The term Founding Fathers is sometimes used to refer to the Signers of the embossed version of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.[6]Signers is not to be confused with the term Framers; the Framers are defined by the National Archives as those 55 individuals who were appointed to be delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and took part in drafting the proposed Constitution of the United States. Of the 55 Framers, only 39 were signers of the Constitution.[7][8] Two further groupings of Founding Fathers include: 1) those who signed the Continental Association, a trade ban and one of the colonists' first collective volleys protesting British control and the Intolerable Acts in 1774,[9] or 2) those who signed the Articles of Confederation, the first U.S. constitutional document.[10]
The phrase "Founding Fathers" is a 20th-century appellation, coined by Warren G. Harding in 1916.[citation needed] Prior to, and during, the 19th century, they were referred to as simply the "Fathers".[citation needed] The term has been used to describe the founders and first settlers of the original royal colonies.[11][12]
When the Second Continental Congress convened on May 10, 1775, it essentially reconstituted the First Congress. Many of the same 56 delegates who attended the first meeting participated in the second.[13] New arrivals included Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, John Hancock of Massachusetts, John Witherspoon of New Jersey, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton of Maryland, who was named as a late delegate due to his being Roman Catholic. Hancock was elected Congress president two weeks into the session when Peyton Randolph was recalled to Virginia to preside over the House of Burgesses. Thomas Jefferson replaced Randolph in the Virginia congressional delegation.[14] The second Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Witherspoon was the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration. He also signed the Articles of Confederation and attended the New Jersey (1787) convention that ratified the Federal Constitution.[15]
The newly founded country of the United States had to create a new government to replace the British Parliament. The U.S. adopted the Articles of Confederation, a declaration that established a national government with a one-house legislature. Its ratification by all thirteen colonies gave the second Congress a new name: the Congress of the Confederation, which met from 1781 to 1789.[16] The Constitutional Convention took place during the summer of 1787, in Philadelphia.[17] Although the Convention was called to revise the Articles of Confederation, the intention from the outset for some including James Madison and Alexander Hamilton was to create a new frame of government rather than amending the existing one. The delegates elected George Washington to preside over the Convention. The result of the Convention was the United States Constitution and the replacement of the Continental Congress with the United States Congress.
Social background and commonalities
The Founding Fathers represented a cross-section of 18th-century U.S. leadership. According to a study of the biographies by Caroline Robbins:
The Signers came for the most part from an educated elite, were residents of older settlements, and belonged with a few exceptions to a moderately well-to-do class representing only a fraction of the population. Native or born overseas, they were of British stock and of the Protestant faith.[18][19]
They were leaders in their communities; several were also prominent in national affairs. Virtually all participated in the American Revolution; at the Constitutional Convention at least 29 had served in the Continental Army, most of them in positions of command. Scholars have examined the collective biography of the Founders, including both the signers of the Declaration and of the Constitution.[20]
Education
Many of the Founding Fathers attended or graduated from the colonial colleges, most notably Columbia known at the time as "King's College", Princeton originally known as "The College of New Jersey", Harvard College, the College of William and Mary, Yale College and University of Pennsylvania. Some had previously been home schooled or obtained early instruction from private tutors or academies.[21] Others had studied abroad. Ironically, Benjamin Franklin who had little formal education himself would ultimately establish the College of Philadelphia based on European models (1740); "Penn" would have the first medical school (1765) in the thirteen colonies where another Founder, Benjamin Rush would eventually teach.
Many of them had moved from one colony to another. Eighteen had already lived, studied or worked in more than one colony: Baldwin, Bassett, Bedford, Davie, Dickinson, Few, Franklin, Ingersoll, Hamilton, Livingston, Alexander Martin, Luther Martin, Mercer, Gouverneur Morris, Robert Morris, Read, Sherman, and Williamson.
Several others had studied or traveled abroad.
