Political Thought of the American Founders

Introduction

The historical importance of the American founders as revolutionaries and state builders and the significance of their ideas in constitutional interpretation and contemporary political debates ensure that their political thought is the subject of voluminous scholarship featuring hotly contested and continuously refined interpretations. During the first half of the 20th century, the Progressive interpretation dominated. Pioneered by James Allen Smith, the Progressive interpretation was given its most visible articulation by Charles Beard in his iconoclastic and still controversial study, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (Beard 1986, cited under the Progressive and Neo-Progressive Interpretation). Although they were far from consistent, Progressives followed Beard in treating the founders’ political ideas largely as surface justifications for their immediate economic interests. During the 1950s, however, challenges to the methodological assumptions and empirical findings of Progressive scholarship released the grip of the economic interpretation of the American Revolution and the formation of the Constitution and renewed interest in the ideas of the American founders’ political thought. Since the 1960s, scholars have engaged in an exhaustive debate over the intellectual origins and character of the founders’ political thought. During the 1970s and 1980s, this debate took form as a highly visible series of confrontations about whether the political thought of the American founders was best thought of as a species of classical republicanism or Lockean liberalism. Not long after this debate began, however, a consensus formed among most scholars that the political thought of the American founders was a synthesis of ancient and modern ideas. This catholic but also diffuse and loose-jointed agreement has informed almost all recent scholarship on the political thought of the founders. Scholars have made a strong case for the importance of ideas from ancient Greece and Rome, the Scottish Enlightenment, British common law, international law, Protestant Christianity, and modern liberalism in the founders’ political thought. Nevertheless, the conclusion that the founders’ political thought was a synthesis did not end debate but rather led to exchanges about which traditions were central and how the different idioms and traditions fit together. More recently, the study of the founders’ political thought has been advanced by ever more sophisticated analyses of the political thought of specific founders, by reinterpretations of the central purposes and original understandings of important documents (including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), by the publication of a number of books that reexamine events that are important in ascertaining the political thought of the American founders (including the formation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitutional Convention), and by the publication of numerous individual and collective biographies that feature interpretations of the political thought of one or several founders. It has also been advanced by new articulations of the Progressive interpretation and the construction of a new framework of interpretation: the unionist paradigm. As these developments have taken place, social history focusing on the lives of ordinary Americans has replaced intellectual and political history as the focus of most academic research in the early republic. This transformation has had an ambiguous relationship with the study of the founders’ political thought. On the one hand, it has turned many scholars away from the study of elite discourse and toward accounts of the lived experiences of women, slaves, free blacks, and ordinary farmers. On the other hand, it has transformed who we think of as founders, illuminated the inegalitarian and ascriptive ideologies that were used to subordinate oppressed groups, and redefined scholars’ understandings of the lines between public and private actions and personal and political beliefs.

General Overviews

One of the causes and consequences of the popularity of the founders in American political culture, or what scholars often call “founders chic,” has been the publication of a large number of biographies, synthetic narratives, and collections of essays about the founders by leading historians, independent scholars, and journalists. Synthetic narratives such as Ellis 2000, Kalyvas and Katznelson 2008, Morgan 1992, Rakove 2010, and Wood 1992 offer important and fresh perspectives on the founders’ political lives and goals and have shed light on the origins, character, and significance of their political ideas. Collections of essays by leading founding scholars such as Bailyn 2003, Wood 2006, and Wood 2011 have made their path-breaking interpretations accessible to broader intellectual audiences.

Bailyn, Bernard. To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders. New York: Knopf, 2003.
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A collection of essays by Bailyn that celebrates the boldness and originality of the founders and explains their greatness and innovativeness as the product of the liberating effect of their place as provincials in the broader international context of the 18th century world that they inhabited.
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Ellis, Joseph. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New York: Vintage, 2000.
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Pulitzer-Prize winning study that examines the ways in which the lives of leading founders were tied together and how their interactions led to some of the most important decisions made by the founding generation.
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Kalyvas, Andreas, and Ira Katznelson. Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511790782Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the political thought of six 18th-century philosophers, only two of whom—Paine and Madison—were American founders. Nevertheless, this work contains a novel thesis that should interest students of the American founding. The authors argue that liberalism and republicanism grew up together, not as rivals. Instead, liberalism was incubated within republicanism and burst from a republican chrysalis.
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Morgan, Edmund S. The Birth of the Republic, 1763–89. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
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Straightforward and clearly written account of the Revolution and the formation of the Constitution. Morgan challenges the then-prevailing Progressive interpretation by arguing that the American Revolution was fought on the basis of the principle of equality. Unity among the colonists around that principle, not class or interest group divisions between them, was the most miraculous development of the period.
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Rakove, Jack N. Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
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Broad study that examines how reluctant rebels were thrust into public lives by the Revolution and thereby led to develop the special talents that vaulted them to greatness. Particularly strong on Hamilton as a state-builder and Madison as a thinking politician.
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Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1992.
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Wood’s important argument that the American Revolution created a fundamental social revolution within the United States with effects that still resonate today. Contains an important restatement of his understanding of the role of classical republican ideology as an antimonarchical moment that gave way to liberalism under the practices of ordinary Americans.
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Wood, Gordon S. Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different. New York: Penguin, 2006.
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A collection of previously published essays by the premier historian of the American founding of his generation. This collection provides illuminating interpretations of the political ideas of Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, and Paine.
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Wood, Gordon S. The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States. New York: Penguin, 2011.
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Another collection of brilliant essays by Wood that illuminates the political thought of a variety of founders and also the meaning of rights and republicanism to the founding generation. As in several of his books, Wood argues that the American Revolution was the most important event in American history and traces its reverberations throughout the world.
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Reference Works

Several valuable reference works and websites have been published in the last thirty years that provide guidance to the American founders, the Constitutional Convention, and the ratification process. Websites such as Founding.com, Special Exhibits on the American Founding, and Vindicating the Founders provide valuable background information, including biographical sketches of leading founders and easy electronic access to useful collections of primary material. Solid analyses of leading documents and events and biographies of the American founders are also provided by dictionaries and encyclopedias of the founding such as Greene and Pole 1991, Levy 1986, Morton 2005, Vile 2005, and Lutz 1992.

Founding.com.
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This website from the Claremont Institute features an annotated Declaration of Independence, a founders’ Library with an extensive collection of writings by key founders, important Supreme Court decisions and government documents (both British and American) on founding issues, links to works that served as philosophical sources for the founders, and a collection of writings by preachers from the era.
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Greene, Jack P., and J. R. Pole, eds. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
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Includes essays by leading authorities on a variety of themes about the causes and conduct of the Revolution and its effects. Important to students of the founders’ political thought because of essays on the ideological background of the American Revolution and on numerous political concepts including liberty, equality, property, consent, happiness, republicanism, sovereignty, separation of powers, rights, and virtue.
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Levy, Leonard W., ed. Encyclopedia of the American Constitution. 4 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1986.
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Includes biographical sketches of leading figures in American constitutional history and essays on important topics in American constitutionalism. Not exclusive to the founding but excellent on the founding themes and figures. Supplemental volume published in 1992.
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Lutz, Donald S. A Preface to American Political Theory. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992.
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Sets forth a definition of the field of American political theory and includes many useful insights on the founders’ political thought, especially a quantitative analysis of the European works most often read and cited by the founders.
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Morton, Joseph C. Shapers of the Great Debate at the Constitutional Convention of 1787: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2005.
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Contains concise but valuable biographical sketches of the fifty-five men who attended the Constitutional Convention.
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Special Exhibits on the American Founding.
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This website by the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University documents major themes within the Constitution Convention, provides short biographical sketches of the delegates, and includes Madison’s notes of the debates. A section on the ratification struggle features interpretive essays on ratification and electronic links to The Federalist Papers, numerous Anti-Federalist writings, and the ratification debates in several states.
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Vile, John R. The Constitutional Convention of 1787: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of America’s Founding. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005.
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Excellent guide to the Philadelphia Convention with many valuable entries. Also includes several primary documents.
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Vindicating the Founders.
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This site by the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University is dedicated to Thomas West’s conservative crusade to vindicate the founders from the charges of racism, sexism, and opposition to democracy. It is, however, balanced by essays and primary sources that criticize the founders. Also contains numerous primary documents that bear on the provocative questions that West raises. Also see Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America by Thomas G. West (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997).
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The Writings and Papers of Individual Founders

Over the past half century, massive editorial and publication projects have made the political writings, private correspondence, and public commentary of the founding generation readily available in edited volumes and electronic and digital forms. A comprehensive volume of the writings of Alexander Hamilton (Hamilton 1961–1987) has been completed. Paine 1967 and Paine 1945 are more limited edited volumes of the writings of Thomas Paine. Wilson 2007 makes available the works of James Wilson. Editorial projects of the writings of John Adams (The Adams Papers series 1963–), Benjamin Franklin (Franklin 1959–), Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson 1950–), James Madison (Papers of James Madison series 1977–), and George Washington (Papers of George Washington 1983–) constitute massive ongoing editorial projects. These volumes contain introductory essays and extensive editorial notes that are themselves scholarly contributions. At their inception, these editing projects proceeded in a strictly chronological order, but many have now been broken into separate series that cover for example the presidential years of a leading Founder, their years serving as secretary of state, their legal careers, and their retirement years. One of the most important contributions of these editorial projects is that they have made virtually all of the papers (including letters, public papers, diaries, records of and notes for speeches) of leading founders easily accessible.

Adams Papers series. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963–.
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This collection (thirty-five volumes to date) of Adams’ writings is the most comprehensive in print. The series contains three subcollections: Diaries, Adams Family Correspondence, and General Correspondence and Other Papers of the Adams Statesmen. A final subvolume include portraits. See the University of Harvard Press website for more details. The first volume of the Correspondence series includes an informative essay describing the fate of much of Adams’ lost correspondence and Adams’ role as a public servant and revolutionary. The series is available online by subscription.
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Franklin, Benjamin. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. 38 vols. Edited by Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959–.
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Although much of what Franklin wrote early in his life has been lost, this edition preserves thousands of his letters, documents, and published essays.
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Hamilton, Alexander. The Papers of Alexander Hamilton. 27 vols. Edited by Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–1987.
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Hamilton’s voluminous papers include a helpful index, continued in several additional volumes. The papers are available online by subscription.
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Jefferson, Thomas. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. 36 vols. Edited by Julian P. Boyd, C.T. Cullen, Catanzariti, and Barbara B. Oberg. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950–.
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Julian Boyd set the editorial standards that were followed in many of the editing projects of the papers of the American founders. The volumes edited by Boyd in this series (vols. 1–21) include extensive annotations. Later editors have supplied less commentary so as not to excessively guide commentary on Jefferson. The papers are also available online by subscription.
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Paine, Thomas. The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine. Edited by Phillip S. Foner. New York: Citadel, 1945.
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This two-volume set is far less than comprehensive but provides an excellent biographical essay by one of Paine’s most astute students.
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Paine, Thomas. The Writings of Thomas Paine. 4 vols. Edited by Moncure Daniel Conway. New York: AMS, 1967.
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Paine’s writings have yet to receive the editorial attention given to other founders. This four-volume work is now dated and does not meet the editorial standards of other projects.
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Papers of George Washington series. Edited by W. W. Abbott. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983–.
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The editors of Washington’s papers estimate that they will eventually encompass ninety volumes. Currently consists of fifty-eight volumes. The papers are published in five series (Colonial, Revolutionary War, Confederation, Presidential, Retirement) plus the Diaries (six volumes, published 1976–1979). See the University of Virginia Press website for more details. The papers are also available online by subscription.
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Papers of James Madison series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1977–.
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This ongoing editorial project follows the Boyd model. The publication of these papers has had the effect of enhancing Madison’s reputation as an independent thinker and politician rather than Jefferson’s lieutenant. The papers are arranged in four series: Congressional series, Secretary of State series, Presidential series, and Retirement series. The first ten volumes of the seventeen-volume Congressional series (1962–1977) were published by the University of Chicago Press. See the University of Virginia Press website for more details. The papers are also available online by subscription.
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Wilson, James. Collected Works of James Wilson. 2 vols. Edited by Kermit L. Hall. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2007.
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No comprehensive editorial project of Wilson’s papers has been undertaken, but this volume includes Wilson’s most important writings, judicial opinions, speeches, and a complete text of his Lectures on Law. Includes bibliographical essay by Mark David Hall.
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Collections

In addition to the papers and writings of the most important founders, editorial projects have resulted in numerous works that compile selected pamphlets, speeches, public debates, documents, and writings on a variety of topics concerning the American founding, including the American Revolution, the Constitutional Convention, the ratification contest, and the First Federal Congress. These volumes also provide easy access for scholars to a broad range of public and private discourse at the founding. Important colonial and revolutionary documents have been compiled by Bailyn 1965 and Lutz 1998, while Farrand 1913, Madison 1987, and Kurland and Lerner 2000 edit Madison’s notes of the Philadelphia Convention and collect important documents surrounding the Convention. Composed of the public speeches and public and private commentary on the proposed Constitution, Kaminski, et al. 1976– represents perhaps the most exhaustive and important editing project of founding era primary material to date. Storing 1981 and De Pauw, et al. 1972–2012 provide important compilations of primary material from opponents of the Constitution and the first congresses.

Bailyn, Bernard, ed. Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1965.
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Edited volume of revolutionary pamphlets. This volume contains the pamphlets that led Bailyn to formulate his thesis for The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Bailyn 1992, cited under the Republican Interpretation).
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De Pauw, Linda Grant, Charlene Bangs Bickford, Kenneth R. Bowling, Helen E. Veit, and William C. diGiacomantonio, eds. The Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United States of America, 4 March 1789–3 March 1791. 20 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972–2012.
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This award-winning series is devoted to the First Federal Congress as the legislative body that completed the Constitution by drafting the Bill of Rights, forming the federal judicial system, determining the location of the federal capital, and funding the Revolutionary debt.
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Farrand, Max. The Framing of the Constitution of the United States. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1913.
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Standard collection for understanding the drafting of the Constitution for much of the 20th century. Now dated but still valuable and often cited.
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Kaminski, John P., Gaspare J. Saladino, Richard Leffler, Charles H. Schoenleber, and Margaret A. Hogan, eds. The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution. 24 vols. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976–.
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This invaluable resource is impeccably edited with numerous valuable editorial notes. It documents commentary surrounding the ratification of the Constitution through an exhaustive compilation of public and private correspondence, including newspaper editorials, speeches and official records and documents, and letters. Twenty-four volumes are currently in print with eight more planned. See the State Historical Society of Wisconsin’s website for information on specific volumes.
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Kurland, Philip B., and Ralph Lerner, eds. The Founders’ Constitution. 5 vols. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2000.
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Arranges speeches, writings, and other documents important to understanding the original meaning of the Constitution under the relevant clause and in thematic sections. Originally published in 1987 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
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Lutz, Donald S., ed. Colonial Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1998.
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Contains each of the colonial charters and constitutions. Supplemented with an important introductory essay that argues that constitutions are important statements of collective identity, symbol, and myth.
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Madison, James. Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison. Edited by Adrienne Koch. New York: Norton, 1987.
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Definitive edition of James Madison’s notes from the constitutional convention. Also includes the essay that Madison wrote in the 1830s as a preface to his notes.
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Storing, Herbert, ed. The Complete Anti-Federalist. 7 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
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Most comprehensive collection of Anti-Federalist writings and speeches in print.
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Journals

Studies of the political thought of the American founders have appeared in a plethora of journals, but the four below have been most important. Two historical journals, the Journal of the Early Republic and William and Mary Quarterly and two from political science, the Review of Politics and Polity, regularly feature articles that provide fresh analyses of the political thought of leading founders, examine events (such as the American Revolution or the Constitutional Convention), and provide explications of specific political concepts important to the founding generation. American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture has also now been launched, which promises to exceed all previous journals as a forum for scholarship on the political thought of the founders.

