With 2026 comes the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. We have and will be observing this literally foundational anniversary for our nation here on Concerning History throughout the year, often with scholarly analysis and reflection on the history and memory of the events of 1776. Yet I’ve had a larger thought, or suite of thoughts, brewing for a while about many of the opinions, philosophies, and policies of the founding generation. Many, maybe even most, Americans regard the Founders with near-unconditional reverence bordering on sanctification; as I’ve read more deeply in the history of the Revolution and Early Republic over the past few years, though, I’ve begun noticing and cataloging a number of positions taken by notable individuals or entire groups that seem at best naive and at worst wilfully ignorant of available evidence or even downright stupid. These are not simply arguments that I disagree with or find morally abhorrent like justifications for chattel slavery or monarchism; these are positions the fly in the face of history, human behavior, and simple logic in ways that remind us of the humanity and fallibility of our Founders. They were prone to biased assumptions and wishful thinking just like the rest of us, and we should all endeavor to engage with their ideas much more critically than is still often the case, two hundred and fifty years later.
The Bill of Rights was Unnecessary
While the benefit of hindsight shows how necessary, and ultimately successful, the re-founding of the United States was in 1987 with the framing of the new Federal Constitution, it was far from obvious at the time. One of the core debates over its ratification that students learn, from primary school through to college, was whether the proposed government was in fact too powerful and would prove a threat to the liberties of both states and individuals. One of the most common proposals on the part of the “Antifederalists,” or those who opposed ratification of the document in its original form, was that they would consent to ratify the Constitution only if it was to be immediately amended to include a list of explicitly protected rights. The Federalists, those in favor of ratification famously led by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, argued that such a Bill of Rights was not necessary, and the common law foundations of the country would ensure that no rights would ever come under serious threat. I have always been dumbfounded by this convenient, even negligent, logic. The United States owed its independence to a war in which citizens of a government based on common law and an “unwritten” constitution disagreed over whether un-enumerated rights were being violated—not to mention that discrimination and the withholding of rights based on race or class was already a feature of the new nation at its conception. Even with the Bill of Rights, Presidents and Congress have enacted policies that obviously violate its provisions, in letter or spirit, beginning as early as the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. In the modern age, an agreement that isn’t in writing is no agreement at all, and it is to our country’s eternal benefit that the Federalists ultimately lost this particular facet of the ratification debate.
Political Parties Could Be Avoided
Another post-Revolutionary irony of the Early Republic was the aversion of nearly every statesman to governmental “factions,” or what we today call political parties. Parties as they currently exist would become a defining feature of American political life in the 1830s with the advent of what is known as the “Second Party System” (we are currently in the Third, which came from the death of the Whig Party and birth of the Republican Party), but broadly-defined parties existed as early as the Federalist/Antifederalist split over Constitutional ratification in the 1780s, and of course the Patriots of 1776 were a revolutionary faction within the British Empire and had been opposed to Loyalists within their own colonies. And yet, the Founders’ generation by and large not only disliked the idea of factions, but thought their formation could be actively prevented. In his essay now known as Federalist No. 10, James Madison outlined how the new Federal Constitution would keep factions in check (though he there defined factions as groups that harmed the common interest through promoting their particular interest, rather than groups who define the common interest differently or believe in different methods of achieving it). George Washington’s revered Farewell Address upon leaving office warned against the dangers of political factions, and the effective death of the Federalist party following the War of 1812 led to contemporaries celebrating the death of factions and the country becoming a one-party state during the first term of James Monroe’s presidency—whereupon the Democratic-Republicans promptly split into two different parties during Monroe’s second term. This should not have shocked anyone, then or since. This same generation had designed, ratified, and implemented a government wherein candidates that won a simple majority of votes won the entire election, thus incentivizing the pooling of resources into two major parties, if not making it inevitable. It should also have been obvious that no human group can ever remain in lockstep for very long; once opponents disappear, the internal disagreements among members will surge to the fore and become more important than any underlying commonalities. Unlike with the Bill of Rights, I cannot celebrate the existence of party politics in American history—but I do think the notion that we could have avoided their presence altogether has always been foolish.
No Entangling Alliances?
