Volume 53, Number 14 · September 21, 2006
The Lost Founders
By Fred Anderson
Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different
by Gordon S. Wood
Penguin, 321 pp., $25.95
That the Founding Fathers fascinate Americans is clear to anyone who walks into a bookstore. Just since January 1, at least thirty-six books have been published or reprinted on the 'big six'—Washington, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison. So much interest would astonish these men; most died believing that the United States had little use for them. In 1802, for example, Hamilton remarked that 'this American world was not meant for me'; a decade later Adams complained that for 'more than Fifty years, I have constantly lived in an enemies Country.' Saddest of all was Jefferson's 1825 lament to Francis Adrian Van der Kamp that their fellow Revolutionaries were 'Dead, all dead! And ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know not us.' That this cri de coeur was inaccurate—he and Adams would survive another year and a half, and Madison would hang on until 1836—only testifies to Jefferson's alienation from the United States at the dawn of the Age of Jackson.
Review, 4085 words
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