American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture. 2012–.
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This interdisciplinary journal began publication in 2012 and promises to be the premier journal of American political thought and thus an important venue for scholarship on the political thought of the American founders.
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Journal of the Early Republic. 1981–.
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Published quarterly by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), this journal publishes articles devoted to American history from 1776 to 1861.
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Polity: The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association. 1968–.
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Polity has acted for many years as the journal of choice for scholars publishing in American political thought.
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Review of Politics. 1939–.
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Dedicated to the publication of historically sensitive political theory, this quarterly journal has been a popular venue for studies of the founders’ political thought since it began publishing in 1939.
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William and Mary Quarterly. 1982–.
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The William and Mary Quarterly is one of the oldest and most prestigious journals in early American history and is known for impeccable editorial standards. It has been the source for numerous seminal articles on the founders’ political thought.
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Methodological Issues

The study of the founders’ political thought has been deeply affected by broader methodological debates within the study of the history of political thought. Philosophically inclined political theorists—especially the students of Leo Strauss—often approach the study of the founders with an eye toward their claims to truth and their transhistorical teachings. This approach is evident in works by Lerner 1987, Tarcov 1988, and Zuckert 1985. In contrast, many historians deny the possibility that past ideas have a claim to truth or can provide lessons for the present. Instead, these scholars are interested primarily in recreating the intellectual milieu of the founders’ political thought, in understanding how this matrix of ideas affected the actions of political actors, and in understanding the contextual political problems addressed by the historical participants. This new historicism or linguistic contextualist approach is advanced and defended in the methodological essays of Pocock 1971, Skinner 1988, and Wood 1979.

Lerner, Ralph. The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.
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Lerner argues that the founders were thoughtful and reflective men who engaged great thinkers and ideas directly to solve the contemporary problems they faced. He also argues that the founders’ ideas must be taken seriously as a possible independent variable of their actions, not as members of the republican school argued as expressions of deep anxieties.
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Pocock, John G. A. “Languages and Their Implications: The Transformation of the Study of Political Thought.” In Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History. By John G. A. Pocock, 3–41. New York: Atheneum, 1971.
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Pocock draws on Thomas Kuhn’s idea of paradigms to call for the study of the political languages that informed the thoughts of historical actors.
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Skinner, Quentin. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas.” In Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics. Edited by James Tully, 29–67. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
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Skinner’s often-cited article documents historical mythologies and argument fallacies that he traces to the philosophical analysis of the history of political thought. Skinner sees this endeavor to expose the methodological failures of “Great Books” approaches as a prelude to the development of a genuinely historical account of the history of political thought. Essay also appears in Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics. Vol. 1, Regarding Method, pp. 57–89 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), which is available online by subscription.
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Tarcov, Nathan. “Quentin Skinner’s Method and Machiavelli’s Prince.” In Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics. Edited by James Tully, 194–203. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
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Argues that the mythologies that Skinner adopted are not endemic to a philosophical approach to the study of political thought and that Skinner’s approach may create its own mythologies. Also appears in Ethics 92.4 (1982): 692–709, which is available online by subscription.
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Wood, Gordon S. “Intellectual History and the Social Sciences.” In New Directions in American Intellectual History. Edited by John Higham and Paul K. Conkin, 27–41. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.
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Wood argues that interpreters should concentrate on how ideas affected the actions of political actors and are thus important for what they do, not what they are. There are no true answers, he suggests, to questions such as the real meaning of the Constitution.
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Zuckert, Michael P. “Appropriation and Understanding in the History of Political Philosophy: On Quentin Skinner’s Method.” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 13.3 (September 1985): 403–423.
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Zuckert provides a penetrating response to the historicist challenge to the philosophical analysis of historical texts that, among other points, argues that assumptions that apply to analyzing the thoughts of ordinary public discourse may often not apply to the study of the greatest minds in the history of political thought. PDF of entire issue, including Zuckert’s essay, is available for download
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Historiographical Studies

Scholars have periodically attempted broad assessments of the historiography of the American founding. These studies often quickly become dated and serve best as snapshots that reveal prevailing methodologies and academic fashions. Nevertheless, at their inception the most important historiographical studies serve to bring to life and crystallize the very frameworks of interpretation that they purport only to identify and characterize. Cornell 1994 argues for the application of postmodern hermeneutic theories to the study of the political thought of the American founders especially in resurrecting the political ideas of the opponents of the Constitution. McGiffert 1987 brings together the most brilliant minds who study the American founding to focus on Gordon Wood’s massively influential study, the Creation of the American Republic (Wood 1967, cited under the Republican Interpretation); Shalhope 1972 and Shalhope 1982 are two essays that announced the birth of the republican interpretation, and Rodgers 1992 declares its death. Onuf 1989 is a brilliant bicentennial essay that calls for a renewed appreciation of the federal origins of the American union. Gibson 2010a and Gibson 2010b provide an overview of the study of the American founding that focuses both on the methodology and substance of the different schools or approaches to the study of the American founding. These works also isolate the most important crucial scholarly debates that have defined the scholarly study of the American founding.

Cornell, Saul. “Moving Beyond the Canon of Traditional Constitutional History: Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights, and the Promise of Post-Modern Historiography.” Law and History Review 12.1 (Spring 1994): 1–28.
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Rooted in a selective application of postmodern hermeneutic theories, this essay calls for expanding the canon of sources examined in the constitutional history of the early republic and suggests the implications that this will have for our understanding of Anti-Federalism. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Gibson, Alan R. Interpreting the Founding: Guide to the Enduring Debates over the Origins and Foundations of the American Republic. 2d ed. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010a.
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Extensive historiographical study of the American founding. Examines the post-Beardian study of the American founding through the lens of seven frameworks of interpretation that have been presented, including the methodological assumptions and fundamental principles within each framework of interpretation.
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Gibson, Alan R. Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010b.
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Examines debates over the economic interpretation of the Constitution, how democratic is the Constitution, how the political thought of the founders should be interpreted, the intellectual foundations of the American republic, and the moral responsibility of the founders for slavery.
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McGiffert, Michael, ed. Forum: The Creation of the American Republic: A Symposium of Views and Reviews, 1776–1787. William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 44.3 (July 1987): 549–640.
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Retrospective analysis of Gordon Wood’s defining study, The Creation of the American Republic (Wood 1967, cited under the Republican Interpretation) by the leading scholars of the American founding. Contains a reply by Wood to his commentators and critics. Available online by subscription.
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Onuf, Peter S. “Reflections on the Founding: Constitutional Historiography in Bicentennial Perspective.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 46.2 (1989): 341–375.
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Documents the transformation of the study of the American founding from largely an historical endeavor to a multidisciplinary conversation. Onuf also sets forth a prescient call for a refocusing on issues of international diplomacy and interstate organization in the crisis of the union of 1787 and the formation of the Constitution. Available online by subscription.
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Rodgers, Daniel T. “Republicanism: The Career of a Concept.” Journal of American History 79 (1992): 11–38.
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Eloquent analysis of the birth and death of republicanism as an interpretive framework. Also establishes the origins of the multiple traditions approach to the study of the American founding. Available online by subscription.
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Shalhope, Robert E. “Toward a Republican Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 29.1 (1972): 49–80.
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This essay identifies the republican interpretation and helped launch the important debates that attended its creation. Available online by subscription.
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Shalhope, Robert E. “Republicanism and Early American Historiography.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 39.2 (1982): 334–356.
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The second of Shalhope’s historiographical essays on republicanism identifies many of the criticisms that were lodged against this interpretation and analyzes the complex body of scholarship that this historiographical approach generated. Available online by subscription.
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Interpretative Frameworks

Interpretations of the founders’ political thought have been structured by schools, frameworks, and traditions of interpretation. Unlike paradigms in the natural sciences, however, these frameworks of interpretation have not been tightly woven, mutually exclusive, universally accepted, or strictly enforced. Furthermore, the ascendancy of one framework of interpretation has not necessarily meant the total subordination of others. The study of the political thought of the American founders is thus best thought of as an accretion of contested perspectives that have over the years each become increasingly sophisticated rather than the replacement of one interpretive framework with another.

The Progressive and Neo-Progressive Interpretation

Progressive and neo-Progressive scholars (Beard 1986; Becker 1960; Jensen 1940; Parrington 1927–1930; Smith 1965) have sought to demythologize the founders and desacralize the Constitution. They argued that the American Revolution was fought not only to establish “home rule” but also precipitated a social revolution within the states about “who should rule at home.” They pursued empirical studies to try to establish that the framers derived immediate economic benefits from their state-building efforts, pursued the antidemocratic interpretation of the Constitution, and fashioned a conflict narrative of American history as a battle between plutocrats and democrats. As earlier suggested, the Progressive interpretation was antagonistic to the study of political thought because Progressives argued that ideas were surface justifications for efforts to advance economic interests. Still, the Progressives never consistently applied this proposition but instead divined the founders’ motives from their writings when those writings seemed to indicate the importance of economic interests in their actions. They also often accepted on face value the validity of contemporaneous statements that characterized the framers as wealthy, self-interested opponents of democracy. More recently, neo-Progressive scholars (Bouton 2007; Holton 2007) have blended empirical analysis and studies of the political thought of the founders in sophisticated ways that do not deny the importance of the study of ideas. Instead, these studies often rely heavily on archival research to retrieve the voices of middling and poor laborers, slaves, and women as evidence of mainstream Progressive interpretations. Rational choice theorists (McGuire 2003) have also revived aspects of the Progressive interpretation by articulating a new economic interpretation of the Constitution. This new economic interpretation that reestablishes important Progressive findings was, paradoxically achieved by subjecting the evidence of economic holdings of the framers gathered by Forrest McDonald in his anti-Progressive tract, We the People (McDonald 1958, cited under the Original Meaning and Design of the Constitution), to advanced statistical analyses not pursued by Beard.

Beard, Charles. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. New York: Free Press, 1986.
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Originally published in 1913. One of the most important books ever written on the American founding. Beard’s controversial economic interpretation remains widespread even though many scholars disagree about what Beard really argued and many aspects of his empirical findings have been decisively challenged.
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Becker, Carl L. History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760–1776. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960.
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Originally published in 1909, Becker’s doctoral dissertation was the first formulation of Becker’s “dual revolution” thesis that the battle with Britain over “home rule” precipitated a battle among Americans about “who should rule at home.”
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Bouton, Terry. Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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Argues with other Progressive scholars that a social revolution in the states led to a counter reaction by elites that culminated in the calling of the Constitutional Convention. Bouton also, however, argues that radicalism was revived somewhat in the 1790s.
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Holton, Woody. Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007.
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Sophisticated recent restatement of the Progressive interpretation that is particularly strong on the fiscal and monetary controversies in the states. Holton focuses on the “invisible” ways in which the Constitution restrained democracy, especially the use of elections from large electoral districts.
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Jensen, Merrill. The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774–1781. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1940.
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Definitive articulation of the thesis that the Articles of Confederation was a democratic document and the logical compliment of the Declaration of Independence. Jensen’s analysis compliments the idea that the original constitution was an antidemocratic document.
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McGuire, Robert A. To Form a More Perfect Union: A New Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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Subjects the data that Forrest McDonald (McDonald 1958, cited under the Original Meaning and Design of the Constitution) used to challenge Beard’s economic interpretation (Beard 1986) to sophisticated empirical tests that McDonald did not perform, especially regression analysis. The result is a new economic interpretation that in part supports and in part challenges Beard’s thesis.
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Parrington, Vernon. Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920. 3 vols. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927–1930.
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Progressive interpretation that provides a vivid version of the idea that American history has been a perpetual battle between haves and have-nots, top dogs and underdogs.
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Smith, J. Allen. The Spirit of American Government: A Study of the Constitution: Its Origin, Influence, and Relation to Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
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One of the earliest and most influential versions of the Progressive thesis about the reasons for the calling of the Constitutional Convention and the antidemocratic, procreditor bias of the original Constitution.
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The Liberal Interpretation

Proponents of the liberal interpretation believe that the United States was founded, to use Michael Zuckert’s apt phrase, as a “natural rights republic” (see Zuckert 1996, cited under Multiple Traditions Interpretations). This interpretation stresses the importance of the Lockean precepts of natural equality, the proposition that legitimate governments are based on the consent of the governed and provide protection for individual rights and the belief that the people have the right to rebel against illegitimate governments. The founders are also said to be commercial republicans who praised commerce as consistent with the desires and capabilities of ordinary citizens and as the proper means for the establishment of a humane, prosperous, and stable polity. American commitments to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and to commercial republicanism, according to this interpretation, have translated across American history into the hegemony of liberal values such as the sanctity of private property, economic individualism, and popular sovereignty. Considered historically, the liberal or Lockean interpretation of the American founding is perhaps the most persistent and enduring interpretation of the political thought of the American founders. Its most recent recrudescences took place in the 1950s and then again in the 1980s. In the 1950s, the liberal interpretation emerged in the works of consensus historians such as Louis Hartz (Hartz 1991) and the anti-Marxist political scientist Martin Diamond (Diamond 1992) as a challenge to the conflict interpretations of the Progressives. Central themes of this interpretation were later restated during the 1970s and 1980s from a variety of angles. Lerner 1987 renews and refines the historical case for understanding the American founders as the architects of a commercial republic; Diggins 1984 presents a kind of neo-consensus interpretation that stresses the synergy of Lockean and Calvinistic values in the American character; Appleby 1984 and Gerber 1993 examine the emergence of liberal ideas in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in America and seek to establish the importance of an historic Locke and the ideas of the Declaration of Independence to the founders in the face of the charge that the liberal interpretation was an anachronistic effort to explain the American character and the absence of socialism in America. Even more recently, Rahe 1992 interprets the American founders as proponents of the “new science of politics” of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke, while simultaneously selectively integrating aspects of classical republicanism into their political thought. Zuckert 1994 forcefully argues that Locke is the cornerstone of American political thought but that the founders synthesized ideas from other traditions of political thought including Protestantism, Whig historicism, and classical republicanism into a coherent Lockean synthesis.

