History nerds everywhere squirm with delight each year when of our biggest national holidays makes it cool, for 24 hours anyway, to celebrate history. Even the most history-resistant among us pretend to go along with the hubbub because it means they get a day off. So today's blog post will be all history, all the time. For at least one day out of the year, maybe the historical slant will not seem too esoteric. Ostensibly it will be to celebrate Independence Day, but we both know I am a history nerd to the core and prefer to write about it all day, every day, occasion be damned.
On with the show: who's your favorite founding father? Such a tough call. First hurdle is to agree on who counts as a 'founding father'. For many, that picture of all of them signing the declaration is proof enough. If you're in the pic, you qualify.
Next, what qualities are we looking for? That's also a tricky one - what may be important to me may not matter at all to you. For instance, do we go with politics or military prowess? Legacy or looks? Smarts or guts? If that's too ivory tower for you, how about we go with a more tabloid approach: which of them would have been the 18th century equivalent of 'Sexiest Man Alive'? And how would that have been quantified back then - number of progeny (in or out of wedlock)? Duels won? Wig style?
History has already done a pretty good job of annointing this group for all the reasons I listed and a lot more. Cities, towns, schools a-plenty are named for them. Two of them have their 60-foot tall faces carved into a mound of granite in South Dakota. They're on our money, for crying out loud. So how about we decrease the pressure on ourselves of picking the GOAT and pick the one we like best, just because.
I never could warm up to Adams or Madison. Washington is such a cliche - everybody loves Number One - but I admit he did grow on me the more I learned about him. Franklin seems like the Nutty Professor of the group - plenty smart but never President, which proves the smart part, doesn't it? Hamilton had looks and smarts, but his ego did him in. I have to go with Thomas Jefferson. He has always been my favorite. Tall, sandy haired, soft-spoken. He wasn't the first prez, but he seems like the kind of guy that would have been okay with that. I can picture him holding the figurative Presidential door for George and saying, 'oh no, you first, I insist'. I suppose it is his status as a true Renaissance man that holds the most appeal for me. Like Madison and Franklin, not only was he interested in everything, he was able understand and even master just about any topic - music, language, agriculture, architecture, politics, science.
And so it was with dismay that I learned of his alleged relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings. Naturally the owning of slaves is certainly a disappointment, ditto most of the other Founding Fathers. When DNA testing indicated Jefferson or a close relative likely fathered children with Sally, well, just when you thought owning slaves couldn't get any more distasteful . . .
I haven't seen the recent film about them. I have wondered if their relationship was a master/slave cliche (overbearing white guy forcing himself on helpless but attractive slave girl), or whether it was more a typical midlife crisis scenario (older guy cheating on his wife with a pretty young woman with whom he is in close proximity on a regular basis). No one will ever know. But it does go a long way toward humanizing Jefferson and all the other guys on our money because all the guys on our money have similar stories about them making some bad decisions. Hamilton pissed off Aaron Burr and got himself killed in a duel. Washington went to great lengths to avoid having his favorite chef, his slave Hercules, benefit from the capitol city's antislavery laws. Ben Franklin's first child was born out of wedlock; mother unknown.
Sure, they were the smartest guys in the room in that picture up there. But they were human. They did some dumb things, too. That's what makes history interesting.
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