Occupations
The Founding Fathers practiced a wide range of high and middle-status occupations, and many pursued more than one career simultaneously. They did not differ dramatically from the Loyalists, except they were generally younger and less senior in their professions.[27]
As many as thirty-five including Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Jay were trained as lawyers though not all of them practiced law. Some had also been local judges.[28]
Washington trained as a land surveyor before he became commander of a small militia.
At the time of the convention, 13 men were merchants: Blount, Broom, Clymer, Dayton, Fitzsimons, Shields, Gilman, Gorham, Langdon, Robert Morris, Pierce, Sherman and Wilson.
Broom and Few were small farmers.
Three had retired from active economic endeavors: Franklin, McHenry and Mifflin.
Franklin and Williamson were scientists, in addition to their other activities.
McClurg, McHenry, Rush and Williamson were physicians.
Johnson and Witherspoon were college presidents.
Finances
Historian Caroline Robbins in 1977 examined the status of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence and concluded:
There were indeed disparities of wealth, earned or inherited: some Signers were rich, others had about enough to enable them to attend Congress. ... The majority of revolutionaries were from moderately well-to-do or average income brackets. Twice as many Loyalists belonged to the wealthiest echelon. But some Signers were rich; few, indigent. ... The Signers were elected not for wealth or rank so much as because of the evidence they had already evinced of willingness for public service.[29]
A few of them were wealthy or had financial resources that ranged from good to excellent, but there are other founders who were less than wealthy. On the whole they were less wealthy than the Loyalists.[27]
Seven were major land speculators: Blount, Dayton, Fitzsimmons, Gorham, Robert Morris, Washington, and Wilson.
Eleven speculated in securities on a large scale: Bedford, Blair, Clymer, Dayton, Fitzsimons, Franklin, King, Langdon, Robert Morris, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Sherman.
Many derived income from plantations or large farms which they owned or managed, which relied upon the labor of enslaved men and women particularly in the southern colonies: Bassett, Blair, Blount, Davie,[30] Johnson, Butler, Carroll, Jefferson, Jenifer, Madison, Mason, Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Rutledge, Spaight, and Washington.
Eight of the men received a substantial part of their income from public office: Baldwin, Blair, Brearly, Gilman, Livingston, Madison, and Rutledge.
Prior political experience
Several of the Founding Fathers had extensive national, state, local and foreign political experience prior to the adoption of the Constitution in 1787. Some had been diplomats. Several had been members of the Continental Congress or elected president of that body.
Benjamin Franklin began his political career as a city councilman and then Justice of the Peace in Philadelphia. He was next elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly and was sent by them to London as a colonial agent which helped hone his diplomatic skills.
Jefferson, Adams, Jay and Franklin all acquired significant political experience as ministers to countries in Europe.
John Adams and John Jay drafted the Constitutions of their respective states, Massachusetts and New York, and successfully navigated them through to adoption.
Historian Gregg L. Frazer argues that the leading Founders (John Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Wilson, Morris, Madison, Hamilton, and Washington) were neither Christians nor Deists, but rather supporters of a hybrid "theistic rationalism".[37]
Many Founders deliberately avoided public discussion of their faith. Historian David L. Holmes uses evidence gleaned from letters, government documents, and second-hand accounts to identify their religious beliefs.[38]
Ownership of slaves and position on slavery
The founding fathers were not unified on the issue of slavery. In her study of Thomas Jefferson, historian Annette Gordon-Reed discusses this topic, "Others of the founders held slaves, but no other founder drafted the charter for freedom".[39] In addition to Jefferson, George Washington, John Jay and many other of the Founding Fathers practiced slavery but were also conflicted by the institution which many saw as immoral and politically divisive.[40] Conversely, many founders such as Samuel Adams and John Adams were against slavery their entire lives. Benjamin Rush wrote a pamphlet in 1773 which harshly condemned slavery and beseeched the colonists to petition the king and put an end to the British African Company of Merchants which kept slavery and the slave trade going. The Continental Association of 1774 contains a clause[41] severely limiting the slave trade as part of the general boycott of British trade.[42][43][44]