Appleby, Joyce O. Capitalism and the New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s. New York: New York University Press, 1984.
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Appleby’s scholarship traces the origins of liberalism to market practices that emerged in early modern Europe. Her scholarship established the importance of liberalism to the Jeffersonians in particular as a liberating alternative to patriarchal and monarchical authority and to mercantilism.
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Diamond, Martin. As Far as Republican Principles Will Admit: Essays by Martin Diamond. Edited by William A. Schambra. Washington, DC: AEI, 1992.
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Diamond’s immensely influential essays are republished in this volume. They reflect his defense of the practical, anti-utopian, and thoroughly modern and liberal foundations of the American founding.
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Diggins, John Patrick. The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-Interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism. New York: Basic Books, 1984.
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Diggins argues that the American founders combined a Calvinistic conception of original sin with a commitment to the liberal political ideas in a synthesis that has pervaded American history.
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Gerber, Scott D. “Whatever Happened to the Declaration of Independence? A Commentary on the Republican Revisionism in the Political Thought of the American Revolution.” Polity 26.2 (Winter 1993): 207–231.
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Points to the tendency of scholars of the republican interpretation to ignore the importance of the Declaration of Independence and thus of the most important early statement of liberalism in American political thought. Available online by subscription.
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Hartz, Louis. The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution. 2d ed. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1991.
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Classic study originally published in 1955 of the American political thought suggesting the “absolute and irrational” attachment of Americans to the idea of Locke. Hartz’s thesis is that the absence of feudalism in America made the development of a truly revolutionary ideology unnecessary and that liberalism became the default ideology of virtually all Americans.
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Lerner, Ralph. “Commerce and Character.” In The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic. By Ralph Lerner, 195–221. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.
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The most sophisticated version of the “commercial republican” interpretation of the American founding.
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Rahe, Paul A. Republics: Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
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Massive synthetic interpretation that argues that the American founders were mostly modern liberals but selectively integrated aspects of classical republicanism into their political thought.
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Zuckert, Michael P. Natural Rights and the New Republicanism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
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Provides the important argument that 17th- and 18th-century Whigs and the American founders fused a republican political science to ideas within Lockean political philosophy.
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The Republican Interpretation

The classical republican or civic humanist interpretation of the American founding was crystallized in the 1970s as a challenge to both the liberal interpretation and the Progressives’ contention that the American founding could not be understood by interpreting the political ideas of the framers. When ideas were understood as ideology, proponents of this interpretation argued, it became clear that they were vital to understanding the American Revolution, the formation of the Constitution, and the creation of the first political parties. The set of ideas that were important in the American founding, however, was not Lockean liberalism but rather classical republicanism or civic humanism. This ideology stresses the importance of virtue (understood as a willingness to sacrifice individual interests to the public good) and a corresponding fear of corruption. It also stresses participatory or positive liberty, the advancement of the public good as a primary role for government, and hesitancy among Americans to embrace commerce. Classical republicanism, this interpretation suggests, drew back to the ancient republics of Greece, reemerged in the Italian Renaissance and then again among coffee house radicals in English political thought in the 17th and 18th centuries, and was reaffirmed in the American Revolution. Conditioned by this opposition ideology, Bailyn 1992 argues, the American Revolutionaries could not help but see the imposition of British rule in the colonies after 1763 as a conspiracy against their liberties. Wood 1967 traces the continuing importance of classical republican ideas in the formation of the Constitution, while Banning 1978, McCoy 1980, and Murrin 1980 argue that it served as the basis for the political thought of the Jeffersonians and continued to reverberate in Americans’ fears of political corruption. Pocock 1972 and Pocock 1975 provide the global narrative of the half-life of the Atlantic republican tradition.

Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. 2d ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1992.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning study that was central in launching republican revisionism. Bailyn argues that civic humanism fused a number of other strains of political thought including Enlightenment rationalism, British common law, and covenant theology into a structured universe of thought that became the prism through which revolutionaries interpreted the actions of the British crown as a conspiracy against their liberties.
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Banning, Lance. The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.
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Establishes the importance of republican ideology in the Jeffersonian fear of constitutional degeneration and executive aggrandizements of power and their commitment to a balance of powers between the branches of government.
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McCoy, Drew R. The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.
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Study of Jeffersonian political economy as Janus faced. On the one hand, the Jeffersonians favored a republican agrarian tradition that celebrated the independence of the yeoman farmer. On the other hand, however, the Jeffersonians were commercial agrarians who hoped to open international markets to American agricultural products.
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Murrin, John. “The Great Inversion, or Court Versus Country: A Comparison of the Revolutionary Settlements in England (1688–1721) and America (1776–1816).” In Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776. Edited by John G. A. Pocock, 368–453. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
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This seminal article argues that the party conflicts of the 1790s between the Jeffersonians and the Federalists were a repeat of the Court and Country party debates of a century before in England.
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Pocock, John G. A. “Virtue and Commerce in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3.1 (Summer 1972): 119–134.
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This often-cited review essay announces the arrival of the classical republican challenge to the Lockean interpretation of the founding and sets forth the outlines that the republican interpretation would take. Available online by subscription.
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Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republic Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.
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Pocock’s comprehensive contribution to republican revisionism. Pocock traces four distinct transmissions of republican tradition: its origins in the writings of Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero; its revival in the Florentine Renaissance; a second revival in 17th- and 18th-century England; and its rebirth in the American Revolution.
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Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967.
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Wood’s masterpiece. Traces the transformation of republican ideology from the classical republicanism of the Revolution to the formation of a nascent form of liberal interest group politics with the ratification of the Constitution.
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The Founders and the Classics

Proponents of the republican interpretation argue that republican ideology is especially important in the American Revolution and the party battles of the 1790s. One of the principal spokesmen of this interpretation, however, argues that classics ideas were “everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought” (Bailyn 1992, p. 26, cited under the Republican Interpretation). Furthermore, most proponents of this interpretation do not envision republicanism as an undifferentiated tradition but rather trace out the several transformations that it has undergone and maintain that the American founders developed their understandings of the classical republican tradition through 17th and 18th century Whig mediators. American republicanism, according to this account, is a fusion of genuinely classical conceptions of liberty and virtue into a libertarian and antiauthoritarian ideology that sees liberty as opposed to and always threatened by the exercise of governmental power. A number of classicists, however, have argued for a more direct and undiluted influence between the founders and Greek and Roman writings. These scholars have argued that the founders knew Greek and Roman authors directly and well as a result of their educations and that the classical tradition was evident in their art, iconography, civic identities, and political thought. Undiluted classical ideas, according to this interpretation, were directly evident in the impact Stoic theory of natural law had on the American Revolution and the Bill of Rights, the importance of classical ideas of virtue and disinterestedness on antiparty sentiment in the early republic, the founders’ commitments to mixed and balanced government, their agrarian sympathies, and their understanding of human nature and virtue. In particular, Bederman 2008, Millar 2002, Nelson 2004, Richard 1994, Reinhold 1984, Sellers 1994, and Wiltshire 1992 trace much of the design of the Constitution and the substance of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights to Greek and Roman sources and precedents even as they disagree about which sources and precedents should be accorded significance. The essays in Onuf and Cole 2011 trace out Jefferson’s perplexing love–hate relationship with the classics.

Bederman, David J. The Classical Foundations of the American Constitution: Prevailing Wisdom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511511486Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The most important parts of this informative book argue that the founders’ understandings of structural aspects of the design of the Constitution—including federalism, bicameralism and the Senate, executive power, the judiciary, and the powers of war and foreign relations—were drawn from classical models.
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Millar, Fergus. The Roman Republic in Political Thought. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002.
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Chapter 4 (“Civic Literacy in Comparative Context,” pp. 53–65) argues that a Roman-mixed Constitution as depicted by Cicero and Polybius was the foundation of much thinking among the American founders about representation and balanced government.
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Nelson, Eric. The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
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Argues in contrast to Pocock that the Greek tradition of republicanism was essentially Platonic and was freighted with a commitment to the rule of the virtuous few and equal distribution of property. Nelson argues provocatively that this tradition exerted influence in the American Revolution through the importance of agrarian and inheritance laws.
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Onuf, Peter S., and Nicholas P. Cole, eds. Thomas Jefferson, the Classical World, and Early America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
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Jefferson was one of the closest students of the ancients among the founders and ancient ideas and sources deeply influenced his ethical beliefs and aesthetic tastes. Nevertheless, he also argued that ancient political science had little to offer moderns. The essays in this volume attempt to explain the sources of Jefferson’s ambiguity toward the classics and the influence of the ancients on his social and political thought.
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Reinhold, Meyer. Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1984.
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Written by a senior classicist who turned to the study of the American founding at the age of sixty, this work further establishes the direct influence of the classical tradition on the American founders. Reinhold argues in particular that Plutarch, Cicero, and Tactitus were important for the political precedents that they supplied to the Americans.
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Richard, Carl J. The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
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Traces out the importance of Greeks and Romans to the founders’ educations, civic identities, and their commitments to mixed and balanced government. Argues that the classics supplied the founders with intellectual tools from which they fashioned new political ideas and concepts but also contends that the tools themselves shaped the minds of the founders.
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Sellers, Mortimer N. S. American Republicanism: Roman Ideology in the United States Constitution. New York: New York University Press, 1994.
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Argues for the importance of Roman political thought, especially the idea of an aristocratic Senate in the political thought of the American founders.
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Wiltshire, Susan Ford. Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
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Examines the evolution of the natural law tradition and then establishes Greek and Roman antecedents for the guarantees and prohibitions included in the Bill of Rights. Persuasively establishes that the rights protected in the Bill of Rights have real—if indirect—antecedents in antiquity.
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The Scottish Enlightenment

Adair 1974 pioneered studies of the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment on the American founders. Proponents of the Scottish Enlightenment interpretation of the American founding, however, have subsequently divided into two camps: scholars who see the Scottish Enlightenment as a modern communitarian alternative to liberalism and others who see it as “liberalism in a different key” (Yarbrough 1998, p. xvii). Proponents of the communitarian understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment (Wills 1978; Wills 1981) have argued that the founders were heavily influenced by moral sense and common sense philosophy, which they interpreted and adopted as rejections of Locke’s “selfish system” of ethics and politics. In contrast, Hamowy 1979, Sinopoli 1992, and Yarbrough 1998 argue that the founders were thoroughgoing liberals who saw the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment as a means of addressing questions raised within liberalism, especially about how selfish and self-regarding individuals could be motivated to obey the law and to engage in the civic obligations that are necessary to maintain any state. Most recently, Fleischacker 2002 argues for the influence of Adam Smith on the American founders’ political thought and Spencer 2002 forcefully restates the case for David Hume’s influence on Madison’s political thought.

Adair, Douglass. Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays. Edited by Trevor Colbourn. New York: Norton, 1974.
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Adair first pointed to the influence of David Hume’s essays on the political thought of James Madison, especially his important case for an extended republic. More broadly, Adair argued that the Framers were influenced by the Scots to adopt a social scientific approach to the study of politics.
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Fleischacker, Samuel. “Adam Smith’s Reception Among the American Founders, 1776–1790.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 59.4 (October 2002): 897–924.
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Maintains that The Wealth of Nations was widely read in America and that Smith influenced Madison’s views on faction and society and the founders’ views on the character of virtue and how to promote it. Available online by subscription.
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Hamowy, Ronald. “Jefferson and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Critique of Garry Wills’s Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 36.4 (October 1979): 503–523.
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Argues that Thomas Jefferson was influenced by the ideas of John Locke (not centrally Francis Hutcheson) in formulating the Declaration of Independence. Argues more generally that the Scottish Enlightenment itself was rooted in the principles of Locke and was thus a variation of liberalism, not a communitarian alternative to it. Available online by subscription.
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Sinopoli, Richard. The Foundations of American Citizenship: Liberalism, the Constitution, and Civic Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
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Strong statement that moral sense philosophy was synergetic with the political goals of liberalism.
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Spencer, Mark G., ed. Hume’s Reception in Early America. 2 vols. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes, 2002.
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Broad study of Hume’s reception and influence on the political thought of the American founders. In particular, Spencer contends specifically that Hume was very important in Madison’s understanding of the sources of faction.
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Wills, Garry. Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978.
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Wills’s controversial and much disputed interpretation of Jefferson’s Declaration as a statement of Scottish moral sense and common sense philosophy and sentimentalism rather than a statement of Lockean individualism and rationalism.
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Wills, Garry. Explaining America: The Federalist. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981.
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Wills’s expanded claim for the importance of Scottish philosophy in the American founding. Wills builds on Adair’s revelations about the influence of Hume on James Madison’s political thought.
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Yarbrough, Jean M. American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson and the Character of a Free People. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
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Yarbrough argues against Wills (Wills 1978) for the influence of Lord Kames, not Francis Hutcheson on Jefferson. Unlike Hutcheson, Kames believed that governments should promote justice (not benevolence) and thus integrated the principles of moral sense philosophy to liberalism.
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Bottom–Up Studies of the American Founding

Since the 1960s, social history has exploded in the historical profession, displacing traditional intellectual and political history. Social historians have argued that “the personal is the political” and that traditional scholarship errs by imposing artificial lines between public and private identities on past historical actors. Social historians have also been concerned to establish the diversity of ordinary Americans and the distinctiveness of their experiences in the early republic and thereby to discredit the proposition that a single, homogeneous American people existed who shared a common experience. Focusing on feminine, forced, and forgotten founders, these scholars have also sought to establish and celebrate the contributions of previously unknown Americans and to emphasize the conflicts of women, slaves, free blacks, ordinary laborers, and Native Americans with white men in positions of power. In emphasizing conflict between ordinary men and women and elites rather than creditors and debtors, this body of scholarship represents a new variation of Progressive scholarship. Working from these suppositions, social historians have been much more interested in reconstructing popular mentalities and establishing how these affected the daily lives of ordinary Americans than in elite discourse. They have, however, turned to elite discourse to establish the intellectual justifications that leading founders made for the subordination and enslavement of Native Americans, women, and African Americans and their exclusion from politics. Most controversially, some neo-Progressive and multicultural scholars have suggested that “other founders” were the real sources of the elite founders’ ideas, not European philosophers. This argument was made most visible in the claim that American constitutional principles were heavily influenced by Native Americans. In the works below, Kerber 1976, Kerber 1980, Allgor 2000, and Zagarri 2007 establish the contours of the political roles of women in the early republic even though women could rarely vote and did not hold office, while Nash 2005 provides a broad history of the American Revolution written from the perspective of subordinated groups. Levy, et al. 1996 is part of a collection of essays in the William and Mary Quarterly on the Iroquois influence thesis, which provides a good summary of the positions of both sides on this topic. Pasley, et al. 2004 provides an excellent example of how social historians seek to redefine the founders and the founding.

