50bookchallenge #10/50: The Meaning of Independence, Edmund S. Morgan

Edmund S. Mor­gan explores what inde­pen­dence meant to three of Amer­i­ca’s most promi­nent Found­ing Fathers: John Adams, George Wash­ing­ton, and Thomas Jef­fer­son. In doing so in such a short vol­ume, he refrains from much biog­ra­phy or his­to­ry les­son, includ­ing only what is nec­es­sary to dis­cuss the impor­tance of inde­pen­dence as it meant to each.

Rather than dates and places, Mor­gan explores the moti­va­tions and val­ues of each man. Adams the ambi­tious politi­cian, Wash­ing­ton the aloof mil­i­tary man, and Jef­fer­son the human­ist each had a com­mon rev­o­lu­tion­ary goal on the sur­face, but vast­ly dif­fer­ent under­ly­ing ideals.

The “beliefs of the Found­ing Fathers” form one of the most dis­tort­ed sets of infor­ma­tion in our cul­ture. Depend­ing on who you speak to, the U.S. was found­ed by devout Chris­tians or athe­ists, rad­i­cal anar­chists or strong Fed­er­al­ists. It does­n’t take much research to see that any sin­gle descrip­tion ascrib­ing qual­i­ties to the men who formed the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is sore­ly inad­e­quate. This book dri­ves that point home.

It’s not so much that the Founders dis­agreed about mat­ters of gov­ern­ment (although they did) but that they had such dif­fer­ent ideas about every­thing. You can bet that any time you hear a state­ment that starts with “The Founders…” that you’ll hear some gen­er­al­iza­tion that has more to do with the speak­er’s prej­u­dices than any his­tor­i­cal facts in evidence.

So it’s a plea­sure to read of these three as (if you’ll for­give the pun) inde­pen­dent enti­ties, with com­mon ground to be sure, but their own caus­es, beliefs, and allegiences.