Franklin, though he was a key founder of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society,[45] originally owned slaves whom he later manumitted. While serving in the Rhode Island Assembly, Stephen Hopkins introduced one of the earliest anti-slavery laws in the colonies, and John Jay would try unsuccessfully to abolish slavery as early as 1777 in the State of New York.[46] He nonetheless founded the New York Manumission Society in 1785, for which Hamilton became an officer. They and other members of the Society founded the African Free School in New York City, to educate the children of free blacks and slaves. When Jay was governor of New York in 1798, he helped secure and signed into law an abolition law; fully ending forced labor as of 1827. He freed his own slaves in 1798. Alexander Hamilton opposed slavery, as his experiences in life left him very familiar with slavery and its effect on slaves and on slaveholders,[47] although he did negotiate slave transactions for his wife's family, the Schuylers.[48] John Adams, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Paine never owned slaves.[49]
Slaves and slavery are mentioned only indirectly in the 1787 Constitution. For example, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 prescribes that "three-fifths of all other Persons" are to be counted for the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives and direct taxes. Additionally, in Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3, slaves are referred to as "persons held in service or labor".[45][50] The Founding Fathers, however, did make important efforts to contain slavery. Many Northern states had adopted legislation to end or significantly reduce slavery during and after the American Revolution.[50] In 1782 Virginia passed a manumission law that allowed slave owners to free their slaves by will or deed.[51] As a result, thousands of slaves were manumitted in Virginia.[51] Thomas Jefferson, in 1784, proposed to ban slavery in all the Western Territories, which failed to pass Congress by one vote.[50] Partially following Jefferson's plan, Congress did ban slavery in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, for lands north of the Ohio River.[50]
The international slave trade was banned in all states except South Carolina, by 1800. Finally in 1807, President Jefferson called for and signed into law a Federally-enforced ban on the international slave trade throughout the U.S. and its territories. It became a federal crime to import or export a slave.[50] However, the domestic slave trade was allowed, for expansion, or for diffusion of slavery into the Louisiana Territory.[50]
Attendance at conventions
In the winter and spring of 1786–1787, twelve of the thirteen states chose a total of 74 delegates to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Nineteen delegates chose not to accept election or attend the debates. Among them was Patrick Henry of Virginia, who in response to questions about his refusal to attend was quick to reply, "I smelled a rat." He believed that the frame of government convention organizers were intent on building would trample upon the rights of citizens.[52] Also, Rhode Island's lack of representation at the convention was due to leader's suspicions of the convention delegates' motivations. As the colony was founded by Roger Williams as a sanctuary for Baptists, Rhode Island's absence at the Convention in part explains the absence of Baptist affiliation among those who did attend. Of the 55 who did attend at some point, no more than 38 delegates showed up at one time.[53]
Spouses and children
Only four (Baldwin, Gilman, Jenifer, and Alexander Martin) were lifelong bachelors. Many of the Founding Fathers' wives, like Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Sarah Livingston Jay, Dolley Madison, Mary White Morris and Catherine Alexander Duer, were strong women who made significant contributions of their own to the fight for liberty.[54]
Sherman fathered the largest family: 15 children by two wives. At least nine (Bassett, Brearly, Johnson, Mason, Paterson, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Sherman, Wilson, and Wythe) married more than once. George Washington, who became known as "The Father of His Country",[55] had no biological children, though he and his wife raised two children from her first marriage and two grandchildren.
Signatories to founding documents
Among the state documents promulgated between 1774 and 1789 by the Continental Congress, four are paramount: the Continental Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. Altogether, 145 men signed at least one of the four documents. In each instance, roughly 50% of the names signed are unique to that document. Only a few people (6) signed three of the four, and only Roger Sherman of Connecticut signed all of them.[56] The following persons signed one or more of these formative documents:
^Dickinson signed three of the documents, two as a delegate from Delaware and one as a delegate from Pennsylvania.
^Morris signed two of the documents, one as a delegate from New York, and one as a delegate from Pennsylvania.