Allgor, Catherine. Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000.
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Traces the distinctively political role that the elite women of Washington, DC, played as deal brokers. Women such as Margaret Smith Murray, Susanna Rowson, and Dolley Madison wrote essays, conducted political ceremonies, hosted parties, and developed a salon culture that allowed male leaders to engage in deal making and partisan politics in a republican context that valorized disinterested leadership.
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Kerber, Linda. “The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment—An American Perspective.”In Special Issue: An American Enlightenment. Edited by Joseph Ellis. American Quarterly 28.2 (Summer 1976): 187–205.
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Kerber’s foundational articulation of the concept of “republican motherhood.” Women, according to Kerber, played a distinctive civic role in the early republic in raising virtuous sons and serving as guardians of the virtue necessary to sustain the republic. Available online by subscription.
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Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.
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Traces out the complex restrictions that the common law doctrine of “coverture” placed on women and men in the early republic and its role in the subordination of women.
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Levy, Leonard W., Samuel B. Payne, Donald A. Grinde, and Bruce E. Johansen. ‘Forum: The ‘Iroquois Influence’ Thesis—Con and Pro.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 53 (July 1996): 587–636.
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Exchange between four scholars over the strength of the claims made for the influence of Native Americans on the political thought of the American Founders. Articles available online by subscription.
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Nash, Gary B. The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America. New York: Viking, 2005.
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Classic bottom–up study of the American Revolution emphasizing its radical character and the counterrevolution by elites that followed.
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Pasley, Jeffrey L., Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher, eds. Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
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Contains essays that emphasize the contributions of ordinary and enslaved Americans to the American founding. The editors of these essays present them as models for how to achieve a new political history that integrates insights from social history and moves beyond a history of elites in the early American republic.
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Zagarri, Rosemarie. Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
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Traces the origins of the women’s rights movement to the American Revolution rather than the Senaca Falls Convention of 1848. Argues that women expanded on gains made during the Revolution and participated in informal ways in party politics and rallies and even exercised the vote in New Jersey, but that by 1828 women were marginalized and practiced politics largely in reform movements and benevolent societies.
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The Unionist Paradigm or Federal Interpretation

The unionist paradigm or federal interpretation is the most recent framework of interpretation to structure debates on the American founding. In their interpretations of the American Revolution, proponents of the republican interpretation characterized the American Revolution as an ideological event in which Americans expressed frenzied and irrational fear of British corruption as a result of their immersion in radical commonwealth ideology. Furthermore, the scholarship of the Progressive historians and Gordon Wood focuses attention on the importance of conflicts between interests within the states and majority tyranny to the formation of the Constitution. Within this framework of analysis, constitutional reform is examined as a Madisonian problem of conflict between interests within the states and a matter of reconciling majority rule to the protection of individual and minority rights. In contrast, proponents of the unionist paradigm focus attention on the importance of geostrategic issues, interstate relations, and visions of American empire in the American Revolution, the formation of the Constitution, and the history of the early republic. More specifically, Greene 1986 and Greene 1994 argue that 19th- and 20th-century models of imperialism should not be used to explain the relationship of the colonists to the British and that the contours of authority between the mother country and its colonies were “negotiated.” The crisis that precipitated the Revolution, Reid 1995 and Greene 2011 also argue, should be understood as a debate over the contours of the British imperial constitution or union in which the Americans set forth rational arguments and made a plausible case for their understanding of the terms of union with Great Britain. Successive discussions of union, scholars within this framework argue, were informed by the original vision that many revolutionaries had of the proper relationship with Great Britain. Proponents of the unionist paradigm or federal interpretation including Armitage (see Armitage 2007, cited under the Declaration of Independence) have also interpreted the Declaration of Independence as a statement within international law of the arrival of a new state on the international scene. When they turn to the formation of the Constitution, proponents of the unionist paradigm (Edling 2003; Hendrickson 2003; Onuf 1983) have taken seriously in a way that previous scholars had not the framers’ concerns that the United States would splinter into separate confederacies and that foreign intervention and civil war would follow. This reinterpretation of the impetus for constitutional reform has, in turn, led these scholars to reinterpret the formation of the Constitution as a “peace pact” between the states akin to the great settlements of Westphalia (1848) and Paris (1919) and led scholars to discuss the state-building imperatives, including the power to tax and raise armies, addressed by the Constitution of 1787. Scholars writing from within this framework of interpretation also see differences between Hamilton and Jefferson as contrasting visions of American empire. Most broadly, the unionist paradigm focuses on the United States as a system of states within an international system of states, does not presuppose the success of the American experiment in nationhood, and depicts American history before the Civil War as a series of efforts to forge “a more perfect union.” See also Onuf 2000.

Edling, Max M. A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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Interprets the framers of the Constitution as state builders who were centrally concerned with the creation of a national government empowered to raise revenue through the power of taxation and to ensure the security of the United States through the ability to raise troops.
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Greene, Jack P. Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1788. New York: Norton, 1986.
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Greene argues that the relationship between the British colonies in North America and the mother country cannot be understood on the model of 19th- and 20th-century imperialism. The developed states of the 19th and 20th century were able to exercise much more hegemonic control over their colonies than the British were able to exercise over theirs.
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Greene, Jack P. Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994.
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Argues that all the terms of settlement of the American colonies and the limited fiscal, administrative, and coercive resources of the British government meant that the colonists were not subjected to strict authority and that the British Empire was never held together by force. Lines of authority were negotiated.
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Greene, Jack P. The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
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Suggests that the colonial case for the reach of British authority had sound historical and legal foundations in the constitutions of the colonies and the Americans’ understanding of an uncodified metropolitan British constitution. Failure by the British to accept the autonomy of colonial constitutions and to acknowledge the colonists’ understanding of the imperial constitution was the central cause of the American Revolution.
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Hendrickson, David C. Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
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Argues that the very real possibility of disunion and civil war, not primarily problems within the states, led to the calling of the Constitutional Convention and that the Constitution should be viewed as a “peace pact” akin to the great peace settlements of European and world history.
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Onuf, Peter S. The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775–1787. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
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Onuf examines how jurisdictional controversies over state boundaries led to new conceptions of statehood and union that, in turn, informed national constitutional reform in 1787.
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Onuf, Peter S. Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000.
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Argues that America’s most famous revolutionary adopted an idealized version of how the British imperial system would have been structured if North American colonists had had their way as the foundation for his conception of union and his vision of an expanding empire of liberty.
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Reid, John. Constitutional History of the American Revolution. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
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This volume summarizes the findings of Reid’s important multivolume study of the influence of British common law constitutionalism in the American Revolution. The Americans consistently claimed to be revolting to preserve the British constitution and to continue the original terms of the union present at the settlement of the colonies. They should, Reid argues, be taken at their word. Abridged edition; originally published in 1991.
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Multiple Traditions Interpretations

As already observed, the republican-liberalism debate of the 1970s and 1980s led rapidly to the wide acceptance of the proposition that the founders’ political thought was the product of a multiplicity of intellectual traditions and drew on a diverse group of idioms. Indeed, even the formative studies in each of the frameworks of interpretation listed thus far often point to the importance of diverse idioms in the political thought of the American founders even as they argue for the centrality of one. The acceptance of discursive pluralism in works by scholars such as Forrest McDonald (McDonald 1985) and Isaac Kramnick (Kramnick 1988), however, raised as many questions as it answered. Could any single tradition be thought of as so central that it set the terms on which other traditions were brought into the mix? How did the various traditions interact or relate to each other? Was the synthesis of ideas and idioms that the founders created coherent or a mere jumble brought together without concern for theoretical consistency? Scholarship that addressed these questions led to the formation of three alternative interpretations of interaction: a neo-Lockean or liberal synthesis, a republican synthesis, and an interpretation of the founders’ political thought as a tension-ridden and incoherent mixture of liberal and illiberal ideas. Proponents of a neo-Lockean synthesis (Greenstone 1986; Zuckert 1996) maintain that that liberalism was the cornerstone of the founders’ political thought and that the founders’ understandings of the ends of political life were thoroughly liberal. Zuckert 1996 also argues that liberalism determined the conditions in which other sets of ideas were synthesized into an American amalgam. Many of the proponents of republican revisionism (Banning 1986) also accepted discursive pluralism but often suggest that the founders were less than coherent in bringing together liberalism and republicanism. Led by James Morone (Morone 1996) and Rogers Smith (Smith 1997), scholars have suggested that illiberal and inegalitarian ideas that have functioned to subordinate racial minorities and women were as much a part of American political thought—including the ideas of the founders—as liberalism and republicanism.

Banning, Lance. “Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the New American Republic.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 43.1 (1986): 3–19.
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Early concession by one of the pioneers of the republican interpretation of the importance of John Locke to the American founders. Banning argues that republican revisionism was never meant to replace Locke but finds the proper place of Lockean ideas in the political thought of the American founders, especially the Jeffersonians. He then sketches the broad outlines for how this integration took place. Available online by subscription.
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Greenstone, J. David. “Political Culture and American Political Development: Liberty, Union, and Liberal Bipolarity.” Studies in American Political Development 1 (1986): 1–49.
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Greenstone argues that Anglo-American republicanism was never conceived by the founders as an alternative to liberalism and never prescribed a comprehensive vision of human well-being. American republicanism and liberalism were thus a coherent whole in prescribing limited government and the importance of public spiritedness in taming the actions of autonomous and potentially antagonistic individuals. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Kramnick, Isaac. “The ‘Great National Discussion’: The Discourse of Politics in 1787.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 45.1 (January 1988): 3–32.
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Kramnick analyzes the influence of republicanism, Lockean liberalism, work ethic Protestantism, and state-centered theories of power and sovereignty in the founders’ political thought. Kramnick’s analysis suggests that the founders’ political thought was less than coherent. The “profusion of tongues” in the American founding, he maintains, led to a “confusion of tongues.” Available online by subscription.
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McDonald, Forrest. Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985.
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Analyzes the multiple systems of political theory and economy that informed the American Revolution and the creation of the Constitution.
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Morone, James A. “The Struggle for American Culture.” PS: Political Science and Politics 29.3 (September 1996): 425–430.
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Concise and accessible statement paralleling Smith’s call for the study of inegalitarian and ascriptive ideologies in American political thought. Available online by subscription.
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Smith, Rogers M. Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
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Argues that inegalitarian and ascriptive ideologies constitute one of the most important traditions within American political thought, including the American founding. He also contends that illiberal ideas have been highly structured, enduring, and defended by elite intellectuals. This understanding of the multiple tradition approach suggests that American political thought has no center and is, in some ways at least, incoherent.
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Zuckert, Michael P. The Natural Rights Republic: Studies in the Foundation of the American Political Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
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Zuckert argues that Locke’s political thought served as the structuring set of ideas within an American “amalgam” composed also of British constitutionalism, Protestant Christianity, and aspects of classical republicanism. Zuckert’s “liberalism first” interpretation suggests that the founders’ political thought was coherent because liberalism determined the terms on which other idioms could enter the amalgam.
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Individual Studies of Select Founders

Studies of the political thought of individual founders continue to be produced at a remarkable rate. The works in the following subsections contain only a sampling of classic or recent studies of the political thought of specific founders.

Benjamin Franklin

As the venerable and sly sage of the American founding, Benjamin Franklin continues to elicit attention. Recent scholarship, including Wood 2004, Weinberger 2005, Pangle 2007, and Houston 2008, has established and emphasized the elusive complexity of the man so often associated with homespun humor, commonsense advice, and pragmatic compromise. This scholarship has also illuminated aspects of Franklin’s political thought that had previously gone underappreciated, especially his contributions to political economy and his vision of union. See also Morgan 2002 and Waldstreicher 2005.

Houston, Alan C. Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
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Examines five areas within Franklin’s political thought—political economy, associational life, population growth, political union, and slavery—and argues that Franklin’s ideas were structured by his goal to create collective improvement among the people.
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Morgan, Edmund S. Benjamin Franklin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
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Short, highly readable, but comprehensive biography of Franklin by one of America’s most celebrated senior historians.
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Pangle, Lorraine Smith. The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
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Deals particularly with Franklin’s views on the economic basis of liberty, his understanding of virtue and its cultivation through moral education, his views on political organization, and his religious beliefs. Places Franklin’s thinking in the context of Western political thought rather than analyzing him in relationship only to the men and questions of his day.
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Waldstreicher, David. Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005.
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Suggests that Franklin’s antislavery credentials have been exaggerated and that—notwithstanding his own shrewd efforts to characterize his own identity—he was profoundly shaped by his experiences with servitude, both as an indentured servant and a slave owner.
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Weinberger, Jerry. Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005.
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Weinberger pursues the controversial argument that Franklin was a closet atheist who did not really accept the moral virtues that he preached.
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Wood, Gordon S. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Penguin, 2004.
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Against a large number of interpreters, Wood maintains that Franklin was essentially pro-British until 1765 and might well have stayed a Loyalist if inept English ministers had not bungled their dealings with him. The man we think of as quintessentially American, Wood establishes, followed a tortured path to becoming an American.
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George Washington

Celebratory studies of the character and indispensable leadership of George Washington run unabated from the founding to the present. Recent scholarship, including Wills 1984 and Longmore 1988, however, emphasize Washington’s political savvy and shrewdness in shaping his own image. Other ambitious studies of Washington (Phelps 1993; Morrison 2009) attempt to revise the belief that Washington had little influence on the formation of the Constitution and was too limpid to have a fully formed political philosophy.

Longmore, Paul K. The Invention of George Washington. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
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Establishes the role that Washington himself played in his own image and argues that he was viewed by his fellow citizens with a mix of republican and monarchical values as a “patriot king” above party and faction.
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Morrison, Jeffry H. The Political Philosophy of George Washington. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
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Argues that Washington’s political ideas constitute a “fully formed political philosophy” (p. 18) constructed from classical republicanism, British liberalism, and Protestant Christianity.
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Phelps, Glenn A. George Washington and American Constitutionalism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.
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Argues that Washington had a quite conscious and informed conception of political thought rooted in classical republicanism and his vision of a continental commercial republic. Claims also that Washington had greater influence at the Constitutional Convention than is generally acknowledged.
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Wills, Garry. Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984.
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Focuses, like Longmore 1988, on the reputation of Washington, especially as it is depicted in early American art and iconography. Excellent exposition of what Washington meant to his generation.
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James Madison

James Madison is recognized as the most theoretically minded and cerebral of the founders and the one most influential in the formation of the Constitution. His political thought is thus the subject of voluminous, contentious scholarship. Banning 1995 most effectively addresses the perennial issue of the question of the consistency of his political career and political thought; Burnstein and Isenberg 2010 reexamines his relationship with Jefferson and the similarities and differences in their ideas; Kramer 1999 emphasizes the historical irrelevance of his celebrated theory of the extended republic. Rakove 1996, Sheehan 2009, and Zuckert 2003 provide the best analyses of his political thought, including the structure and purposes of his constitutional reform program, his understanding of public opinion and role as an intellectual midwife of that then fledgling political concept, his understanding of originalism, and the relationship of liberalism and republicanism within his political thought. Ketcham 1971 still provides the best one-volume biography of Madison, emphasizing his political life and accomplishments, while McCoy 1989 remains the definitive interpretation of his retirement years.

