A Nation Like No Other (7 page)

Washington clearly understood the importance of religion and morality, but what are the “dispositions and habits” to which he referred? Looking through four hundred years of American history, back to the first colonists' arrival at Jamestown, we find five habits of liberty that have been crucial to sustaining American Exceptionalism. They are:

Tempering man's worst impulses, these distinctly American habits are vital to cultivating an engaged, informed citizenry, which is needed to sustain a free republic and secure the unalienable rights asserted in the Declaration of Independence. The emphasis on these habits set America apart from its European counterparts, where monarchs were intent on cultivating passive, obedient subjects unlikely to challenge their rulers' claim to power.

The Founders encouraged these habits of liberty both through policy and by personal example. Recognizing that a virtuous republic must be based on a virtuous citizenry, they assumed the American nation would not prosper, regardless of its governing structures, unless the people vigorously practiced these habits and inculcated them in future generations. We can see these habits in action through the lives of five members of America's founding generation.

As God endowed man with rights, the Creator also gave man the first and most durable of human institutions: the family. God repeatedly affirmed the family as the best means to secure a happy, just, and moral life. Faith and family grew up in tandem as the twin pillars of Judeo-Christian civilization.

Faith gave the Founders context and meaning in their lives; families gave them an outlet for expressing their understanding of the world, and the obligation and privilege to love and be loved in return. The Founders laid their greatest hopes for the American republic on a commitment of free men to faith and family, since these two pillars defend liberty against licentiousness and tyranny.

John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and later vice president and president of the United States, was a devoted husband of Abigail and father of six children. The couple had known each other since childhood, basing their marriage upon mutual respect and admiration. As they witnessed the birth of a new republic and experienced the fatigue and separation of war, John and Abigail continually looked to each other for emotional, spiritual, and intellectual support.

The struggle for American independence kept Adams away from his family for long periods, sometimes years at a time. But the couple maintained an extensive correspondence, particularly during his time in Philadelphia during the Continental Congress. Their letters reveal an unshakeable commitment and devoted love for one another. They shared a mutual appreciation for philosophy, poetry, and politics, and their letters
show how much John valued Abigail's counsel on matters of government and public life.

The Adams also understood the importance of education in the lives of their children, and their own responsibility to instill in them the virtues and values vital to the new nation's success. Early in his legal career, John wrote about the importance of the proper education of youth:

In a letter to Abigail in 1780, he likewise explained why he supported the armed struggle to secure the nation's independence:

Adams' love of family compelled him not only to study politics and war, but to engage in both, to ensure that his children could enjoy the blessings of liberty. He believed that the education of children was central to the maintenance of liberty, and he hoped a free republic would provide an environment where his children could study the greatest expressions of human culture and man's God-given creativity—painting, poetry, music, architecture, and other arts. Both John and Abigail understood that the cultivation and protection of these virtues all begin in the family.

Indeed, above their status as citizens, workers, or statesmen, the Founders cherished their role in their families. The family was prized as
the best incubator for love, charity, religion, work, and safety, and a model for all other social relations. As John Adams wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1814, “As long as Property exists, it will accumulate in Individuals and Families. As long as Marriage exists, Knowledge, Property and Influence will accumulate in Families.” Once again, Adams demonstrated that he saw the institution of family as the cornerstone of a free society, and marriage as the fundamental building block of the family. He also believed that the family was inextricably linked to economic prosperity.

Family is the most basic social unit, and for the Founders, the model for all society and the locus of work, education, religion, love, discipline, and national memory. The Pilgrim settlers described the family as “a little commonwealth” whose constituent members had deep and abiding obligations to themselves and to each other for their mutual prosperity, safety, and happiness. These values, developed in the home, extended to society at large. According to Adams, “The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families.”

Strong and healthy families created strong and healthy citizens and taught those citizens their responsibilities to society. A mid-eighteenth-century Protestant preacher explained, “As the Civil State, as well as the Churches of Christ, is furnished with members from private families: if the governors of these little communities, were faithful to the great trust reposed in them, and family-religion and discipline were thoroughly, prudently and strictly, maintained and exercised . . . the Civil State would prosper and flourish from Generation to Generation.”
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The preacher's assertion implied that if the family ever faltered, the colonists' virtues could be erased in one generation.

Experience had taught the colonists the value of extended families as a stabilizing force in society. After the disaster at Roanoke and early stumbling at Jamestown, the colonies were settled not by individuals, but almost exclusively by family units that were stable, productive, and self-sustaining.
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The division of responsibilities among family members created mutual dependence within the family but independence from the outside community, allowing families to raise children to be free and self-sufficient citizens.

Both liberty and family life derived from something greater than their constituent parts. In 1813, looking back on his life, Thomas Jefferson observed, “The happiness of the domestic fireside is the first boon of Heaven; and it is well it is so, since it is that which is the lot of the mass of mankind.”

