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Madison, Hamilton, and Jefferson: Reinterpreting America's Founding Fathers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2017

Peter A. Coclanis
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Extract

These are “interesting times” for the Founding Fathers—“interesting” in the ironical sense in which the word is employed popularly, but also in the apocryphal Chinese curse. For example, for several decades now, writers such as Gary Wills, Joseph Ellis, Ron Chernow, and Richard Brookhiser have been tapping into large general audiences with best-selling studies on the Founding Fathers. At the same time, numerous dyspeptic faculty members—including, alas, some influential College Board consultants—have decried the “overattention” being paid to “dead white males,” however distinguished, and in so doing, often succeeded in easing the Founding Fathers off of both the historical stage and the scantron sheets of the SAT.

Type
Review Essays
Information
Business History Review , Volume 91 , Special Issue 3: A Special Issue on Methodologies , Autumn 2017 , pp. 575 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2017 

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References

1 See, for example, Bellows, Kate, “Professors Ask Sullivan to Stop Quoting Jefferson,” Cavalier Daily (Charlottesville, Va.), 13 Nov. 2016 Google Scholar, http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2016/11/professors-ask-sullivan-to-stop-quoting-jefferson; Karin Kapsidelis, “U.Va. Faculty, Students Ask Sullivan Not to Quote Jefferson,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, 14 Nov. 2016, http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/article_cbb2f84f-edc6-56b6-9fcc-059ee8123d28.html; “University of Virginia President Criticized for Quoting Thomas Jefferson,” CBS News, 16 Nov. 2016, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/university-of-virginia-president-criticized-for-quoting-thomas-jefferson.

2 Alan Taylor, “Our Feuding Founding Fathers,” New York Times, 17 Oct. 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/opinion/our-feuding-founding-fathers.html.

3 See John, Richard R., “Prophet of Perspective: Thomas K. McCraw,” Business History Review 89 (Spring 2015): 129–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCraw, Thomas K., “Immigrant Entrepreneurs in U.S. Financial History, 1775–1914,” Capitalism and Society 5 (July 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: article 3, doi:10.2202/1932-0213.1070; Thomas K. McCraw, “Innovative Immigrants,” New York Times, 1 Nov. 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/opinion/immigrants-as-entrepreneurs.html; “HBS Professor Thomas K. McCraw, Sr., Dies at 72,” press release, Harvard Business School Newsroom, 7 Nov. 2012, http://www.hbs.edu/news/releases/Pages/thomasmccrawobituary.aspx.

4 Gladstone, W. E., “Kin Beyond Sea,” North American Review 264 (Sept.–Oct. 1878): 179–212 Google Scholar (quote appears on p. 185); William Lloyd Garrison, speech, Framingham, Mass., July 4, 1854. For the quote, see The Liberator, 7 July 1854, 106, http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/1854/07/07/the-liberator-24-27.pdf.

5 Sylla, Richard, “Financial Systems and Economic Modernization,” Journal of Economic History 62 (June 2002): 283 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sylla's position on these matters is laid out in numerous publications, most notably in Sylla, “Shaping the U.S. Financial System, 1690–1913: The Dominant Role of Public Finance,” in The State, the Financial System, and Economic Modernization, ed. Sylla, Richard, Tilly, Richard, and Tortella, Gabriel (Cambridge, U.K., 1999), 249–70Google Scholar; Sylla, “Financial Systems”; Sylla, “Hamilton and the Federalist Financial Revolution, 1789–1795,” New York Journal of American History 65 (Spring 2004): 32–39 Google Scholar; Sylla, “Financial Foundations: Public Credit, the National Bank, and Securities Markets,” in Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s, ed. Irwin, Douglas A. and Sylla, Richard (Chicago, 2011), 59–88 Google Scholar.

6 John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 25 Jan. 1806, Adams Papers, Founders Online, National Archives, last modified 28 Dec. 2016, accessed 17 Jan. 2017, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5119.

7 Chernow, Ron, Alexander Hamilton (New York, 2004)Google Scholar.

8 Sean Wilentz, “The Details of Greatness,” New Republic, 29 Mar. 2004, 27–35, https://newrepublic.com/article/61007/the-details-greatness.

9 Sean Wilentz, “The Details of Greatness.”

10 O'Brien, Michael, A Character of Hugh Legaré (Knoxville, 1985), xiii Google Scholar.

11 In this regard, it is instructive to note that even John Quincy Adams who was bitterly disillusioned of Jefferson was capable at once of recognizing Jefferson's genius and of offering a balanced assessment of the man and his legacy. In his diary in 1819, Adams wrote that “Jefferson is one of the great men whom this country has produced, one of the men who has contributed largely to the formation of our national character—to much that is good and to not a little that is evil in our sentiments and manners.” See entry of 27 Dec. 1819, The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection, vol. 31, 237, Massachusetts Historical Society, accessed 17 Jan. 2017, http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/php/doc?id=jqad31_237.