Banning, Lance. The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.
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Excellent developmental analysis of Madison’s political thought from 1782 to 1792. Argues for the essential consistency of Madison’s political thought based on his commitment to the formation of a federal republic.
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Burnstein, Andrew, and Nancy Isenberg. Madison and Jefferson. New York: Random House, 2010.
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Recent account of the relationship of Madison and Jefferson that contains extensive analysis of their political thought. Emphasizes Madison’s independence from Jefferson but also reaffirms the importance of their “great collaboration.”
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Ketcham, Ralph. James Madison: A Biography. New York: Macmillan, 1971.
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Definitive one-volume biography of Madison. Contains extensive analysis of Madison’s political career and political thought.
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Kramer, Larry D. “Madison’s Audience.” Harvard Law Review 112.3 (January 1999): 611–679.
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Presents the important argument that Madison’s famous theory of an extended republic had almost no historical impact on the framing or ratification of the Constitution. Available online by subscription.
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McCoy, Drew R. The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
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Elegant volume that focuses on Madison’s retirement years as he reflected about the origins of the Constitution, instructed the next generation in the meaning of the Constitution, and urged Americans to preserve their union.
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Rakove, Jack N. Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. New York: Knopf, 1996.
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Pulitzer Prize winning study that focuses on the political thought of Madison as the key to understanding the original meaning of the Constitution and further suggests that Madison differed from most contemporary originalists in his approach to constitutional interpretation.
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Sheehan, Colleen A. James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511809385Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Neo-Aristotelean reading of Madison’s political thought that suggests that the primary purpose of the political system was to educate public opinion.
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Zuckert, Michael P. “The Political Science of James Madison.” In History of American Political Thought. Edited by Bryan-Paul Frost and Jeffrey Sikkenga, 149–166. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2003.
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Excellent interpretation of Madison’s understandings of republicanism and federalism.
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Alexander Hamilton

In his day and ours, Alexander Hamilton has had a polarizing effect. Often vilified and sometimes praised, he is nevertheless recognized by all as central to the formation of the American republic and by many as the first modern American. Classic and recent biographies and studies of Hamilton’s political thought including Stourzh 1970, McDonald 1979, Flaumenhaft 1992, Walling 1999, and Chernow 2004 defend him against the charges most frequently lodged against him by stressing his commitment to republicanism and constitutionalism and the comprehensiveness of his vision of national greatness. The collection of essays in Ambrose and Martin 2006 provide a balanced portrait of Hamilton.

Ambrose, Douglas, and Robert W. T. Martin, eds. The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton: The Life and Legacy of America’s Most Elusive Founding Father. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
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This collection of essays by leading Hamilton scholars resulted from a conference in 2001 and provides fresh reassessments of Hamilton’s political thought and his legacy.
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Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: Penguin, 2004.
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Most comprehensive biography of Hamilton to date. Chernow devotes extensive attention to political ideas and theory but is strongest on Hamilton’s political economy. Most broadly, this study defends Hamilton against the charge of elitism by contrasting Hamilton’s vision of a dynamic and open commercial republic with Jefferson’s egalitarian agrarianism that rested paradoxically on slavery.
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Flaumenhaft, Harvey. The Effective Republic: Administration and Constitution in the Thought of Alexander Hamilton. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992.
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This work argues that the central problem within Hamilton’s political thought was how to reconcile popular sovereignty with energetic government and that he reconciled this tension with a call for a strong and independent executive.
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McDonald, Forrest. Alexander Hamilton: A Biography. New York: Norton, 1979.
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Provocative revision of Hamilton’s political thought and career that casts him as a romantic, a defender of market economies, and an opponent of privilege. McDonald establishes Hamilton intellectual debts to Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, William Blackstone, and David Hume.
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Stourzh, Gerald. Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1970.
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Enduring treatment of Hamilton’s political thought that emphasizes his role as an empire builder, the importance of David Hume in the formation of his political thought, and the significance of “fame” to both his own political motives and his beliefs about political greatness.
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Walling, Karl-Friedrich. Republican Empire: Alexander Hamilton on War and Free Government. Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 1999.
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Sympathetic reconstruction of Hamilton’s integrated vision of empire resting on a commercial-manufacturing society, a professional military establishment, and an energetic government led by an independent executive.
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Thomas Paine

Among the most enigmatic of the founders, Paine has been the subject of substantial research. Foner 1976 and Cotlar 2011 explain the sources and influence of Paine’s radicalism. Ferguson 2000 explains the popularity of Common Sense; Fruchtman 2009 provides a short and accessible but insightful introduction to Paine’s political thought.

Cotlar, Seth. Tom Paine’s America: The Rise and Fall of Transatlantic Radicalism in the Early Republic. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
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Examines Paine as the most important transmitter of a species of transatlantic radicalism that gave legitimacy to democratic politics in the United States in the 1790s.
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Ferguson, Robert A. “The Commonalities of Common Sense.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 57.3 (July 2000): 465–504.
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Masterful analysis of the reasons for the remarkable popularity of Common Sense. Ferguson analyzes the historical figure of Paine, examines the relationship of the style and tone of Common Sense to its political message, and interprets Paine’s pamphlet as an enduring statement of American identity. Available online by subscription.
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Foner, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
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Still the best study of the political thought of Paine in print. Foner traces the sources of Paine’s radicalism to his Quaker upbringing, radical English opposition ideas, and the artisanal culture for which he spoke. He also observes how Paine was unusual among those of his generation in combining a commitment to radically democratic politics with an unflinching faith in unrestrained economic development.
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Fruchtman, Jack, Jr. The Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
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Concise overview pointing to seven main themes in Paine’s political thought: faith in God, opposition to privilege, the importance of a democratic republic and a written constitution, trust in public spiritedness, faith in a strong commercial republic, belief in the importance of international commercial relations, and faith in the efficacy of revolutions (but not after his release from prison in 1794).
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Thomas Jefferson

As America’s essentially contested statesman, Jefferson is the subject of constant analysis and reinterpretation. Most recently, Jefferson’s scientific racism, his view on miscegenation and slavery, and discussions of the Sally Hemings’s affair have placed Jefferson under fire and diminished his reputation. Much scholarship on Jefferson’s political thought including Ellis 1998 and Onuf 2007 now attempts to explain or at least contextualize his many contradictions as the slaveholding herald of equality, the profligate aristocrat who championed democracy, and the opponent of miscegenation who probably fathered children with Sally Hemings. O’Brien 1996 and Wiencek 2012 offer highly critical judgments of Jefferson. Writing before this onslaught of scholarship, Matthews 1984 treats Jefferson as a radical democrat, while Onuf 2000 and Spahn 2011 examine Jefferson’s vision of American empire and exceptionalism. See also Malone 1948.

Ellis, Joseph J. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Vintage, 1998.
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Award-winning study of Jefferson’s character and political thought. Addresses Jefferson’s many contradictions by suggesting that his “psychological agility, his capacity to play hide-and-seek within himself, was a protective device he developed to prevent his truly radical and highly romantic personal vision from colliding with reality” (p. xvii).
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Malone, Dumas. Thomas Jefferson and His Time. 6 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1948.
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This multivolume work is the definitive biography of Jefferson but is clearly sympathetic. Finished just as the wave of criticism of Jefferson began. Malone deals with virtually every aspect of Jefferson’s political thought but none in particular depth.
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Matthews, Richard. The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984.
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Short provocative book that portrays Jefferson as a radical based on his proposition that “the Earth Belongs to the Living,” his conception of political economy, and his beliefs about democracy. Sharply contrasts the political philosophies of Madison and Jefferson.
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O’Brien, Conor Cruise. The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785–1800. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
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Unrelenting attack on Jefferson’s political ideas, especially his beliefs about race, slavery, democracy, revolution, and the proper sphere of powers for the national government. Argues that Jefferson should and will lose his position among the pantheon of American heroes and that his ideas align most closely with contemporary white supremacists and militia groups.
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Onuf, Peter S. Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.
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Examines Jefferson’s conception of union and his “empire of liberty,” suggesting that they emanated from an idealized version of how the British imperial system might have operated.
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Onuf, Peter S. The Mind of Thomas Jefferson. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007.
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Collection of essays on Jefferson’s views on federalism, religion, education, race, and slavery by Jefferson’s finest contemporary student. Onuf argues for a contextual approach to interpreting Jefferson that sympathetically reconstructs his beliefs before criticizing them but does not fall into Jefferson’s own self-serving script about how to interpret him.
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Spahn, Hannah. Thomas Jefferson, Time, and History. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
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Important recent study of Jefferson’s political thought that focuses on his effort to craft a narrative of “American exceptionalism.”
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Wiencek, Henry. Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.
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Scathing rebuke of Jefferson’s treatment of slavery and his beliefs about race. Argues that Jefferson abandoned his anti-slavery views in the early 1790s and began to consider slaves as capital assets. Also documents Jefferson’s harsh treatment of his own slaves.
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John Adams

As Jefferson’s reputation has come under attack, John Adams’s has risen, especially because of his noted opposition to slavery. Adams’s reputation has benefitted massively from McCullough 2001, a best-selling biography, and the television series based on it. Ellis 1993 and Thompson 1998 add to our understanding of Adams with works about his retirement years and political thought.

Ellis, Joseph J. Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams. New York: Norton, 1993.
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Concentrates on Adams’s retirement years. Captures important dimensions of Adams’s political thought, especially his belief that the elite should and would rule and that the American political system combined popular sovereignty with equality before the law.
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McCullough, David G. John Adams. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.
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Immensely popular and mostly uncritical biography of Adams that is nevertheless rewarding to specialists. McCullough emphasizes Adams’s sociability, rectitude, and frankness; his idyllic marriage and familial relations; his long relationship with Thomas Jefferson; and his political accomplishments. Less emphasis is placed on Adams’s political ideas, but this study is nevertheless valuable for contextualizing Adams’s political thought.
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Thompson, C. Bradley. John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
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Best analysis in print of the political theory of Adams. Thompson makes a strong case that Adams was the most astute defender of his age of complex and balanced government secured especially by bicameralism.
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James Wilson

James Wilson was as influential as any other single Founder in supplying the ideological foundations of the American Revolution and the formation of the Constitution. He set forth early justifications for the sovereignty of colonial legislatures, diagnosed the problems that attended government under the Articles of Confederation, was highly influential in Philadelphia in the final structure of the Constitution, provided the most widely published defense of the Constitution during the ratification struggle, and was influential in Pennsylvania and national politics (as a Supreme Court justice) into the 1790s. The studies in this section by Conrad 1985, Hall 1997, Witt 2007, Ewald 2008, Zink 2009, and Pedersen 2010 establish that progress is being made in rectifying Wilson’s well-known status as the most underrated and understudied of the founders.

Conrad, Stephen A. “Polite Foundation: Citizenship and Commonsense in James Wilson’s Republican Theory.” Supreme Court Review 1984 (1985): 359–388. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Examines Wilson’s extensive plans for civic education. Wilson, Conrad establishes, thought throughout his long political career about the importance of improving the moral knowledge and virtue of the American citizenry though polite conversation. Available online by subscription.
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Ewald, William. “James Wilson and the Drafting of the Constitution.” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 10.5 (June 2008): 901–1009.
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Analyzes Wilson’s arguments at the Constitutional Convention and his contribution to the drafting of the Constitution. Distinguishes Wilson’s political thought from Madison’s and removes Wilson from Madison’s shadow.
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Hall, Mark David. The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 1742–1798. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997.
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First systematic and comprehensive analysis of Wilson’s political philosophy. Hall argues that Wilson combined ideas from classical republicanism, Locke, the Christian natural law tradition, Reformed Protestantism, and the Scottish Enlightenment to formulate the most developed political philosophies held by one of the founders.
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Pedersen, Nicholas K. “The Lost Founder: James Wilson in American History.” Yale Journal of Law and Humanities 22 (2010): 257–337.
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Passionate, broad effort to explain why Wilson has been forgotten and why it matters that he has been forgotten. Pederson argues that Wilson—more than any other founder—gave thoroughly modern and convincing arguments about the role of the presidency, the necessity for the abolition of slavery, and the relationship between centralization and federalism. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Witt, John Fabian. “The Pyramid and the Machine: Founding Visions in the Life of James Wilson.” In Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law. Edited by John F. Witt, 15–82. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
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Draws on the metaphors of the pyramid and the machine to sharply contrast Wilson’s idealistic vision with Madison’s pluralistic one.
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Zink, James, “The Language of Liberty and Law: James Wilson on America’s Written Constitution.” American Political Science Review 103. 3 (August, 2009): 442-455.
DOI: 10.1017/S0003055409990086Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that Wilson conceived of the Constitution as a means of civic education and a device for constituting the American people. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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The Declaration of Independence

As one of the most important formative documents of the United States and principal symbols of the American civil religion, the Declaration of Independence has been—with the exception only of the Constitution itself—the most studied document of the founding era. Scholars have parsed every word, endlessly disputed its original purpose, debated the origins and meanings of its central concepts, argued about the similarities and differences between Jefferson’s draft and Congress’s, and traced its impact in American society and the world. In addition to Becker 1958, a classic analysis of the sources of Jefferson’s political ideas and Wills 1978, a controversial study (cited under the Scottish Enlightenment), the works in this section represent the latest round in these disputes. Maier 1997 historicizes the Declaration arguing that it was, during its day, one of many such declarations. White 1978 and Zuckert 2002 treat the Declaration on the highest philosophical plane with Zuckert 2002 providing the strongest defense of the Declaration as the articulation of a coherent philosophy of liberalism. Armitage 2007 argues provocatively that the Declaration should be viewed as a declaration of American statehood necessary to secure full diplomatic rights for the fledgling nation, not as a statement of American values or the contours of legitimate government.