The Founders viewed liberty as a special privilege from God that was inextricably tied to their family and their faith. George Whitefield, the renowned preacher of the Great Awakening and close friend of Benjamin Franklin, summed up why Americans should be thankful: “Your situation in life, every one must confess, is one of great blessing: the providence of God has given you a wonderful heritage, above many of your fellow-creatures.”
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Faith and family both secured and gave meaning to the blessings of liberty.

The colonies' first settlers were adventurers and frontiersmen who established an American tradition of pursing fortune and knowledge through work. Labor, whether manual or intellectual, increased man's dignity and liberty as he became self-sufficient and availed himself of self-made opportunities. Ever since John Smith introduced the “Law of Work” at Jamestown, a strong work ethic was more than a moral maxim—it was a necessity for survival and a route to prosperity.

Benjamin Franklin stands out among the Founders as the embodiment of this ethic of work, industry, and innovation. For Franklin, the key to prosperity lay in his Thirteen Virtues, among them Industry and Frugality. Industry, as Franklin defined it, was to “lose not time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”
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Franklin lived that ethic of work and encouraged his countrymen to do the same. As a young man, he became a successful printer and author, writing
Poor Richard's Almanack
at the age of twenty-six. He became the celebrated inventor of bifocals and the Franklin stove, as well as an authoritative scientist on subjects such as lightning, ocean currents, and meteorology. In his distinguished career as a diplomat and statesmen, Franklin guided the colonies toward revolution and unity, navigating them through the treacherous waters of European diplomacy.

Franklin's greatest legacy, though, is the ethos of self-made success that he advocated and exemplified. To him, the pursuit of happiness was best understood as an unalienable right to pursue property; and consequently he understood the accumulation of wealth as evidence of a “moral striving” that benefitted society.
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This notion was fundamentally democratic; a man was to be judged solely by what he produces, not by his social class or some other artificial criteria. As Franklin advised immigrants, “People do not inquire concerning a Stranger, What is he? but, What can he do?”
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Franklin suggested the government's rightful role was to defend liberty and opportunity, allowing man to improve his condition through his own initiative: “I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.... The less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
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Ingenuity and discovery, as Franklin showed by example, were part and parcel of this American work ethic. The relentless quest for scientific discovery and economic opportunity also provided an animating force for exploring and settling America, from the Northwest Ordinance to Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase to the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The Founders considered innovation and invention so important that they wrote protections for inventors into the Constitution—the document that articulated our society's most precious and protected liberties. The Patent and Copyright Clause reads, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

The American republic was conceived as a commercial republic in which hard work and innovation would create a level of prosperity unrivaled in history. As Alexander Hamilton observed in Federalist no. 12, “The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.”

The Founders, especially Benjamin Franklin, revered work as a moral virtue and a great habit of liberty. With industry and ingenuity, work was
the great means by which the American people could achieve independence and pursue happiness.

The Founders recognized that citizens of a free republic would have to accept extraordinary responsibilities. In European monarchies, the people were subjects who owed loyalty and obedience to their superiors, while the Court and the aristocrats were duty bound, at least in theory, to guard the best interests of commoners and of society as a whole. A republic, by contrast, required that each man, serving as his own sovereign, act not only in his own best interest but also in the interest of his fellow countrymen.

Benjamin Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, exemplified a commitment to his fellow citizens in his own life. In Philadelphia, he helped lead The Sons of Liberty, a society that arose in all the colonies dedicated to educating and organizing the people to champion liberty. The Sons of Liberty played a vital role as a meeting place for like-minded patriots to develop the ideals of the Revolution. The group also engaged in collective actions—its members staged the famous Boston Tea Party, and some of its adherents helped tear down the statue of King George III on Bowling Green. Later in life, Dr. Rush dedicated himself to public health and helped to contain a yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793. Though most other doctors fled the epidemic, Rush stayed, risking his own life and saving thousands.

The Founders believed this kind of private virtue, manifested through philanthropy, charity, and participation in civic life, was crucial to America. And indeed, myriad popular associations dedicated to helping the poor, often based around churches and immigrant groups, spread throughout the colonies and the early republic.
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To facilitate their work, local and state governments gave these groups tax exemptions and other privileges. Land grants and endowments flourished in colonial America and afterward, transforming the nation into a great educational and philanthropic society.

After America's founding, associations dedicated to philanthropy, science, philosophy, and politics sprung up across the new nation. In the
early 1800s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed how widespread these civic groups had become: “In no country in the world has the principle of association been more successfully used or applied to a greater multitude of objects than in America.... A vast number of others are formed and maintained by the agency of private individuals.”
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As Tocqueville noted, the societies ranged from political parties and public safety commissions to religious groups and commercial associations.