The Founders: Intro essay
John Adams, second US president, wrote that “the revolution was effected before the war commenced. The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.” (Letter to Mr. Niles, January 14, 1818.)
To getting to know someone requires at least some idea of what philosophies influence him or her as well as what events fills one’s minds. Our country’s founders’ beliefs and attitudes about how to organize and govern a nation are found in their writings and their actions.
Thomas Jefferson chiefly wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776. He became our third US president in 1800. In later years, he said that he wrote the Declaration “to be an expression of the American mind.” He was assisted by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, forming a committee established by the Second Continental Congress to compose the declaration of independence from the abuses visited upon the colonies by the monarch. Some historians well might say that it is a most faithful reflection of John Locke’s writings from the 17th century.
An English political philosopher, John Locke wrote the Second Treatise of Civil Government, which was published in 1690. The influence of his liberal political philosophy has not been exceeded by many, if any, ever. (In today’s jargon, we would call Locke’s political philosophy “Conservative” instead of “liberal”, as the meanings have changed over time.) Locke promoted the establishment of a republic, comprising limited government, representative democracy, natural rights and the right of resistance to tyranny. He condemned absolutism in every form, whether despotic monarchies or the absolute sovereignty of parliaments (or congresses).
Locke maintains that originally all men had lived free in a state of nature, all were equal and there was no government. Each and every man had natural rights to life, liberty and property. That is nature’s law, the only law. However, each man had to protect his natural rights, which became more inconvenient and confusing over time, facing more insecurity. So men came together and established a civil society and created a government with one purpose only, which was to enforce nature’s law. They did not make the government absolute. The only power they surrendered and gave to government was the power to enforce the law of nature. The only authority held by the state “can be no more than those persons had in a state of nature before they entered into society, and gave it up to the community.” All powers not expressly surrendered are reserved to the people themselves. If the government exceeds or abuses the authority explicitly granted in the political contract, it becomes tyrannical; and the people then have the right to dissolve it or to rebel against it and overthrow it.
Locke goes to pains to point out that no branch of government or any political agency has the authority to invade the natural rights of a single individual, the law of nature. Regardless of how large a majority of the people’s representatives should demand restrictions of freedom of speech or the confiscation and redistribution of property, no such action could be taken legally. Such action would justify effective resistance to the government. (I wonder if Al Sharpton has read the Declaration of Independence recently; he seems most interested in stopping the freedom of speech held by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.)
Ben Franklin and John Adams made a few minor changes to Jefferson’s draft and Congress accepted the Declaration on July 4, 1776.
Another huge influence on American thinking came from Baron de Montesquieu, a French nobleman whose life spanned 1694 to 1778. He was an ardent student of John Locke’s writings and he admired British institutions. His great book is Spirit of Laws in which he studies actual history of the political systems through the ages and draws conclusions about useful government based on historical facts instead of depending upon the pure logic of philosophy or revealed knowledge from God or prophets of God. He is best known for his theory of the separation of powers and checks and balances.
One of our Founders is James Madison. He is called the Father of the Constitution because he was the most knowledgeable and best prepared delegate to the Constitutional Convention, held from May to September of 1787. He became our 4th president. He had read Montesquieu closely, as well as Locke and other philosophers. The US Constitution embodies Montesquieu’s theory of political power and how to control it.
Montesquieu believed that any man will abuse any power entrusted to him, and that ensures that any government will aggrandize power to itself and will degenerate into despotism sooner or later…unless. Rein in the power by breaking up the government. There are three natural divisions in government: legislative, executive, and judicial. He says that if you let anyone (or group) get control of two of the three divisions, liberty is lost. The only way to avoid tyranny is to enable each branch to act as a check on the power of the other two branches. For example, the executive should have the power to veto an overreaching law passed by the legislature, while the legislature should have the power to impeach an executive who overreaches his authority and, finally, there should be an independent judiciary that has the power to protect our individual rights against wrong actions taken by either or both of the other branches.
Montesquieu’s theory with few changes is in the draft of the constitution that Madison had prepared before the convention in Philadelpia opened. That fundamental structure for the federal government, ardently guarding against the natural tendency to tyranny by people in power, remained in the final constitution without modification.
So, we have briefly met John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, four of our Founders. All signed the Declaration of Independence, two worked on the constitution convention at Philadelphia. Who were the two on diplomatic missions that summer?
The average age of the men who attended the US constitution convention was 42 years. While few Americans went to college, a majority of the delegates had graduated from college. Many were lawyers, businessmen and planters. Only 8 of them had been among those who had signed the Declaration of Independence.
