Concept

Founding Fathers of the United States

Overview

The Founding Fathers of the United States, referred to as the Founding Fathers or the Founders by Americans, were a group of late-eighteenth-century American revolutionary leaders who united the Thirteen Colonies, oversaw the War of Independence from Great Britain, established the United States of America, and crafted a framework of government for the new nation.

The Founding Fathers include those who wrote and signed the United States Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States, certain military personnel who fought in the American Revolutionary War, and others who greatly assisted in the nation's formation. The single person most identified as Father of the United States is George Washington, commanding general in the American Revolution and the nation's first president. In 1973, the historian Richard B. Morris identified seven figures as key founders, based on what he called the "triple tests" of leadership, longevity, and statesmanship: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Washington.

Most of the Founding Fathers had ancestry traceable back to England, though many had family roots extending across the other regions of the British Isles: Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Additionally, some traced their lineage back to the early Dutch settlers of New York (New Netherland) during the colonial era, while others were descendants of French Huguenots who settled in the British Thirteen Colonies, escaping religious persecution in France. Many of them were wealthy merchants, lawyers, and landowners.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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To make this a little clearer, let us but trace some of the ordinary provisions of life, through their several progresses, before they come to our use, and see how much they receive of their value from human industry. Bread, wine and cloth, are things of daily use, and great plenty; yet notwithstanding, acorns, water and leaves, or skins, must be our bread, drink and cloathing, did not labour furnish us with these…
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
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But the majority of these leaders do not aim at separation. In this they adhere to the known principle of General Hamilton, never, under any views, to break the Union. Anglomany, monarchy, and separation, then, are the principles of the Essex federalists; Anglomany and monarchy, those of the Hamiltonians, and Anglomany alone, that of the portion among the people who call themselves federalists. These last are as…
Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4
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The various forms of government owe their origin to the various degrees of inequality between the members, at the time they first coalesced into a political body. Where a man happened to be eminent for power, for virtue, for riches, or for credit, he became sole magistrate, and the state assumed a monarchical form; if many of pretty equal eminence out-topped all the rest, they…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind
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Philosophers who discussed Founding Fathers of the United States

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

United States Declaration of Independence

Place in the tradition

Part of American philosophy.

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