“A bunch of old, slave-owning, white men.” “True conservatives/libertarians who did not believe in government intervention.”
These are just two of the many viewpoints being shared by Americans about our nation’s founders. The problem with both? They generalize the Founding Fathers to opposite political poles. Both sides of the political spectrum either demonize or idealize these men in ridiculous and ill-informed ways.
To begin, I’ll analyze the “liberal” viewpoint “A bunch of old, slave-owning white men”. I put “liberal” in quotes because I, as a self-proclaimed liberal, have nothing but disdain for those who have this view. This idea of the Founders all being apparently the same extremely racist person began to take root in the 1960s and is still preached today by those who have read A Peoples’ History of the United States by Howard Zinn a few too many times. If you go by their opinion, the Founding Fathers were all cruel slavers who hypocritically espoused the idea that “all men are created equal” while still keeping their fellow human beings in bondage.
Obviously, I’m not trying to defend slavery, and to be sure, many of our founders were slave-owners. This is a troubling thought, especially when one thinks of Thomas Jefferson, the man who penned the Declaration of Independence while keeping slaves. But one must also look at the Founding Fathers like Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the earliest proponents of abolition in American government and helped give weight to the idea. Others like Benjamin Rush, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay were ardently anti-slavery, and even those who owned slaves like Jefferson, Madison, and Washington often condemned it’s evils and wished that they could do more to end it. Washington in particular wished to free his slaves but knew that there was no sure way of giving them their freedom, and even then after his death his slaves were freed according to his will. Of course, merely wishing that something would end while still doing it is wrong. But the fact is that most of the major founders paid at least lip service to abolition, and some actively worked against it.
The second major viewpoint taken today is the “conservative” or “libertarian” idea that the Founders all shared in their beliefs, namely very small government and a strict interpretation of the Constitution. This is almost as ridiculous as the “liberal” viewpoint. I again put the conservatives and libertarians who share this view in quotations because they are the vocal minority in most places.
The founders were a diverse group who split almost immediately after the war’s end because of differing viewpoints on how the country should be run. The Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison (at first), and John Jay wanted a strong Federal (or central) government that was superior to state governments and exercised power over them. The Democratic-Republicans, led by Jefferson and (later on) Madison, wanted a weak central government and more power to local government, with the smallest governments like town boards having the most influence on the lives of the local inhabitants.
The Federalists controlled the White House for the first two presidencies, Washington (although he officially did not have a party) and John Adams. Democratic-Republicans, who were closer to modern Republicans in terms of their fear or government intrusion, constantly attacked both men while they held office. Yes, that’s right, they went after Washington. They were afraid that a strong central government would exert too much control over the lives of citizens and restrict their rights, all the while claiming that through a loose interpretation of the Constitution, this was justified. And Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan included two things that might seem loathsome to conservatives: assumption of the states’ debt by the Federal government and a national bank. Democratic-Republicans feared that assumption would put the states under the power of the central governments and that a central bank would restrict the economy.
Anyone with a working knowledge of US politics knows that the idea of a central bank is loathsome to Libertarians and some Conservatives (see Ron Paul’s End the Fed). And a major fear of right-wingers today is that the “oppressive” Federal government is trampling all over our constitutional liberties.
So while many of the Founders shared some views with the conservatives of today, many more believed things that are horrifying to the right-wing of today. And while, yes, the Founders were all white, and many of them were slave-owners, many were not, and many worked to end slavery.
To oversimplify the beliefs of the Founding Fathers in the service of a personal political agenda does a disservice to both them and the political party affiliated with these claims. Of course, it is mostly extremists who make these claims, but if nobody comes forth to dispel them, people might be misinformed. I know that this is simply an article for a school newspaper and not many outside of this school will read it, but I think it is important to realize that the Founding Fathers were a diverse and complicated group of people, and they should not be lumped into one category.
