Greatness of the Founders: An Objective Examination, Part 5

James Madison was the major architect of the Constitution and constructed the Bill of Rights, amendments to the Constitution, coauthor of The Federalist and who advocated religious liberty. He was the co-founder of the Democratic-Republican political party in the 1790s and the most important member of the first House of Representatives in 1789. He was Secretary of State to Jefferson's administration; and the fourth President of the United States. Yet compared to other Founders, especially Thomas Jefferson who was his close friend, he has not received as much accolade from historians.

Greatness of the Founders: An Objective Examination, Part 4

When people wrote about Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, they write him as the founder of American capitalism. Yet, in 1900 when that New York University established a Hall of Fame, Alexander Hamilton was honored by being the first person selected. Theodore Roosevelt was a fan of Hamilton and the first editor of the New Republic, Herbert Croly, called him – a sound thinker, the constructive statesman who sponsored a vigorous, positive, constructive national policy ...that implied a faith in the powers of an efficient government to advance the national interest. [The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly, NY, 2002; p. 29 & p. 38]

Greatness of the Founders: An Objective Examination, Part 3

While Benjamin Franklin became a symbol of the ability to succeed in the United States rising from poverty to wealth, Thomas Jefferson became the symbol of the advocacy against tyranny, the principles of the Constitution, and the battle against oppression. He has been the most quoted of the Founders and scrutinized for his seeming hypocrisy that all are created equal and at the same time retaining slaves. The first person to write Jefferson's biography was James Parton, who wrote:

If Jefferson was wrong, America is wrong. If America is right, Jefferson was right. [The Jeffersonian Image in the American Mind, Merrill Peterson, Oxford University Press, 1960; p. 234]

Greatness of the Founders: An Objective Examination, Part 2

Benjamin Franklin was a man who wore many hats and contributed to the science of electricity and invention. For historians, he is a complex character who rose from obscure poverty to be among the great thinkers of the founding of a new nation. An artisan, he was a self-made man with little formal education and rose from poverty to wealth. Ordinary citizens identified with him because he was more in tune with common society than the other founding gentlemen, like Washington and Jefferson.

Greatness of Founders: An Objective Examination, Part 1

Gordon S. Wood:

The United States was founded on a set of beliefs and not, as were other nations, on a common ethnicity, language, or religion. … By the time Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day, July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years following the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, an aura of divinity had come to surround the founding generation.