The Disillusionment of America’s Founders

Blog overview

By the end of their lives, America’s leading founders were surprisingly disappointed in the government and the nation that they had helped to create. In fact, most of them – including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson – came to deem America’s constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. In this series Dennis C. Rasmussen draws on his new book, ‘Fears of a Setting Sun’, to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders’ disillusionment.

The Enduring Confidence of James Madison

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

October 6, 2021

  Despite being a rather sickly hypochondriac, James Madison outlasted all the other founders, living until June 1836, almost through Andrew Jackson’s second term as president. Through all that time he remained relatively confident in the superiority and durability of America’s constitutional order. He did occasionally harbor some real worries and experience some palpable disappointments, …...

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The Disillusionment of Thomas Jefferson: Sectionalism

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

September 29, 2021

  Thomas Jefferson’s disillusionment was in many respects the most surprising of all. For most of his life he was consistently – one might even say relentlessly – optimistic about America’s future. Even when the Federalists implemented measures that he deemed deeply objectionable during their ascendancy in the 1790s, from Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan to …...

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The Disillusionment of John Adams: Civic Virtue

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

September 22, 2021

  The namesake of this institute, John Adams, was unsurpassed among the American founders in the depth of his knowledge about politics, history, and law. No one in that age of remarkably learned political leaders – not even James Madison – read as voraciously or ranged as widely as Adams in contemplating the proper underpinnings …...

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The Disillusionment of Alexander Hamilton: Governmental Energy

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

September 15, 2021

  Among the American founders, Alexander Hamilton was easily the most consistent and unabashed proponent of a strong national government. His foremost dream for the new United States was that it would eventually achieve the kind of international prominence, military might, and economic prosperity that he saw embodied in the great European monarchies, especially Britain, …...

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The Disillusionment of George Washington: Partisanship

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

September 8, 2021

  Throughout his remarkable public career, one of George Washington’s foremost wishes for his country was that it would remain free of political parties and partisanship. All of America’s founders at least professed an aversion to “factions,” as they were frequently called, but none loathed them more fiercely, consistently, and sincerely than he did. As …...

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Why America’s Founders Came to Fear for the Country’s Future

By Dennis C. Rasmussen

September 1, 2021

  On September 17, 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered one last time in what is now Independence Hall in Philadelphia in order to sign the charter that they had spent the past four months crafting. As the last of the thirty-eight signers affixed their names to the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin called attention …...

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