Founding Myths (54 page)

21
.
  
Samuel Tilden in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and Albert Gore in 2000 won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college. Andrew Jackson won a plurality of votes in 1824, but since no candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the presidency was decided in the House of Representatives, which chose John Quincy Adams over Jackson.

22
.
  
Although this compromise passed Congress by a substantial majority, it failed to receive unanimous approval from the separate state legislatures, as required for any amendment to the Articles of Confederation.

23
.
  
Madison,
Notes of Debates
, August 21.

24
.
  
Ibid., August 21 and 22.

25
.
  
Failure to require a two-thirds majority for navigation laws was among the main reasons George Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginia refused to sign the Constitution. Mason argued: “By requiring only a majority to make all commercial and navigation laws, the five Southern States, whose produce and circumstances are totally different from that of the eight Northern and Eastern States, may be ruined, for such rigid and premature regulations may be made as will enable the merchants of the Northern and Eastern States not only to demand an exhorbitant freight, but to monopolize the purchase of the commodities at their own price, for many years, to the great injury of the landed interest, and impoverishment of the people; and the danger is the greater as the gain on one side will be in proportion to the loss on the other.” (Merrill Jensen et al., eds.,
Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution
[Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976], 8: 45 or 13: 350.) Toward the end of the Convention, Randolph declared there were “features so odious in the constitution as it now stands, that he doubted whether he should be able to agree to it,” and failure to require a supermajority for navigation laws “would compleat the deformity of the system.” Randolph was not above compromise, but he had been left out of this one. (Madison,
Notes of Debates
, August 29.)

26
.
  
Ibid., August 22.

27
.
  
Ibid., August 8.

28
.
  
Washington to Patrick Henry, Benjamin Harrison, and Thomas Nelson (former governors of Virginia), September 24, 1787, Jensen et al.,
Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution
, 8: 15.

8: American Aristocracy

  
1
.
  
Gordon Wood, “The Greatest Generation,”
New York Review of Books
, March 29, 2001.

  
2
.
  
David McCullough, “The Argonauts of 1776,”
New York Times
, July 4, 2002.

  
3
.
  
Joseph Ellis,
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 13, 17.

  
4
.
  
Gordon Wood perceives the need to apply some sort of standard. In his “Greatest Generation” essay (see note 1), he first attests to the founders' foibles: “Certainly they were not immune to temptations of self-interest that attracted most ordinary human beings. They wanted wealth and position and often speculated heavily in order to realize their aims. They were not democrats, certainly not democrats in any modern manner. They were never embarrassed by talk of their being an elite, and they never hid their superiority to ordinary folk.” So what makes these elitists, in Wood's estimation, the greatest generation? “They struggled to internalize the new liberal man-made standards that had come to define what it meant to be truly civilized—politeness, taste, sociability, learning, compassion, and benevolence—and what it meant to be good political leaders—virtue, disinterestedness, and an aversion to corruption and courtier-like behavior. Of course, they often did not live up to such standards; but once internalized, these enlightened and classically republican ideals and values to some degree circumscribed and controlled their behavior. Members of this revolutionary generation sought, often unsuccessfully, to be what Jefferson called ‘natural aristocrats'—aristocrats who measured their status not by birth or family but by enlightened values and benevolent behavior. It meant, in short, having all the characteristics that we today sum up in the idea of a liberal arts education.” Wood's standards are minimal: the founders were “great” because they internalized the values of a liberal arts education and externalized the manners of a finishing school. The thrill is gone. Do members of “the greatest generation” deserve our adulation simply because they tried (but often failed) to be virtuous?

  
5
.
  
To develop standards, perhaps we should follow the lead of the Catholic Church, which has established very precisely who can be called a “saint.” To qualify, a candidate must endure the scrutiny first of a specially convened tribunal, then, in succession, of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints; a committee of nine theologians; a committee of cardinals and bishops; and finally the Pope. If these officials all certify that the candidate possessed both the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) and the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude), he or she can be called a “Servant of God.” Certification by these deliberative bodies that the Servant of God performed a miracle earns the title of “Blessed,” and finally, certification that the Blessed performed a miracle after she or he had died warrants the title of “Saint.” It's all cut and dried. To be fair and precise, shouldn't we require candidates for historical greatness to undergo some sort of scrutiny like this? Such a notion is admittedly absurd, revealing the futility of applying the term “great” in an objective manner.

  
6
.
  
American Heritage,
Great Minds of History: Interviews with Roger Mudd
(New York: Wiley, 1999).

  
7
.
  
Charles Murray, in
Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and
Sciences, 800
B
.
C
.
to 1950 (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), attempts to quantify and rank people who “have achieved great things.” By examining how many times people are mentioned in standard reference works and indexes, Murray claims to distinguish “great accomplishment from lesser achievement.” Only by equating “greatness” with “influence” could this method claim any objective validity. It is no accident that Murray does not extend his analysis to the political arena. If he did, Hitler would certainly emerge as one of history's greatest humans.

