Founding Brothers: Preface Summary & Analysis

The American Revolution seemed “improbable” at the time, but in hindsight it was “inevitable.” Many of the figures involved in the Revolution spoke as if they were “actors in a historical drama.” Members of the revolutionary generation would claim that, in the words of John Adams, they were “present at the creation.” The extraordinary legacy of the Revolution is evident in the many revolutions that followed it, with republican governments replacing monarchies and colonial rule all across the globe. Today, the liberal principles established in the United States during this period hold sway around the world.

The revolutionary leaders may have spoken confidently, but in reality the values they fought for were still developing during their lifetimes. Military historians have concluded that if British commanders had been more aggressive at the beginning of the Revolution, they would have succeeded in stifling it, and the signers of the Declaration of Independence would have been executed for treason. It may have been inevitable that America eventually achieved independence from Britain, but it was not inevitable that this happened in one decisive but “improvisational” moment, rather than gradually. American institutions that survive to this day were created in a “sudden spasm” of creation.

Almost everything that the Revolution achieved was without any global precedent. In particular, no republican government had successfully presided over any territory as large as the thirteen colonies, which were not unified in any real way at the time. Hindsight is useful but “tricky,” and it is hard to know how much of it to employ. Ellis argues for a mode of hindsight that allows us to balance the knowledge we gain from our contemporary perspective with an understanding of the perspectives of those who lived during the post-Revolutionary period. He compares this to being “nearsighted and farsighted at the same time.”

Hindsight informs us that the abundance of the American natural landscape was a source of “limitless potential.” Meanwhile, the perspective of the revolutionary generation reminds us of a key problem: that the argument in favor of independence from Britain—a critique of centralized, distant authority—could also be used to undermine the new republican government of the United States of America. Although American’s long-term potential was indeed “limitless,” on a more immediate level the scale of the republic, along with its internal conflicts, made it seem likely that the nation would split into a number of different “state or regional sovereignties.”

History didn’t turn out this way thanks to the work of the handful of political leaders who drafted the Constitutional Convention in 1787. While the Constitution can certainly be viewed in a critical light, it is also true that Convention was a “miracle” in that it managed to solve problems that seemed entirely unsolvable. The Constitution managed to create a federal government that stayed true to the republican values outlined in 1776. 1787 was thus another “Founding Moment” of the nation, inaugurating a “second phase” of the Revolution.

The atmosphere surrounding the Constitutional Convention was one of uncertainty. Many compromises were made in order to appease opposing interests, and some issues were approached in a deliberately vague way to  avoid further conflict. At the time, the word “American”—like the word “democrat”—was used as an insult. In 1789, the newly elected federal government met in New York City to discuss the future of the republic. Helpfully, it had essentially been decided that George Washington would serve as the “first chief executive.” However, there remained many difficult issues to resolve.

Again, it was unclear whether it would be possible for a republican government to govern territory as large as the United States, and whether this would violate the principles of the Revolution if such an experiment proved successful. It remained to be seen if a coherent sense of American identity would develop at all. Furthermore, 700,000 of those living in the new American republic were black slaves, most of them in the Chesapeake Colonies and the Deep South.

The final years of the eighteenth century following the Constitutional Convention were “the most crucial and consequential” decade in American history. Issues ranging from the Civil War to the growth of American imperial domination in the twentieth century all had their origins in this period. People both idolize and vilify the Founding Fathers precisely because we are still “living their legacy.”

Among historians, it has become trendy to avoid focusing on the Founding Fathers and instead tell the story of the revolutionary period by focusing on the lives of ordinary people. Ellis’ decision to spotlight the leaders of the time is thus “old-fashioned”; however, he insists that these leaders were unquestionably the most important figures of the era. American institutions that still exist today were built by these leaders, all of whom had close—if tumultuous—personal relationships with one another.

These figures were all white, and essentially all were men. On the other hand, all of them would have been prohibited by the class system from rising to political prominence in England. In this sense, they were very American—“America’s first and, in many respects, its only natural aristocracy.” One school of thought interprets the Revolution as a radical assertion of liberty against European corruption, which was then corrupted by the Federalists (especially Alexander Hamilton). A different school highlights the origins of the Revolution further back, and proposes that its main principle was “collectivist rather than individualistic” action in service of the nation as a whole.

The different interpretations that exist in the present reflect the debates that raged at the time. Ultimately, both sides “have legitimate claims on historical truth” and both reflect the values of the Revolution. One of the most important legacies of the Revolution was harnessing the energy of disagreement and turning it toward productive ends. This means that “the United States is founded on a contradiction,” and that we should accept this. It is important to see that relations among the revolutionary generation were not harmonious, but rather “a decade-long shouting match.”

Founding Brothers focuses on the “eight most prominent political leaders” of the time: Abigail and John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. The book focuses on a series of episodes that illustrate the characteristics of the revolutionary generation, and overall highlights four themes: the Founding Fathers’ achievements was a “collective enterprise,” their political relations were also highly personal, they took the most challenging issue, slavery, “off the agenda,” and the revolutionary generation was aware that they were “making history” and behaved accordingly, with consideration to their own legacies.

The episodes in Founding Brothers are in chronological order, except for the first one, which portrays the fatal duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. This appears first in the book because it introduces the themes of the book well. It is also the only instance in which a disagreement among the Founding Fathers led to violence, in part due to the fact that Burr is the “odd man out” among the revolutionary generation. The end of the chapter sets the scene of the duel: a “hot summer morning in 1804,” as Burr and Hamilton separately row across the Hudson River to their meeting point.