Armitage, David. The Declaration of Independence: A Global History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
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Argues that the Declaration of Independence was first understood as a statement of the legal sovereignty of the United States and its purpose was to affirm its status as a nation equal to others in the world, not a philosophical statement about the conditions of legitimate government.
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Becker, Carl. The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas. New York: Vintage, 1958.
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Originally published in 1922. Classic study that emphasizes the importance of natural rights philosophy to understanding the Declaration by an extreme skeptic of that philosophy.
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Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Knopf, 1997.
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Maier argues that the Declaration of Independence passed by Congress was a far better crafted and politically astute document than Jefferson’s original. She also emphasizes the lack of originality of Jefferson’s claims by examining the numerous other “declarations of independence” that took form as resolutions, grand jury charges, and instructions to Congress from town meetings, county conventions, and provincial congresses.
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White, Morton G. The Philosophy of the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
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White provides a philosophical analysis of key terms in the Declaration of Independence including “self-evident truths” and “inalienable” rights. He concludes against both rationalists and sentimentalists that Jefferson rested the case for independence on a synthesis derived from Jean-Jacques Burlamqui in which the moral sense identifies moral truths and reason verifies them.
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Zuckert, Michael P. Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002.
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Part 3 (“Forging the Lockean Amalgam,” pp. 203–296) provides the best interpretation in print of the Declaration as a unified statement of Lockean political philosophy. Zuckert argues that Jefferson believed that the truths in the Declaration were meant to be held by Americans as if they were self-evident. Suggests that Jefferson was correct when he called these truths expressions of the American mind.
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The Critical Period and the Articles of Confederation

From 1776 to 1789, the United States engaged in its first experiment in union under the Articles of Confederation. The Federalists’ view of the 1780s as a “critical period” in American history set forth most forcefully in Fiske 1916 and the Articles of Confederation as the framework of an unworkable system reaffirmed in Dougherty 2001 has predominated studies of the formation of the Constitution with the exception of the Progressives. Progressives (Jensen 1940) have emphasized the accomplishments of the government under the Articles of Confederation and the relative stability and economic prosperity of these years. They have also derisively characterized standard Federalist interpretations as the “crisis and patriots to the rescue thesis.” Most recently, proponents of the unionist paradigm have reemphasized the idea of the years immediately preceding the calling of the Constitutional Convention as a critical period but suggest that the real reason that they were so critical is not that the framers feared class warfare within the states but that the Federalists’ fears of civil war between the states and foreign influence were plausible (see Hendrickson 2003, cited under the Unionist Paradigm or Federal Interpretation). Hammond 1957 and Ferguson 1961 provide the best interpretations of public finance and banking in the early republic, while Rakove 1979 provides the best political history of the Confederation period and the drafting and ratification of the Articles of Confederation. Most important, interpretations of these years and the Articles of Confederation are central to interpretations of the purposes of the Constitution, in particular whether the broadest aim of the Constitution was to protect the property of the elite, to restore order and economic stability to the nation, or to preserve the union.

Dougherty, Keith L. Collective Action Under the Articles of Confederation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
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Use of rational choice theory to defend the Federalist view of the Articles of Confederation as unworkable. Establishes that public goods—especially security—could not be achieved through the Articles, which made compliance with requisitions voluntary and thus encouraged free-riding. States complied with requisition requests when it served their self-interest, such as when British troops threatened or occupied their state.
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Ferguson, E. James. The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776–1790. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961.
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Still the best account of American public finance from the revolution to the enactment of Hamilton’s program. Written out of a Progressive mode in suggesting the centrality of issues of public finance to political centralization but rejects as crass the proposition that the private, economic interests of the framers in redeeming securities was the motive of constitutional reformers.
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Fiske, John. The Critical Period of American History, 1783–1789. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916.
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Classic study that crystallized the standard Federalist view that the period between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was a critical period in which the future of the republic was held in the balance.
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Hammond, Bray. Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957.
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Comprehensive study of the evolution of banks and banking practices in the United States from the founding to the Civil War. Hammond emphasizes the politics as well as the economics of banking. He also challenges the Progressives’ proposition that small farmers were debtors who sought inflationary money.
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Jensen, Merrill. The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774–1781. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1940.
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Progressive study that interprets the Articles of Confederation as a democratic document that established a decentralized political system that was the natural complement to the Declaration of Independence.
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Rakove, Jack N. The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress. New York: Knopf, 1979.
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Comprehensive study of the Confederation Congress, including the formation and ratification of the Articles of Confederation and the major issues Congress confronted. Ends with an account of the origins of the movement for constitutional reform.
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The Constitutional Convention

For obvious reasons, the Constitutional Convention remains one of the most closely examined events of the founding Era. Many studies of the Philadelphia convention such as Warren 1937, Bowen 1966, Rossiter 1966, and Berkin 2002 have been celebratory, with Bowen famously characterizing the event as “the miracle at Philadelphia.” These scholars view the framers as patriotic men out to form a “more perfect union.” In sharp contrast, Beeman 2009 attempts to bring the Framers down from the clouds, and the Progressives and Beard 1986 (cited under the Progressive and Neo-Progressive Interpretation) charge that delegates sought to protect and advance the economic interests that they held in common. Progressive scholarship has led to the view of the Convention as a forum for bargaining and compromising among delegates out to advance their self-interests and the interests of their states. Storing 1971 challenges the Progressives by arguing for the importance of constitutional principles in the debates at Philadelphia. Still other scholars (Jillson 1988) interpret the Convention as a complex interplay between ideas and political theory on the one hand and individual economic interests and state political interests on the other hand. Roche 1961 shifts focus away from whether ideas or interests were central by viewing the delegates as pragmatic politicians and the Convention as a shifting reform caucus.

Beeman, Richard R. Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution. New York: Random House, 2009.
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Comprehensive recent study of the Convention that argues that the framers were not demigods but rather plain, honest men.
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Berkin, Carol. A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution. New York: Harcourt, 2002.
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Brief, well-written account of the Convention that emphasizes the formation and powers of the legislature. Includes biographical sketches of the delegates and often emphasizes the importance of ideas and personalities in the formation of the Constitution.
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Bowen, Catherine Drinker. Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966.
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Dramatic narrative account of the Convention by a talented popular writer that is still a best seller. Bowen argues that given the obstacles faced by the delegates the drafting of the Constitution was nothing less than a miracle.
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Jillson, Calvin C. Constitution Making: Conflict and Consensus in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Agathon, 1988.
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Study that provides a sophisticated analysis of the interplay between interests and ideology at the Convention.
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Roche, John P. “The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action.” American Political Science Review 55.4 (December 1961): 799–816.
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Classic account that emphasizes the shifting dynamics of the constitutional convention as a “reform caucus in action” rather than the importance of interests or theories. Available online by subscription.
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Rossiter, Clinton. 1787: The Grand Convention. New York: Macmillan, 1966.
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Celebratory account of the Convention and the delegates as progenitors and predictors of American greatness. Rossiter begins with surveys of the economic landscape of America, discusses the problems the Convention was designed to address, and provides biographical sketches of the delegates. Four chapters discuss the dynamics and compromises of the Convention.
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Storing, Herbert J. “The Constitutional Convention: Toward a More Perfect Union.” In American Political Thought: The Philosophic Dimension of American Statesmanship. Edited by Morton J. Frisch and Richard G. Stevens, 51–68. New York: Scribner, 1971.
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Storing emphasizes the shared mission of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention and the importance of principles and deliberation in the proceedings.
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Warren, Charles. The Making of the Constitution. Boston: Little, Brown, 1937.
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Written as a challenge to the Progressive scholarship that then gripped the study of the American founders, Warren’s classic study of the Constitutional Convention describes how and why the various clauses of the Constitution came into being and provides a day-to-day account of the proceedings of the Convention.
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The Original Meaning and Design of the Constitution

Political scientists, historians, and legal scholars agree that the original meaning and design of the Constitution is an immensely important area of research even as they disagree about why it is important. Historians often historicize the Constitution, searching for the original purposes and the problems that it was designed to address. Political scientists often search for the design and the continuing effects of that design on contemporary politics. Especially recently, legal scholars search for the original meaning of the Constitution with many believing that this understanding is legally dispositive. In particular, Rakove 1996 (cited under James Madison) and Powell 1985 historicize originalism, emphasizing the differences between the framers’ originalism and the originalisms of contemporary scholars. Crosskey 1953, Johnson 2005, Robertson 2005a, Robertson 2005b, and Amar 2005 provide contrasting interpretations of the original purposes and meaning of the Constitution. Nedelsky 1990 argues that the original Constitution was skewed to protect property and prevent redistribution of wealth, while McDonald 1958 argues that the Constitution was the product of “we the people” and designed as an instrument for their self-governance.

Amar, Akhil Reed. America’s Constitution: A Biography. New York: Random House, 2005.
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Brilliant, comprehensive analysis of what the Constitution meant to the founding generation. Argues that previous commentators have failed to appreciate the paradoxical character of the original Constitution as both a democratic and proslavery document and the geostrategic considerations that inspired it. Also argues that amendments deepened its democratic and geostrategic commitments while eventually reversing its commitment to slavery.
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Crosskey, William. Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.
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Controversial and neglected, but immensely provocative study of the original meaning of the Constitution. Crosskey argued that Congress’ powers under the Constitution were intended to be unlimited and accuses Madison of falsifying his notes to the Convention and other documents. A third volume, The Political Background of the Federal Convention (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), was begun by Crosskey and finished by William Jeffrey.
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Johnson, Calvin H. Righteous Anger at the Wicked States: The Meaning of the Founders’ Constitution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511511141Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that the original Constitution was first a protax document meant to allow the federal government enough revenue to finance wars and pay its debts. Further contends that “righteous anger at the wicked states” for their imbecility and indifference to union motivated the founders.
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McDonald, Forrest. We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
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This study is one of the most often-cited counters to Beard’s economic interpretation (see Beard 1986, cited under the Progressive and Neo-Progressive Interpretation), but it nevertheless is an economic interpretation in its own right. McDonald’s thesis that Philadelphia delegates represented a diversity of interest groups and that the Constitution gained widespread popular support during ratification even from ordinary farmers counters Beard’s view of the Constitution as an instrument of class power.
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Nedelsky, Jennifer. Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism: The Madisonian Framework and Its Legacy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
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Argues that the framers embedded protection for the idea of property into the Constitution and conversely provided no rationale or constitutional foundation for redistribution. The result, according to Nedelsky, is that, although we now have a redistributive state, we have no principled justification for that function for government. This mismatch between our governmental practices and constitutional foundations, according to Nedelsky, has resulted in much confusion and misunderstanding.
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Powell, H. Jefferson. “The Original Understanding of Original Intent.” Harvard Law Review 98.5 (1985): 885–948.
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One of the most-cited articles in the voluminous and unending debate over constitutional interpretation, this essay was one of the first to attempt to hoist originalists of their own petard by examining the differences between contemporary originalism and its earliest formulations. Available online by subscription.
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Robertson, David Brian. The Constitution and America’s Destiny. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005a.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511610622Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Study that combines political thought and American political development to establish that Madison’s vision of a strong central government was essential to America’s destiny as a world power.
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Robertson, David Brian. “Madison’s Opponents and Constitutional Design.” American Political Science Review 99.2 (May 2005b): 225–243.
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Argues that the original design of the Constitution was as much a product of Madison’s losses as his victories. Federalism, according to Robertson, was embedded into the Constitution, not by conscious design, but as a part of a deeply compromised document. This design has had a lasting effect on the distribution of political power in the United States. Available online by subscription.
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The Political Thought of Publius

The Federalist Papers are generally considered the definitive explication of the original meaning of the Constitution by the men who wrote it. As such, they have been the subject of numerous studies. Interpretive questions, however, have arisen about whether to treat them as a unified text written by a personified author, Publius, or to examine the “split personality” between Hamilton and Madison. Dietze 1960 provides the definitive split-personality interpretation, while Epstein 1984, White 1987, Kesler 1987, Carey 1989, and Myerson 2008 stress the unified teachings of Publius. Together, these studies suggest that both approaches have resulted in insights and that broad contours of similarity about the reasons for constitutional reform existed alongside specific differences about the proper distribution of powers between the different branches. Yet other differences—including those over political economy—were submerged and avoided.

Carey, George W. The Federalist: Design for a Constitutional Republic. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.
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Carey argues against the antidemocratic interpretation of the original design, the contention that separation of powers was designed to deadlock the political system, and the “split personality” thesis.
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Dietze, Gottfried. The Federalist: A Classic on Federalism and Free Government. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960.
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Classic exposition of the “split personality” thesis. Dietze argues that Madison hoped to balance powers between interests but that Hamilton favored the centralizing power created in the Constitution. He also argues that Madison and Hamilton differed over nationalistic versus federal interpretations of the “necessary and proper clause” and the “national supremacy clause.”
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Epstein, David F. The Political Theory of the Federalist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
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Valuable analysis of the political thought of Publius, stressing the importance of consent, energetic government, impartial administration, and “good” government.
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Kesler, Charles. Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding. New York: Free Press, 1987.
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Collection of essays by leading founding scholars, especially Straussians. Particularly illuminating on such issues as federalism, separation of powers, the meaning of the rule of law, and the nature of a republican executive. The core thesis unifying these essays is that Publius sought to educate public opinion and create virtue in the republic.
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Myerson, Michael I. Liberty’s Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote The Federalist, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World. New York: Basic Books, 2008.
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Analysis of the collaborative effort between Hamilton and Madison. Provides a rebuke of neo-Progressive readings and argues that The Federalist remains viable as a guide to how the government should function even if it does not address questions of equality and rights.
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White, Morton G. Philosophy, the Federalist, and the Constitution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
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Philosophical analysis of the epistemology, ethics, philosophy of history, and theory of human nature of Publius. White argues that Publius combined Lockean rationalism in morals with Humean empiricism in politics.
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The Political Thought of the Anti-Federalists

Often dismissed as cranks and ignored because they lost the battle over ratification, the Anti-Federalists have nevertheless recently won respect as important contributors to the American political tradition. One persistent question, however, has been how to characterize the Anti-Federalists and their political ideas. Were they, as Progressive historians suggested, farmers and debtors who opposed the Constitution because they saw it as an antidemocratic and elitist effort to protect the interests of wealthy Federalists? Were they instead conservative “men of little faith” who clung to the belief that republican governments had to be confined to a small geographical area? Lynd 1962 and Main 1974 express the Progressive interpretation of the Anti-Federalists. Kenyon 2002 challenges the Progressive reading but derides the Anti-Federalists as reactionaries. This interpretation is challenged by Wood 1987, Siemers 2002, and Duncan 1995. Cornell 1999 and Siemers 2002 develop typologies to differentiate between the different varieties of Anti-Federalism. Storing 1981 treats the writings of the Anti-Federalists on the highest philosophical plane, searching for their foundational commitments and their views about the ends or purposes of government. The author concludes that they were, like the Federalists, proponents of classical liberalism.