  
8
.
  
Ellis,
Founding Brothers
, 13. Ellis assumes that whatever occurs within the narrow and contained world inhabited by “central players” must be “historically significant.” Fame and significance, however, are not synonymous. Ellis opens his masterfully written book with an intriguing story of a duel between two fading political figures, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, in 1804—a tragic personal drama of little historical import. He follows with a tale about a dinner party in which a major deal was supposedly struck; this intimacy in the political arena makes for a good story, but Ellis himself admits that the deal was discussed in other venues as well, and his dinner party scenario “vastly oversimplifies the history that was happening at that propitious moment.” Another tale features the “silence” of the first federal Congress over the question of slavery; here indeed was an issue of great national importance, yet Ellis's claim that debates within Congress over the question of slavery were “central” while the experiences of the slaves themselves were not is disingenuous. The final story eulogizes the friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson during their later years. This reconciliation between elder statesmen affords a poignant conclusion to the book, but it was hardly central to the founding of our nation or “the subsequent history of the United States, including our own time.” The story of the Adams-Jefferson friendship, like that of the Burr-Hamilton duel, appears significant only because the characters had participated in other important events at previous times. Ellis includes these episodes not because they are crucial to the history of the United States, but because they can be turned into interesting stories. The lives of heroes and giants, from birth to death, will always make for a good read—but biographical sketches of famous personalities should not be presented as “significant” history.

                
Ironically, since Ellis's stories do not relate to the actual founding of our nation, they are all “marginal or peripheral” to “the central events and achievements of the revolutionary era.” Ellis refers to the two “founding moments” in American history, the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the adoption of a Constitution in 1787–1788, yet he addresses neither of these, for his book commences in the year 1790. There is nothing wrong in this, save for the false packaging. He titles his book
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
to give the stories added weight and significance, even though he addresses neither the “Founding” nor the “Revolution.” Like so many others, he rides the coattails of America's most special time: the act of national creation.

  
9
.
  
Before accepting the position of superintendent of finance, Morris insisted that he have the absolute power to dismiss, on his own authority alone, any officer at all involved in federal expenditures. After his appointment, Congress placed all money borrowed from foreign governments directly in his hands. It permitted him to import or export goods on the nation's tab, with no oversight. It allowed him to issue private contracts to supply
the army, and it placed the entire Marine Department under his control. It granted him the authority to deal with foreign ministers, thereby allowing him to operate his own department of foreign affairs. Meanwhile, the state of Pennsylvania, the nation's most prominent commercial center, granted Morris the authority to run its official business more or less by himself.

10
.
  
For Morris's central roles in the founding of the nation, see Ray Raphael,
Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation
(New York: The New Press, 2009), and Charles Rappleye,
Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

11
.
  
McCullough, “Argonauts of 1776,” July 4, 2002.

12
.
  
Ibid.

13
.
  
David McCullough,
John Adams
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 78, 90. McCullough also notes that delegates for six states in the Continental Congress “were under specific instructions not to vote for independence.” This was true in the early spring of 1776, but over the course of the next few months, all states except New York either instructed their delegates to vote for independence or permitted them to do so. These changed instructions were not due to debates within Congress, but to pressure from without.

14
.
  
John Adams to Benjamin Rush, March 19, 1812, in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department, ms no. 229 (44), Boston Public Library. The words deleted are: “Mr Gerry, Mr Lovel was not there. Gerry not till 1776. Lovel not till 1777.”

15
.
  
Adams to Jefferson, November 12, 1813, John Adams,
Works of John Adams
, Charles Francis Adams, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1850–1856), 10: 78–79.

16
.
  
John Adams, with his handy breakdown of one-third, one-third, and one-third, is often cited as the definitive source on the strength of Tories, patriots, and neutrals during the American Revolution. In 1815, writing to James Lloyd, he stated that a “full one third were averse to the Revolution. . . . An opposite third conceived a hatred of the English. . . . The middle third . . . were rather lukewarm.” (Charles Francis Adams, ed.,
The Works of John Adams
[Boston: Charles Little and James Brown, 1850], 10: 110.) Here, however, Adams was speaking not about the American Revolution but about the political split in 1797 between Americans who supported the French Revolution and those who supported Britain, France's enemy at that time. Words usually deleted would make this clear: “rather lukewarm
to both England and France
.” In 1908 historian Sydney George Fisher misinterpreted Adams's reminiscence, thinking it applied to the numbers of patriots and loyalists in the American Revolution, and that mistaken notion has been passed along. Adams showed a penchant for breaking down the population into thirds; writers of history texts, in turn, have shown a penchant for accepting as fact these quick and easy assessments, set to paper several decades later by an aging man and taken totally out of context.

17
.
  
McCullough,
John Adams
, jacket copy (written by McCullough).

18
.
  
John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, in Charles Francis Adams, ed.,
Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife Abigail Adams, during the Revolution
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1875), 193.