The aforementioned Farewell Address of George Washington is one of the foundations of American civic education. I’ve guided students through reading and discussing it countless times, both for historical and general rhetorical lessons. It’s largely seen as a model of statesmanship and sound advice, and much of it is well-reasoned and at times prophetic of the troubles that would face the young nation in its first century. Yet there has always been one section of Washington’s speech that has irritated me: his warning against “permanent” diplomatic alliances. In fact, the first president warned against pursuing both “antipathy” and “attachment” of too fierce or prolonged a character on the international stage, instead recommending the pursuit of friendship towards all. Washington isn’t necessarily wrong here; his advice that maintaining either inveterate enemies or most-privileged allies over long periods can warp a nation’s point of view and lead to actions that are not in fact supportive of its own interests is valid, but also pretty obvious to anyone with a brain. Many historians theorize that this passage of Washington’s speech was inspired by recent events, namely the diplomatic alignment of many Federalists as pro-Britain and many Democratic-Republicans as pro French to a fault as well as the attempt of Revolutionary France to invoke the United States’ alliance with the French crown. This certainly appears to be a reasonable interpretation, but the latter especially falls apart upon closer inspection. That alliance had, rightfully, been dismissed by Washington’s own administration as having been made with a different government, effectively a different nation, and certainly ended upon the execution of King Louis XVI. Cautioning his peers against their current biases might be closer to the mark, but his advice to just be nice to everyone as the solution still comes across as unbearably naive for a middle-aged former general and statesman of the 18th century who owned hundreds of slaves. What’s worse, this passage has become grossly misinterpreted throughout the centuries in both the classroom and public memory, all too often being cited as a warning against alliances of any kind, which would be even more absurd. If the sage advice of Washington only boils down to “Pursue diplomacy with a strong sense of your own interest and don’t enter into any agreements that would compromise your own country,” then my response is…no duh, George. That’s just called diplomacy.
The End of Conflict through Trade
Thomas Jefferson was a controversial thinker, to say the least. Author of the Declaration of Independence and one of the founding intellects of American democracy and liberty, yet a massive slaveholder who extolled pseudoscience that upheld white supremacy. Critic of a powerful, centralized government when not at its head, but one of the most proactive wielders of Federal power once president himself. One of the odder facets of Jefferson’s thinking, however, regards trade and commerce. Along with his other humanitarian principles, our third president revered, even fetishized, free trade between nations and peoples. On the one hand, this makes a certain amount of sense. Increased contact and non-violent, mutually-beneficial exchange has been proven to increase understanding and empathy, breaking down barriers between those of different backgrounds and world views. Jefferson, though, apparently argued for even greater effects: engaging in free, global trade would lead to the complete eradication of war itself. Scarcity would be eliminated and no one would want to endanger their interconnected prosperity by pursuing hostilities. It’s a nice dream, but clearly a utopian one. Jefferson seems to have forgotten, or discounted, that most of his vaunted commerce was conducted to enrich not whole peoples but individuals, most often leading not to widespread prosperity but the further stratification of society. He also ignored humans’ tendency to go to war expressly in pursuit of wealth, as any number of historical examples should have demonstrated. Who knows if we will ever have true World Peace, but if we do, increased trade will almost assuredly be a consequence, not a cause.
Militias Win Wars
Ah, the militia. America has always treasured its citizens soldiers, and never has it done so more than it the first few decades of its existence. Our Founders’ prioritization of liberty, fear of tyrannical government, heritage of frontier communities that relied on common defense, and study of classical history led them to prefer the use of temporary bodies of militia for national defense instead of professional, trained soldiers. The initial successes of the Boston minute men in the opening engagements of the Revolutionary War in 1775 certainly supported this position, but may in fact have done more harm than good in the long run. Poorly-trained and undisciplined citizen-soldiers who held their own comfort higher than military necessity nearly doomed American independence; the only way to defeat the British was by eventually facing British regulars in the field, and only the enlistment and training of Continental regulars after would provide that ability—but the British would capture New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia from routed militia forces in the years beforehand. Ideology is a hard thing to unlearn, however, and most members of the Continental Congress preferred to selectively, even falsely, remember the successes of militia over the service of the Continentals, even initially refusing to offer pensions at the conclusion of the war (perhaps they should have paid more attention to the accounts of Roman legionnaires revolting when denied bonuses than to Cincinattus giving up office and returning to his farm). Combined with the shoestring budget of the Early Republic, this pro-militia ideology led to a reliance on citizen soldiers again in 1812, with predictably disastrous results. Indeed, multiple attempted invasions of Canada fell apart when state militia refused to cross the border and leave the country where they held their service to be bound! The nation had barely escaped catastrophe by the close of the war in 1815, but again the reputation of militia emerged nigh-unscathed; indeed, many—later including Jackson himself—remembered the (anti)climactic Battle of New Orleans as a triumph of Andrew Jackson’s Tennessee and Kentucky militia, despite their dismal performance in the battle. While militia as such played little role in the Mexican War, the volunteer forces sent to supplement United States Regulars were habitually undisciplined and had noted failures in combat (though admittedly, some fantastic successes), and the volunteer armies of the Civil War took over a year of hard training and fighting to resemble something even close to effective fighting forces. Of all the theories discussed here, this is the one that endured the longest and was shared by more than just the Founders; one could even call this fetishization of militia a shared American delusion for the first century of our country’s existence.