Post-constitution life
Subsequent events in the lives of the Founding Fathers after the adoption of the Constitution were characterized by success or failure, reflecting the abilities of these men as well as the vagaries of fate.[57] Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe served in highest U.S. office of president. Jay would be appointed as the first chief justice of the United States and later elected to two terms as Governor of New York.
Seven (Fitzsimons, Gorham, Luther Martin, Mifflin, Robert Morris, Pierce, and Wilson) suffered serious financial reversals that left them in or near bankruptcy. Robert Morris spent three of the last years of his life imprisoned following bad land deals.[54] Two, Blount and Dayton, were involved in possibly treasonous activities. Yet, as they had done before the convention, most of the group continued to render public service, particularly to the new government they had helped to create.
Youth and longevity
Many of the Founding Fathers were under 40 years old at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776: Alexander Hamilton was 19, Aaron Burr was 20, Gouverneur Morris was 24. The oldest were Benjamin Franklin, 70, and Samuel Whittemore, 81.[58]
The last remaining founders, also poetically called the "Last of the Romans", lived well into the nineteenth century.[60] The last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who died in 1832.[61] The last surviving member of the Continental Congress was John Armstrong Jr., who died in 1843. He gained this distinction in 1838 upon the death of the only other surviving delegate, Paine Wingate.[62]
Other notable patriots of the period
Some of the following men and women, such as George Mason, were very influential, and others had little direct role in setting up the American federal government. All helped to establish the new nation.
George Mason, revolutionary writer, author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, influential delegate to the Constitutional Convention and the co-father of the United States Bill of Rights[77]
Knox[89] helped found the Society of the Cincinnati in 1783; the society was predicated on service as an officer in the Revolutionary War and heredity. Members included Washington, Hamilton and Burr. Other Founders like Sam Adams, John Adams, Franklin and Jay criticized the formation of what they considered to be an elitist body and threat to the Constitution. Franklin would later accept an honorary membership though Jay declined.[90]
Scholarship on the Founders
Articles and books by twenty-first century historians combined with the digitization of primary sources like handwritten letters continue to contribute to an encyclopedic body of knowledge about the Founding Fathers.
Joseph J. Ellis – According to Ellis, the concept of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. emerged in the 1820s as the last survivors died out. Ellis says "the founders", or "the fathers", comprised an aggregate of semi-sacred figures whose particular accomplishments and singular achievements were decidedly less important than their sheer presence as a powerful but faceless symbol of past greatness. For the generation of national leaders coming of age in the 1820s and 1830s – men like Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun – "the founders" represented a heroic but anonymous abstraction whose long shadow fell across all followers and whose legendary accomplishments defied comparison.
We can win no laurels in a war for independence," Webster acknowledged in 1825. "Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us ... [as] the founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defence and preservation.[91]
Joanne B. Freeman – Freeman's area of expertise is the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton as well as political culture of the revolutionary and early national eras.[92][93][94] Freeman has documented the often opposing visions of the Founding Fathers as they tried to build a new framework for governance, "Regional distrust, personal animosity, accusation, suspicion, implication, and denouncement—this was the tenor of national politics from the outset." [95]
Annette Gordon-Reed is an American historian and Harvard Law School professor. She is noted for changing scholarship on Thomas Jefferson regarding his relationship with Sally Hemings and her children. She has studied the challenges facing the Founding Fathers particularly as it relates to their position and actions on slavery. She points out "the central dilemma at the heart of American democracy: the desire to create a society based on liberty and equality" that yet does not extend those privileges to all."[39]
David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize winning 2001 book, John Adams., focuses on the Founding Father, and his 2005 book, 1776, details George Washington's military history in the American Revolution and other independence events carried out by America's founders.
Founders Online – a searchable database of over 178,000 documents authored by or addressed to George Washington, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.
The Founding Fathers were portrayed in the Tony Award–winning 1969 musical 1776, which depicted the debates over, and eventual adoption of, the Declaration of Independence; the stage production was adapted into the 1972 film of the same name.