Cornell, Saul. The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788–1828. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
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Establishes a taxonomy of Anti-Federalism that differentiates between elite, middling, and plebian Anti-Federalists. These groups, according to Cornell, had different economic interests and social backgrounds but shared a distrust of centralized power, a localist vision of politics, and a commitment to an energized public sphere. Anti-Federalism, Cornell argues, became integrated into American political thought as a tension-ridden and complex body of ideas. Cornell also uses reprint counts to show which Anti-Federalists were most popular at the time.
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Duncan, Christopher M. The Anti-Federalists and Early American Political Thought. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995.
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Argues that the Anti-Federalists were “men of a different faith.” As localists and proponents of participatory politics, they were the heirs of Puritan theology and the champions of a communitarian ideology that stands in stark contrast to the dominance of liberal individualism.
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Kenyon, Cecelia. Men of Little Faith: Selected Writings of Cecelia Kenyon. Edited by Stanley Elkins, Eric McKitrick, and Leo Weinstein. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002.
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Kenyon’s classic but often challenged interpretation was that the Anti-Federalists were traditionalists who believed that a republic could only be contained within a small geographical area and thus opposed the creation of a truly national government.
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Lynd, Staughton. Anti-Federalism in Dutchess County, New York: A Study of Democracy and Class Conflict in the Revolutionary Era. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1962.
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Micro study of the sources of Anti-Federalism that reaches neo-Beardian conclusions.
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Main, Jackson Turner. The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781–1788. New York: Norton, 1974.
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Progressive account that treats the Anti-Federalists as small, debtor farmers and true democrats who opposed the aristocratic program of the Federalists. The contest over ratification, as Main portrays it, was essentially a class conflict in which the Federalists’ control over the press and the state legislatures prevented a majority against ratification from ensuring its rejection. Originally published in 1961.
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Siemers, David J. Ratifying the Republic: Antifederalists and Federalists in Constitutional Time. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.
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Argues that the Anti-Federalists contributed as much to the rapid acceptance of the Constitution as the Federalists. Opposition to the Constitution died quickly, according to Seimers, because former Anti-Federalists and Madisonian Federalists formed an alliance against Hamiltonian expansionism based on the premise articulated in the ratification process that the Constitution established a government of limited powers.
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Storing, Herbert. What the Anti-Federalists Were For: The Political Thought of the Opponents of the Constitution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
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This interpretive essay treats the Anti-Federalists sympathetically as contributors to the American political tradition. The Anti-Federalists, according to Storing, were skeptical of federal power, called for a bill of rights, and continued to favor a small republic but nevertheless also favored the formation of an American union. Storing’s interpretative essay was originally published as Volume 1 of The Complete Anti-Federalist (see Storing 1981, cited under Collections)
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Wood, Gordon S. “Interests and Disinterestedness in the Making of the Constitution.” In Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity. Edited by Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter II, 69–109. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.
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Wood inverts Kenyon’s interpretation, suggesting that the Anti-Federalists were the first true moderns who accepted the give and take of interest groups in the state legislatures as the Federalists clung to a soon-to-be-outdated conception of disinterested representation.
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Ratification of the Constitution

Despite its obvious importance, the ratification of the Constitution remains one of the least studied aspects of the American founding, in part because until recently primary sources to study this topic were scattered in archives across the country and because ratification contests in each of the states were distinctive, requiring a detailed knowledge of state and local politics in each of the thirteen states. Few scholars had the tactile knowledge necessary to do a comprehensive study or were willing to do the sheer volume of work required. Rutland’s journalistic account (Rutland 1966), Libby’s analysis of the divisions of the votes for and against ratification (Libby 1969), and Riker’s study of rhetorical strategies of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists (Riker 1996) provide some generalizations about the entire ratification struggle, but for the most part scholars (Collier 2003; Conley and Kaminiski 1988; De Pauw 1966; Gillespie and Lienesch 1989) studied individual state ratifications and emphasized the unique dynamics, political leadership, and economic interests in each state. The near completion of the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution (Kaminski, et al. 1976–, cited under Collections) has brought together the materials necessary for broader studies of ratification. Maier 2010 represents the first comprehensive study of ratification.

Collier, Christopher. All Politics is Local: Family, Friends, and Provincial Interests in the Creation of the Constitution. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2003.
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Model study of the influence of local politics and factional conflicts in explaining ratification by a particular state. Argues that local political conflicts and familial connections trumped both broader economic and ideological factors in ratification in ensuring speedy ratification by a large majority in Connecticut.
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Conley, Patrick T., and John P. Kaminiski, eds. The Constitution and the States: The Role of the Original Thirteen in the Framing and Adoption of the Federal Constitution. Madison, WI: Madison House, 1988.
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Set of essays by leading scholars that cumulatively treat ratification as a series of local contests. The essays are ordered, however, in the sequence of ratification. This ordering allows the reader to judge how the changing national context affected ratification in particular states.
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De Pauw, Linda Grant. The Eleventh Pillar: New York State and the Federal Constitution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966.
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Study of the ratification in the state where Anti-Federalism dominated. De Pauw concludes that the rich and well-born supported the Constitution but rejects the proposition that either wealth or sectionalism explains ratification in New York. De Pauw also argues that both Anti-Federalists and Federalists favored the Constitution because it would create a stronger union, but Anti-Federalists wanted amendments and favored conditional ratification.
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Gillespie, Michael Allen, and Michael Lienesch, eds. Ratifying the Constitution. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989.
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Like the essays in Conley and Kaminski 1988, this set of essays by leading scholars uses a variety of approaches to address ratification in each of the states. Establishes the complexity of the state ratifying contests.
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Libby, Orin Grant. The Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution, 1787–8. New York: Franklin, 1969.
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Study that provides empirical evidence for the Progressive contention that urban and coastal areas supported the Constitution but that the interior western regions opposed it. Originally published in 1894.
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Maier, Pauline. Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.
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First comprehensive account of the ratification. Maier’s narrative focuses on many lesser known figures, describes the momentum of the contest, and argues the ratification contest was not simply between opponents and defenders of the Constitution, but rather that many individuals saw the Constitution as better than the Articles of Confederation but nevertheless opposed numerous parts of it.
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Riker, William H. The Strategy of Rhetoric: Campaigning for the American Constitution. Edited by Randall L. Calvert, John Mueller, and Rick K. Wilson. London: Yale University Press, 1996.
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Rational choice study of the framing of issues, strategies of rhetorical persuasion, and content of arguments presented during the ratification struggle. Riker argues that strategies such as forcing quick decisions in a number of states, proposing the Constitution as an “all or nothing” choice, and requiring the ratification of only nine states were central to Federalist victory.
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Rutland, Robert Allen. The Ordeal of the Constitution: The Antifederalists and the Ratification Struggle of 1787–1788. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966.
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Narrative account of the ratification struggle based primarily on private correspondence and newspapers. Suggests that Anti-Federalist disorganization and a comparative dearth of leadership doomed their cause.
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The Bill of Rights

Congressional proposal of a bill of rights and its ratification by the states almost immediately after the formation of the Constitution marks one of the great prudential accomplishments of the founding generation. Rutland 1955 and Bowling 1988 illuminate the political struggles that led to the formation of the bill of rights and its eventual passage as a campaign pledge from the Federalists and a weapon against Anti-Federalism. These scholars and most others emphasize Madison’s role but disagree about his sincerity. Leibiger 1993, Labunski 2006, and Kasper 2010 suggest that Madison’s conviction that a bill of rights was necessary and good in itself grew as the ratification struggle spun out. Finkelman 1990 and Gibson 2012 view Madison’s sponsorship of amendments as a shrewd political maneuver made with little conviction, primarily to erode opposition to the Constitution. Amar 1998 provides a provocative reinterpretation of the character of the original bill of rights primarily designed to promote democracy and state rights.

Amar, Akhil Reed. The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
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Argues that the original rights protected in the Bill of Rights were meant to promote popular sovereignty and the corporate rights of the states more than the rights of individuals.
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Bowling, Kenneth R. “‘A Tub to the Whale’: The Founding Fathers and Adoption of the Federal Bill of Rights.” Journal of the Early Republic 8.3 (Autumn 1988): 223–251.
DOI: 10.2307/3123689Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Documents how, to the chagrin of the Anti-Federalists, the Federalists used passage of the Bill of Rights to diminish opposition to the Constitution. Maintains that Anti-Federalists were not happy with the tub into which they were thrown. Available online by subscription.
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Finkelman, Paul. “James Madison and the Bill of Rights: A Reluctant Paternity.” Supreme Court Review 1990 (1990): 301–347.
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Exemplary version of the interpretation that James Madison was motivated primarily by the political considerations to support a bill of rights. Available online by subscription.
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Gibson, Alan. “‘Bound By Every Motive of Prudence’: James Madison, Republican Government, and the Bill of Rights.” In A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe Edited by Stuart Leibiger, 109–126. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118281369Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Traces the evolution of Madison’s position on a bill of rights, emphasizing his continuing skepticism about the necessity and effectiveness of written declarations of rights by linking it to his concerns about the threats of majority factions and the plasticity of legislative power.
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Kasper, Eric T. To Secure the Liberty of the People: James Madison’s Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court’s Interpretation. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010.
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Argues that Madison came to believe that a bill of rights was useful and necessary in and of itself.
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Labunski, Richard E. James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
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Dramatic narrative account of James Madison’s path from skeptic about the desirability of amendments to the Constitution to champion of the Bill of Rights.
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Leibiger, Stuart. “James Madison and Amendments to the Constitution, 1787–1789: ‘Parchment Barriers.’” Journal of Southern History 59.3 (August 1993): 441–468.
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Strong argument that Madison found a bill of rights to be an appropriate addition to the Constitution because it would serve as a substitute for constitutional provisions that he had failed to secure at Philadelphia, including a council of revision, a congressional veto on state laws, and a wholly national Senate. Available online by subscription.
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Rutland, Robert Allen. The Birth of the Bill of Rights, 1776–1791. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955.
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First comprehensive account of the formation of the Bill of Rights. Emphasizes Madison’s central role but concludes that the inclusive nature of a bill of rights was the result of a truly national appeal for protection of these rights.
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Church and State

Contemporary political debates over the proper relationship between church and state have fostered a large cottage industry in studies of the founders’ positions on the proper relationship between church and state. Scholarship, like contemporary political debates, often pits those who believe that the founders favored government accommodation of religion versus those who believe that they favored strict separation of church and state. Many scholars, however, have argued that a genuinely historical interpretation introduces an approach to church–state issues that transcends current ways of framing the relationship. Dreisbach 2002, Hamburger 2002, and Mansfield 2007 suggest that the founders—even Madison and Jefferson—never intended a strict separation of church and state. Kramnick and Laurence Moore 1996 and Ragosta 2010 reach the opposite conclusion with Kramnick focusing on elite founders and Ragosta emphasizing the position of dissenting religious groups. Muñoz 2009 and Myerson 2012 represent efforts to complicate and reconfigure the contemporary debate through historical research. Buckley 1977 is the definitive account of the Virginia church–state struggle, often considered the “warp and woof” of establishment-clause jurisprudence.

Buckley, Thomas E. Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776–1787. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1977.
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Seminal study of the church state struggle in Virginia. Establishes the leadership of Madison and Jefferson but points to the contributions of evangelical religious groups to the eventual resolution.
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Dreisbach, Daniel L. Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State. New York: New York University Press, 2002.
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Argues that Jefferson’s conception of church and state was never intended to separate religion from public life and that Jefferson and Madison intended only to prevent preference for a particular sect. Also emphasizes the dangers of the use of this metaphor in deciding church–state issues.
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Hamburger, Philip. Separation of Church and State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
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Presents a strong argument that separation of church and state was not the original intention of the founders, but that the notion arose during the 19th century as a result of anti-Catholicism as Protestants attempted to protect their interests in areas that contained new Catholic majorities.
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Kramnick, Isaac, and R. Laurence Moore. The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness. New York: Norton, 1996.
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Straightforward argument for separation of church and state and a secular Constitution. Argues that separation of church and state is the natural outgrowth of classical liberalism.
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Mansfield, Stephen. Ten Tortured Words: How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America . . . and What’s Happened Since. Nashville: Nelson, 2007.
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Popular presentation of the argument that the First Amendment was only designed to prevent the establishment of a national religion, not to prevent the encouragement of religion or faith.
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Muñoz, Vincent Phillip. God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
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Muñoz sensibly argues that the founders’ views on church and state cannot be divided between strict separationalists and nonpreferentialists. Instead, there were three positions: a Madisonian perspective in which the state is prohibited from taking cognizance of religion, a Washingtonian view in which religious belief and practice is encouraged, and a Jeffersonian view designed to cultivate rational religion and diminish superstition.
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Myerson, Michael. Endowed by Our Creator: The Birth of Religious Freedom in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012.
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Myerson sets forth the argument that the “original wisdom” of the founders is found not only in their reluctance to support narrow sectarian policies and taxes for the support of religious institutions, but also in their willingness to open the door to governmental acknowledgement of religion that is inclusive and aimed at the secular purpose of promoting virtue in the citizenry.
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Ragosta, John. Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped Win the American Revolution and Secured Religious Liberty. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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Focuses on the role of Virginia dissenters and argues that their history of persecution led them to oppose any involvement of the government in religious affairs, even support or aid. This study thus suggests that dissenters and the Jeffersonian leadership were at one in their beliefs about the proper relationship of church and state.
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Religion

In addition to questions about the proper relationship of church and state, scholars have also examined how the framers’ religious beliefs influenced their understanding of governmental design and its proper purpose. Some have also seen religious beliefs (especially Protestantism) as a broad ideology that was central to the settlement of America and the creation of the United States. Several scholars who have come to this conclusion have argued that religion was a counter current to liberalism. In particular, Shain 1994 counters Louis Hartz’s thesis (see Hartz 1991, cited under the Liberal Interpretation) that America was founded on the basis of a “liberal tradition” by examining the Protestant roots of local community traditions and laws. Sandoz 1990 and Hall 2003 focus on the broad Christian foundations of central aspects of the American constitutional tradition.

Hall, David W. The Genevan Reformation and the American Founding. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2003.
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Hall argues that the founders’ understanding of liberty, their concern for human depravity and thus the depravity of rulers, their concomitant commitment to limited government, and specific institutional arrangements adopted in modern representative republics were heavily influenced by the ideas of John Calvin and the Genevan Reformation.
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Sandoz, Ellis. A Government of Laws: Political Theory, Religion, and the American Founding. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.
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Sandoz argues that the intellectual foundations of the American Constitution and the political system it formed are found in Christianity and classical political thought. The founders particularly accepted the fallen nature of humanity and designed institutions and laws to address that insight.
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Shain, Barry. The Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
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Suggests that the origins of American political thought are found not in individualism or Lockean liberalism but Protestant ideas and values, particularly as these are expressed by clergy in sermons conducted during colonial settlement and the American Revolution.
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Federalism

Innovations to federalism and separation of powers mark the major conceptual contributions of the American founding to the history of political thought. Scholars (Diamond 1992; Ostrom 1987; Zuckert 1986) have considered the differences between confederations, federal governments, and unitary or national systems of government, the varieties of federalisms held by the founders, and the conceptions embodied in the Constitution. McLauglin 1918 traces the origins of American federalism to practices born of colonization and the structure of the British imperial constitution, while LaCroix 2010 analyzes the ideological origins of American federalism. Murrin 1988 emphasizes federalism as the central constitutional innovation of the founders.

