Founding Fathers

Ron DeSantis's Book on the Founders has been Disappearing Online. We Found a Copy

by Gillian Brockell

Written during his days as a Tea Party Congressman, DeSantis's 2011 book cherry-picks quotes from the Washington and Hamilton to argue that Barack Obama was engaged in an unconstitutional power grab that would have appalled the founders. It also makes bad arguments about the centrality of slavery to the early Republic. 

Why America Must Not Reelect this Demagogue: That’s What Trump is, and it Matters

by Eli Merritt

Trump is a demagogue –– and therefore a poison to democracy. Joe Biden is not. Voters must understand that clearly. The health, and possibly survival, of our democracy depends upon it.

‘Hamilton’ and the Historical Record: Frequently Asked Questions

The Disney+ filmed version has fans wondering what’s accurate. Historians are fans, too, and they have answers, along with caveats.

Our Fear of Government Power Has Left Us Fighting COVID-19 with Volunteerism

by Elisabeth S. Clemens

Americans have always relied on the private sector in times of war and disaster.

Impeachment: Republicans are in the tank for Trump, but Democrats aren't impartial, either

by Jonathan Zimmerman

As of right now, I think Trump should be removed. But I must keep my mind open to new arguments and evidence, instead of closing myself off before we have heard them. 

Trump’s Lawyers Say a Crime Is Required for Impeachment, But Experts Say That’s Not What Founding Fathers Intended

Featuring historians Rachel Shelden, Jeffrey Engel, and David Stewart. 

Why demagogues were the Founding Fathers’ greatest fear

by Eli Merritt

Washington’s greatest fear that summer of decision in Philadelphia was that unwise, self-seeking politicians — even if fairly elected to public office — would tear down the central government and its constitutional laws for the sake of their own advancement and glorification.

Disaster Relief and the Founding Fathers: Original Intent?

by Cynthia A. Kierner

What does the appalling spectacle of the Superdome after Katrina, the disgraceful neglect of post-Maria Puerto Rico, or the far greater attention paid to wildfires in California over their equally devastating counterparts in Oklahoma, say about the politics and culture of twenty-first-century America?

A Senate Impeachment Trial Isn't Really a Trial and It Was Never Meant to Be

by Harlow Giles Unger

Only Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were tried in the Senate. As the Founders had planned, both suffered humiliation but neither was convicted. 

The Framers’ Answers to Three Myths About Impeachment

by Garry Wills

Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who has been overseeing the impeachment hearings, is badly misrepresenting the Constitution when he says that the Congress is a co-equal branch of government with the presidency.

The Founding Fathers Feared Foreign Influence—And Devised Protections Against It

If the United States was going to be different, the framers needed a founding document that fully recognized and defended against the corrupting influence of foreign money and power, particularly on the president.

Mary Thompson Featured in Article on George Washington's Dog Breeding

Among the names the future first president gave his dogs were Sweet Lips, Venus, Trulove, Taster, Tippler, Drunkard and Madame Moose.

No, Trump in 2019 is not like George Washington in 1794

Here’s why that comparison doesn’t work.

Fractured Into Factions? What The Founders Feared About Impeachment

Even more than 230 years ago, the Founders were eerily prescient in fearing how the impeachment process could play out: beset by partisanship and broken down by factions.

Benjamin Franklin, Religious Revolutionary

by J.D. Dickey

Surprisingly, however, during America’s first major evangelical revival — the Great Awakening of the 1730s and ’40s — one of its most important figures had little use for religious conservatism. In fact, he wasn’t a preacher at all, but the reform-minded, freethinking Philadelphia printer Benjamin Franklin.

The Electoral College: How the Founders Cheated You of Your Vote

by Harlow Giles Unger

Weeks of debate by America’s Founders failed to set any rules at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia—a failure that led to “cheating” at the Electoral College ever since.

November is Native American Heritage Month. Critics say Trump is subverting it with a new celebration of the Founding Fathers.

Last week, President Trump declared November as “National American History and Founders Month,” a celebration of the country’s “dedication to promoting liberty and justice.”

What we get wrong about Ben Franklin’s ‘a republic, if you can keep it’

by Zara Anishanslin

Erasing the women of the founding era makes it harder to see women as leaders today.

The Founders’ Furious Impeachment Debate--and Benjamin Franklin’s Modest Proposal

by Harlow Giles Unger

“This Magistrate is not the king! The people are the king!”

Review of “The Political Thought of America’s Founding Feminists”

by Christine Talbot

“Lisa Pace Vetter’s book, The Political Thought of America’s Founding Feminists, examines the political theories of seven women who were central figures in American political thought, despite their exclusion from the contemporary canon."