Several Founding Fathers—Hamilton, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Laurens and Burr—were reimagined in Hamilton, a 2015 musical inspired by the 2004 biography Alexander Hamilton, with music, lyrics and book by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The musical won eleven Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.[96]
Children's books
In their 2015 children's book, The Founding Fathers author Jonah Winter and illustrator Barry Blitt categorized 14 leading patriots into two teams based on their contributions to the formation of America – the Varsity Squad (Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams, Madison, Jay, and Hamilton) and the Junior Varsity Squad (Sam Adams, Hancock, Henry, Morris, Marshall, Rush, and Paine).[97]
Critisism
Slavery
Several critits of the founding fathers have pointed to their status as slaveholders to either argue that they were hypocritial or morally bankrupt. Thomas Jefferson in particular has been criticized in such a fashion. [98]
^Calvin C. Jillson (2009). American Government: Political Development and Institutional Change (5th ed.). Taylor & Francis. p. 31. ISBN978-0-203-88702-8.
^Caroline Robbins. "Decision in '76: Reflections on the 56 Signers". Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Vol. 89 pp 72–87, quote at p. 86
^Brown, Richard D. (July 1976). "The Founding Fathers of 1776 and 1787: A Collective View". The William and Mary Quarterly. 33 (3): 465–480. doi:10.2307/1921543. JSTOR1921543.
^See Brown (19764); Martin (19739); "Data on the Framers of the Constitution", at [1]
^ abLambert, Franklin T. (2003). The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press (published 2006). ISBN978-0691126029.
^Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813. "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government."
^Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814. "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
^Quoted in The New England Currant (July 23, 1722), "Silence Dogood, No. 9; Corruptio optimi est pessima." "And it is a sad Observation, that when the People too late see their Error, yet the Clergy still persist in their Encomiums on the Hypocrite; and when he happens to die for the Good of his Country, without leaving behind him the Memory of one good Action, he shall be sure to have his Funeral Sermon stuff'd with Pious Expressions which he dropt at such a Time, and at such a Place, and on such an Occasion; than which nothing can be more prejudicial to the Interest of Religion, nor indeed to the Memory of the Person deceas'd. The Reason of this Blindness in the Clergy is, because they are honourably supported (as they ought to be) by their People, and see nor feel nothing of the Oppression which is obvious and burdensome to every one else."
^Frazer, Gregg L. (2012). The Religious Beliefs of America's Founders: Reason, Revelation, and Revolution. University Press of Kansas. ISBN978-0700620210.
^ abcdefFreehling, William W. (February 1972). "The Founding Fathers and Slavery". The American Historical Review. 77 (1): 81–93. doi:10.2307/1856595. JSTOR1856595.
^ abThe Cambridge History of Law in America. 2008. p. 278.
^Williams, J. D. (Summer 1987). "The Summer of 1787: Getting a Constitution". Brigham Young University Studies. 27 (3). Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University: 67–89. JSTOR43041299.
^See the discussion of the Convention in Clinton L. Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention (New York: Macmillan, 1966; reprint ed., with new foreword by Richard B. Morris, New York: W. W. Norton, 1987).
^ abGriswold, Rufus (1855), The Republican Court, or, American Society in the Days of Washington, D. Appleton & Co.
^ abcdeEncyclopædia Britannica. Founding fathers: the essential guide to the men who made America (John Wiley and Sons, 2007).
^McWilliams, J. (1976). "The Faces of Ethan Allen: 1760–1860". The New England Quarterly. 49 (2): 257–282. doi:10.2307/364502. JSTOR364502.
^Newman, Richard. Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (NYU Press, 2009).
^Jane Goodall (August 27, 2013). Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants. Grand Central Publishing. pp. 60–61. ISBN978-1-4555-1321-5.
^Ballenas, Carl. Images of America: Jamaica (Arcadia Publishing, 2011).
^Holmes, David (2006). The Faiths of the Founding Fathers. Oxford University Press US.
^Wood, Gordon S. (2007). Revolutionary Characters, What Made the Founding Fathers Different. New York: Penguin Books, pp 225–242.