Diamond, Martin. “What the Framers Meant by Federalism.” In As Far as Republican Principles Will Admit: Essays by Martin Diamond. Edited by William A. Schambra, 93–107. Washington, DC: AEI, 1992.
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Pioneering essay by Diamond that argues that the conception of federalism held by the framers and Publius was a composite that combined features of a truly national government with an older understanding of federalism that required recognition of the states as states within the national government.
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LaCroix, Alison L. The Ideological Origins of American Federalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
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LaCroix argues that American federalism did not emerge as a novel set of compromises at the Constitutional Convention or simply as a result of prior structural and institutional precedents from the British Empire. Instead, the emergence of American federalism was an ideological event that resulted from a transformation in thinking that eventually established that divided authority was a positive good, not a potentially fatal defect.
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McLauglin, Andrew C. “The Background of American Federalism.” American Political Science Review 12.2 (May 1918): 215–240.
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Classic exposition of the institutional or structural interpretation of the origins of American federalism. McLauglin argues that American federal organization was the product of practices within the British empire.
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Murrin, John. “The Invention of American Federalism.” In Essays on Liberty and Federalism: The Shaping of the U.S. Constitution. Edited by David E. Narrett and Joyce S. Goldberg, 20–47. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1988.
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Pathbreaking essay that argues against Wood that the real conceptual innovation expressed in the Constitution was not the invention of a “new science of politics,” but the articulation of a new conception of federalism. Murrin argues that Federalists and Anti-Federalists alike accepted the outlines of a federal system but disagreed about where to draw the federal boundary.
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Ostrom, Vincent. The Political Theory of a Compound Republic: Designing the American Experiment. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.
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Important for Ostrom’s explication of the theory of federalism underlying The Federalist Papers. Ostrom argues against Diamond 1992 that Madison and Hamilton were not embarrassed or disingenuous federalists, but real champions of the idea of a compound republic in the sense that it was not only composed of multiple autonomous units of government, but also of multiple decision structures within each unit of government.
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Zuckert, Michael P. “Federalism and the Founding: Toward a Reinterpretation of the Constitutional Convention.” Review of Politics 48.2 (1986): 166–210.
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500038511Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Decisive challenge to Martin Diamond’s interpretation of the origins and character of American federalism (see Diamond 1992). Also, sets forth a typology of “federalisms” held by delegates at the Constitutional Convention. Available online by subscription.
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Separation of Powers

In addition to federalism, separation of powers was the other key political concept of the founding era. Scholars have debated the intellectual origins of this concept, the original purposes of separation of powers, and its contemporary effects. Gwyn 1965 and Vile 1967 provide analyses of the long history and deeply contested character of the “doctrine” of separation of powers. Burns 1963 argues that separation of powers has led to deadlock of the American political system, while Fischer 1971 and Carey 1978 challenge the argument that deadlock was one of the founders’ original goals.

Burns, James MacGregor. Deadlock of Democracy: Four-Party Politics in America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963.
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Classic presentation of the thesis that the founders’ adoption of separation of powers encouraged deadlock and delay to prevent governmental tyranny.
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Carey, George. “Separation of Powers and the Madisonian Model: A Reply to the Critics.” American Political Science Review 72.1 (March 1978): 151–164.
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Argues against the deadlock thesis of Burns (see Burns 1963) and the antidemocratic interpretation of the Progressives and the New Left that separation of powers was not meant to thwart popular government or to protect the economic interests of the minority, but rather to prevent arbitrary and lawless acts in the context of a government controlled by the people. Available online by subscription.
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Fischer, Louis. “The Efficiency Side of Separated Powers.” Journal of American Studies 5.2 (August 1971): 113–131.
DOI: 10.1017/S0021875800000712Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Explores the conception of separation of powers put forth in the writings of Washington, Hamilton, Jay, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison. Argues against Burns (see Burns 1963) and others that the framers envisioned separation of powers and an independent executive as promoting a division of labor between the branches to promote the efficient use of those powers, not simply to prevent tyranny or arbitrary government. Available online by subscription.
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Gwyn, William B. The Meaning of Separation of Powers: An Analysis of the Doctrine From Its Origin to the Adoption of the United States Constitution. New Orleans, LA: Tulane University Press, 1965.
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Historical study of the genealogy of separation of powers.
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Vile, M. J. C. Constitutionalism and Separation of Powers. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967.
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Comprehensive treatment of the history, development, and meaning of separation of powers. Vile distinguishes a “pure doctrine” and then examines historical deviations. The pure doctrine divides government into three branches, allots governmental functions between these branches, ensures that each branch exercises only its proper function, and ensures that personnel in each branch are separated from each other.
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Executive Power and the Development of the Party System

The election of 1800 in which Thomas Jefferson assumed power from John Adams is often considered the first peaceful transfer of power by popular decision between opposing parties within a government. One of the most important intellectual innovations of the founding era involved the justification of legitimate opposition and the transformation of “party” from a synonym for faction to its acceptance as a form of political organization. Hofstadter 1969 and Zvesper 1977 trace the origins of legitimate opposition and the stubborn intellectual countercurrents that attended the birth of modern political parties. The ideological foundations of the Federalist and Jeffersonian parties and the reach of executive power—including war powers—under the first administrations are examined by Adams 1921, Cunningham 1978, Hamilton and Madison 2007, Bailey 2007, and Kleinerman 2009. Elkins and McKitrick 1993 addresses each of these topics in a magisterial overview of the Washington and Adams administrations.

Adams, Henry. History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison. 9 vols. New York: Scribner, 1921.
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Henry Adams’ classic analysis of Jefferson and Madison, and the accomplishments and failures of their presidencies. Particularly important for students of the founders in its analysis of the inadvertent expansion of executive power under Jefferson and Madison. Originally published 1889–1891 in nine volumes, this work was reissued in 1986 in two volumes (edited by Earl N. Harbert, New York: Library of America). The first volume focuses on Jefferson, and the second volume on Madison.
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Bailey, Jeremy D. Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511509742Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Pathbreaking study that argues against the thesis—made popular by Henry Adams (see Adams 1921)—that Jefferson was an opponent of executive power when he was out of office who hypocritically favored it when he became president. Jefferson frequently appealed to the use of prerogative powers as president, according to Bailey, but he justified the use of this discretionary power by appealing directly to the people.
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Cunningham, Noble E., Jr. The Process of Government Under Jefferson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.
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Analysis of how decisions were made in the Jefferson administration. Undermines the myth that Jefferson was either a distracted or uninterested chief administrator.
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Elkins, Stanley, and Eric McKitrick. The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
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Sweeping, magisterial study of the formative years of the United States. Elkins and McKitrick draw from and fully elaborate John Murrin’s contention that the party battles of the 1790s were a repeat of the “court versus country” battles of 17th- and 18th-century England (see Murrin 1980, cited under the Republican Interpretation.). They also revisit Hofstadter’s problem of the rise of legitimate opposition.
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Hamilton, Alexander, and James Madison. The Pacificus–Helvidius Debates of 1793–1794: Toward the Completion of the American Founding. Edited by Morton J. Frisch. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2007.
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Contains the important debate between Hamilton and Madison over the extent of presidential powers in war and foreign relations. Excellent introductory essay by Morton Frisch serves as an original contribution both about the historical debate between Hamilton and Madison and the contemporary debate about the scope of presidential powers.
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Hofstadter, Richard. The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
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Pathbreaking study of how a generation who opposed political parties created ground work for legitimate opposition and peaceful transitions of power.
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Kleinerman, Benjamin A. The Discretionary President: The Promise and Peril of Executive Power. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009.
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General analysis of the scope of executive power under the Constitution in emergency situations. Important here because it contains excellent comparative studies of the conceptions of executive power held by Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson.
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Zvesper, John. Political Philosophy and Rhetoric: A Study of the Origins of American Party Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
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Analysis and explanation of the origins of partisan politics in a context in which both Jeffersonians and Federalists maintained adherence to an ethos of impartiality. Zversper argues that disagreements between the Jeffersonians and the Federalists concerned fundamentally different understandings of human nature and the proper origins, extent, and ends of civil government, and that neither party saw itself as partisan.
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Political Economy

The political economy of the American founding remains relatively understudied. Much of the scholarship focusing on this topic resulted from the liberalism–republicanism debate of the 1970s and 1980s when scholars working from within the republicanism thesis (see McCoy 1980, cited under the Republican Interpretation) argued that the founders continued to have persistent doubts about unimpeded economic development and were opposed by proponents of the liberal interpretation (Appleby 1984, cited under the Liberal Interpretation; Caton 1988; McNamara 1998; Nelson 1987), who argued that the founders hoped to create a commercial republic. The end of the liberalism–republicanism debate has led to more specialized studies (Appleby 2000; Breen 2004) documenting the economic activities of ordinary Americans and the creation of the consumer revolution and to studies by economic historians (Irwin and Sylla 2011; Wright 2008) reexamining the economic policies made during the first administrations and their consequences. Shankman 2004 provides a particularly innovative account of the origins of democratic capitalism.

Appleby, Joyce O. Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2000.
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Appleby builds on her earlier studies of the economic origins of liberalism and the political and economic policies of the Jeffersonians (e.g., see Appleby 1984, cited under the Liberal Interpretation) by documenting the commercial activities of numerous ordinary Americans.
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Breen, Timothy H. Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence. New York: Oxford, 2004.
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Examines the explosion of purchasing and the advent of a consumer society in mid-18th century colonial America and traces the origins of the American Revolution to the colonists’ realization of the political power that their purchasing power gave them. Breen argues that diverse colonists were unified into Americans and spurred to Revolution by their participation in consumer boycotts.
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Caton, Hiram. The Politics of Progress: The Origins and Development of the Commercial Republic, 1600–1835. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1988.
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Broad study that argues that commercial republicanism or liberal democratic capitalism emerged out of modern scientific thinking in a series of successive waves of genius. The American founders, according to Caton, enthusiastically embraced and institutionalized this way of thinking.
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Irwin, Douglas A., and Richard E. Sylla, eds. Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
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Collection of essays by leading economic historians that examine the long-term consequences of economic decisions made during the founding.
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McNamara, Peter. Political Economy and Statesmanship: Smith, Hamilton, and the Foundations of the Commercial Republic. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998.
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Compares the economic and political thought of Adam Smith with that of Alexander Hamilton. McNamara argues for the superiority of Hamilton’s use of statesmanship resting on experience and history and rooted in constitutional government over Smith’s deductive economic principles.
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Nelson, John R., Jr. Liberty and Property: Political Economy and Policymaking in the New Nation, 1759–1812. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
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Argues against McCoy (see McCoy 1980, cited under the Republican Interpretation) that the Jeffersonians did not oppose the development of domestic manufacturers and thus were not locked into even a Janus-faced vision of the nation’s future. Indeed, according to Nelson, the embargo policies of the Jeffersonians, not of Hamilton and the Federalists, were most likely to result in the creation of a liberal republic.
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Shankman, Andrew. Crucible of American Democracy: The Struggle to Fuse Egalitarianism and Capitalism in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.
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Shankman argues that a democratic capitalist consensus emerged from the interplay of state politics in Pennsylvania. Democratic capitalism, according to Shankman, was hardly an unproblematic or inevitable outgrowth of liberalism but rather came about unintentionally as a resolution that neither the Jeffersonians nor Federalists directly sought.
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Wright, Robert E. One National Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
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First five chapters focus on the development of banking and funding systems in England and America, including the debates between Hamilton and Jefferson on the benefits and dangers of the debt that was created to fight the Revolution. Wright argues against conventional wisdom that Hamilton hoped to pay off the national debt, albeit slowly.
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Slavery and the Original Constitution

The founders’ moral responsibility for slavery and whether the Constitution was a proslavery document have been fiercely debated since the American founding. These questions have become increasingly integrated into evaluations of the political thought of the American founders rather than bracketed as they were in the past. In particular, questions of moral responsibility arise from contested standards of judgment and interpretations of historical context adopted by different historians and political scientists. Meanwhile, the question of the character of the original Constitution points back to debates between Lincolnians on the one hand and Garrisonians and neo-Garrisonians on the other. Neo-Lincolnians (Fehrenbacher 2001; Zuckert 2007) have often argued that the recognition of slavery in the Constitution was minimal (the word slavery is not mentioned in the original Constitution) and did not confer legitimacy on the institution. Fehrenbacher 2001 also argues following Freehling 1972 that the Constitution looked forward to the eradication of slavery and that the formation of a strong union first was the only chance to achieve that goal. In contrast, neo-Garrisonians (Finkelman 2001; Van Cleve 2011; Waldstreicher 2009) look at numerous clauses in the Constitution, not simply the 1808 slave trade provision, the three-fifths clause, and the fugitive slave clause. They suggest that powers such as the power to quell insurrections, protections of the states against domestic violence, and prohibitions against exports were meant to protect slavery. Neo-Garrisonians further suggest that concessions made to slavery—particularly the fugitive slave clause—were not necessary to preserve the union and that the founders supported slavery to enhance their lavish lifestyles. Freehling 1994 provides something of a compromise position, suggesting that many of the founders were conditional opponents of slavery but hints that they knew that the conditions to make them more active opponents of slavery would probably never arise. Kolchin 2003 is cited often and provides a comprehensive analysis of the origins and character of American slavery.

Fehrenbacher, Don. The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery. Completed and edited by Ward M. McAfee. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
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Most sophisticated defense of the founders’ position on slavery. Argues that the original Constitution was “bifocal”—recognizing slavery in the present, but looking forward to its eventual elimination.
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Finkelman, Paul. Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson. 2d ed. Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 2001.
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Uncompromising indictment of the Jeffersonians and the founders in general for slavery. One of the most forceful statements of the neo-Garrisonian interpretation of the Constitution as a compact with the devil.
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Freehling, William W. “The Founding Fathers and Slavery.” American Historical Review 77.1 (February 1972): 81–93.
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Defends the founders by analyzing their accomplishments in beginning the eradication of slavery. Available online by subscription.
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Freehling, William W. “The Founding Fathers, Conditional Antislavery, and the Nonradicalism of the American Revolution.” In The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War. By William W. Freehling, 12–33. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
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Freehling recants much of what he had said in his earlier, much-cited essay and argues instead that the founders were conditional opponents of slavery and that those conditions had little chance of arising.
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Kolchin, Peter. “The American Revolution.” In American Slavery, 1619–1877. By Peter Kolchin, 63–92. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.
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Balanced, comprehensive survey of American slavery incorporating the insights of a massive amount of scholarship on the founding. Founding scholars will find this chapter on the effects of the American Revolution on slavery helpful.
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Van Cleve, George W. A Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
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Van Cleve analyzes the political and legal accommodations made to slavery to create and expand the republic. This work includes a forceful new statement of the proslavery interpretation of the Constitution.
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Waldstreicher, David. Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification. New York: Hill and Wang, 2009.
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Another forceful recent restatement of the Garrisonian interpretation of the Constitution as a proslavery document. Waldstreicher argues that the framers were forced to accommodate the interests of slave holders to gain ratification and that slavery became grafted into the economic and political system as a result of these compromises.
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Zuckert, Michael P. “Legality and Legitimacy in Dred Scott: The Crisis of the Incomplete Constitution.” Chicago-Kent Law Review 82 (2007): 291–328.
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Subtle and balanced assessment of the Constitution that argues that it recognizes the legality of slavery but not its legitimacy. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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