from Boston, born in 1735 and will live a long life, dying
in 1826.
The second President of the United States; the first Vice President under Washington.
He attended Harvard.
He’s very active in Boston politics, attacking the British taxation policies.
He is a delegate to the Continental Congress.
He defends the British troops who fire upon the Bostonians at the Boston Massacre.
He helped guide the Declaration of Independence to fruition.
It is, in fact, Adams who suggested that Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence,
just as he had recommended George Washington to be the Commander of the Continental Army.
He’s the first U.S. Minister to Great Britain, and of course, his own Presidency is a one-term
affair taking place in the larger context of the French Revolution, and much of his
Presidency is taken up with potential conflict with France, which he manages to avoid.
One of the more controversial aspects of Adams’ Presidency was the passage of the Alien and
Sedition Acts.
This was in response to the turmoil brought about by the French Revolution and by the
emerging divisions of sentiment, here in the United States, over the issues that the French
Revolution brought to the forefront.
Adams, of course, would retire, go back to Boston, and live out the rest of a long and
fruitful life.
The third figure I want to mention here is Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin is the oldest of these founding fathers, born in 1706, dying in 1790.
A true renaissance figure, a printer, a writer, a diplomat, editor, inventor, a scientist,
easily the most famous American of his time, much admired by the French, a very skilled
diplomat, very skillful in arranging alliances and loans for the young country.
He spent a good deal of his adult life in Europe doing these things, a leading cultural
figure in the United States, and easily the most famous.
He invents the Franklin stove.
He founds a philosophical society that will morph into the University of Pennsylvania.
I think he’s the first Postmaster General for the colonies.
I believe he founded the first fire station, or fire unit for the colonies.
Just a remarkable man who had his hands in a lot of different affairs here.
He helped to draft the Declaration of Independence.
He negotiated the treaty that ends the War with Great Britain in 1783.
He is a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
And it’s interesting that his son, Franklin’s son, had been the governor of New Jersey,
and was a tory, as they were called, that is English colonists in America who sided
with the mother country and did not seek rebellion or independence.
This of course, this difference in politics, will break the Franklin family, so that Benjamin
Franklin loses his relationship with his son over politics.
Another figure that you should be familiar with is Alexander Hamilton.
Now he’s one of the younger founding fathers, in fact, he was born in the West Indies.
He was seen by leading figures on the island of Nevis, where he was born, as something
of a prodigy.
He ran an emporium there.
He mastered different currencies.
He assumed the habits of command at an early age.
A college fund was created for him.
He was sent to, I think it was called Kings’ College at this point; it became Columbia
University later, in New York City, and indeed Hamilton was in college when the War broke
out.
As I remember, Washington took notice of Hamilton during the battles around New York, and brought
him onto his staff.
So Hamilton had a very privileged view of the Revolutionary War.
He acted as Washington’s eyes and ears during the War.
After the War, of course, Hamilton would be appointed by Washington as the first Secretary
of the Treasury, and one of the true founders of our constitutional government.
Hamilton laid the financial foundations for the United States during his tenure as Secretary
of the Treasury.
And of course, Hamilton would be killed in a duel in 1804 with Vice President of the
United States, Aaron Burr, and we’ll talk more about that in a later lecture.
Hamilton should also be remembered for his writing of the Federalist Papers.
There’s actually 3 authors here, Hamilton; James Madison; and John Jay; although Hamilton
wrote the bulk of these papers.
They were designed to secure ratification of the new Constitution, and indeed, they
succeeded.
Very high level propaganda, you might say, designed to convince the American people of
the suitability of this new, more powerful, centralized government.
Thomas Jefferson – A few words, a Virginia slave owner, born in 1743, died in 1826, along
with John Adams, on the same day.
The 3rd President of the United States, the founder of an alternative political party
in the 1790s, which we will talk about later.
A delegate to the Continental Congress, he served as our representative in France during
the early years of the French Revolution.
A true republican in the sense that he distrusted large government.
Jefferson is famous for his promotion of the Empire of Liberty, which he envisioned being
populated by small independent farmers of great virtue since they were autonomous and
did not depend upon the capitalists for employment.
Jefferson is one of those figures that we will come back to over the course of these
lectures.
He was the first Secretary of State.
He died in debt.
And his library, which is probably the largest in the country, became the beginning of our
Library of Congress.
Jefferson, like Franklin, a true renaissance figure, endlessly tinkering with his house
at Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia; founded the University of Virginia; served
2 terms as President; and Jefferson, of course, illustrates that problem at the heart of the
American experience between the proclamation that all men equal on the one hand with the
fact that he was a large-scale slave owner on the other.
We’ll talk more about Jefferson when we talk about Lewis and Clark.
The last figures here, I’ll quickly sum up.
James Madison, a Virginia slave owner, a chief lieutenant of Jefferson.
Jefferson often came up with the ideas, which were then put into practice by Madison.
Madison is quite famous as a father of the U.S. Constitution, as he took detailed notes
during the deliberations, and his Virginia Plan was very influential in creating our
first government.
Of course, Madison is also one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, along with Hamilton
and Jay.
Two more figures I’m just going to briefly mention –
John Marshall – John Marshall is significant in U.S. history because he genuinely elevated
the Supreme Court to a status equal to that of the legislative and executive branches.
His development of judicial review made the Supreme Court an equal partner in the system
of checks and balances.
And then finally, Aaron Burr.
I’m going to mention him now because we’re going to talk about him later.
Burr is a true aristocrat, unlike some of these other founders he was born into wealth.
His grandfather, of course, was the famous Puritan divine, Jonathan Edwards, who you’ll
read about in American literature.
His father was President of New Jersey College, which of course, would become Princeton.
Burr is about the same age as Hamilton and these two men will clash over the course of
their careers.
You get the sense that New York City is not big enough for these two egos and these two
very talented men.
Burr, of course, will kill Hamilton in a duel in 1804, and we will discuss that in detail.
So this wraps up our lecture, just trying to give you an introduction to some of these
founding fathers so it would give you a sense of their significance and the roles they played
in the American Revolution.
Thank you.