^ abcdefghiBuchanan, John. "Founding Fighters: The Battlefield Leaders Who Made American Independence (review)". The Journal of Military History (Volume 71, Number 2, April 2007), pp. 522–524.
^ abcdeR. B. Bernstein (2009). The Founding Fathers Reconsidered New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
^LaGumina, Salvatore (2000). The Italian American experience: an encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis, p. 361.
^Unger, Harlow (2009). James Monroe: The Last Founding Father. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN978-0-306-81808-0.
^Kann, Mark E. (1999). The Gendering of American Politics: Founding Mothers, Founding Fathers, and Political Patriarchy. ABC-CLIO. p. xi. ISBN978-0-275-96112-1.
^"Founding Father Thomas Paine: He Genuinely Abhorred Slavery". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (48): 45. 2005. JSTOR25073236.
^David Braff (2009). "Forgotten Founding Father: The Impact of Thomas Paine". In Joyce Chumbley (ed.), Thomas Paine: In Search of the Common Good (2009) pp. 39–43
^Burstein, Andrew. "Politics and Personalities: Garry Wills takes a new look at a forgotten founder, slavery and the shaping of America", Chicago Tribune (November 9, 2003). "Forgotten founders such as Pickering and Morris made as many waves as those whose faces stare out from our currency."
^ abRafael, Ray. The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Founding Fathers: And the Birth of Our Nation (Penguin, 2011).
^Schwartz, Laurens R. Jews and the American Revolution: Haym Solomon and Others, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1987.
^Kendall, Joshua. The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture (Penguin 2011).
^Wright, R. E. (1996). "Thomas Willing (1731–1821): Philadelphia Financier and Forgotten Founding Father". Pennsylvania History. 63 (4): 525–560. JSTOR27773931.
^Winter, Jonah and Blitt, Barry, The Founding Fathers!Those Horse-Ridin', Fiddle-Playin', Book-Readin', Gun-Totin' Gentlemen Who Started America Simon and Schuster, New York (2015)
Bailyn, Bernard. To Begin the World Anew Knopf, 2003.
Bernstein, Richard B. Are We to Be a Nation? The Making of the Constitution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Bernstein, R.B. The Founding Fathers Reconsidered (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Brown, Richard D. "The Founding Fathers of 1776 and 1787: A Collective View," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 33, No. 3 (July 1976), pp. 465–480 JSTOR1921543.
Commager, Henry Steele. "Leadership in Eighteenth-Century America and Today," Daedalus 90 (Fall 1961): 650–673, reprinted in Henry Steele Commager, Freedom and Order (New York: George Braziller, 1966).
Ellis, Joseph J. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).
Ellis, Joseph J. The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783–1789 (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, May 2016).
Freeman, Joanne B. Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
Green, Steven K. Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Greene, Jack P. "The Social Origins of the American Revolution: An Evaluation and an Interpretation," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Mar. 1973), pp. 1–22 JSTOR2148646.
Harris, P.M.G., "The Social Origins of American Leaders: The Demographic Foundations, " Perspectives in American History 3 (1969): 159–364.
Lefer, David. The Founding Conservatives: How a Group of Unsung Heroes Saved the American Revolution (2013)
Kann, Mark E. The Gendering of American Politics: Founding Mothers, Founding Fathers, and Political Patriarchy (New York: Frederick Praeger, 1999).
Adrienne Koch; Power, Morals, and the Founding Fathers: Essays in the Interpretation of the American Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1961).
K. M. Kostyal. Founding Fathers: The Fight for Freedom and the Birth of American Liberty (2014)
Franklin T. Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America. (Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, 2003).
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Richard B. Morris, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
Robert Previdi; "Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America," Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 29, 1999
Rakove, Jack. Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2010) 487 pages; scholarly study focuses on how the Founders moved from private lives to public action, beginning in the 1770s
Cokie Roberts. Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation. New York: William Morrow, 2005.
Gordon S. Wood. Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (New York: Penguin Press, 2006)