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ONE

The Founders

“It is rare indeed for a nation to have at its summit a group so variously gifted as Washington and Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Adams. And what was particularly providential was the way in which their strengths and weaknesses compensated each other, so that the group as a whole was infinitely more formidable than the sum of its parts. They were the Enlightenment made flesh.”

—PAUL JOHNSON, A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

EDUCATING THE FOUNDERS

“At age sixteen Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton were all being schooled by Scots who had come to America as adults.”

—GARRY WILLS, INVENTING AMERICA

This remarkable fact was no mere coincidence. Scholars from Scotland were held in the highest regard in colonial America because of the preeminence of Scottish thinkers and Scottish universities at that time. The Scottish Enlightenment (it is usually dated from about 1730 until the 1790’s) was an explosion of creative intellectual energy in science, philosophy, economics, and technological innovation. It arrived just in time to have a decisive influence on the Founders.

Jefferson was the architect of the Declaration of Independence, Madison was the architect of the Constitution, and Hamilton was the architect of The Federalist Papers. If we want to understand their thinking, we need to start with the fact that the Scottish Enlightenment provided their teachers.

Jefferson’s tutor, William Douglas, had studied at Glasgow and Edinburgh, but the great intellectual influence on Jefferson was William Small. Small was a powerful representative of the Scottish Enlightenment, and he was by far the most brilliant member of the faculty at William and Mary. He came to America to teach only from 1758 to 1764—at precisely the right time to guide Jefferson’s studies there. Small left America when he did in response to an urgent request from James Watt. Watt wanted his help with the development of the steam engine.

Madison’s tutor, Donald Robertson, was also a product of the Scottish Enlightenment at its peak, but the great intellectual influence on Madison was John Witherspoon, also a Scot. Witherspoon’s own education can help us see just how close the Founders were to the Scottish Enlightenment. Before coming to America, he studied with Adam Smith and Thomas Reid. When Madison entered Princeton in 1769, under the leadership of Witherspoon it had become the American university where the great thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment—Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and David Hume—were studied most intensely.

Hamilton set out from the island of St. Croix to enroll at Princeton in 1772. He was sent by two sponsors who had recognized his astonishing gifts, his employer and Hugh Knox, a Scot and a Presbyterian minister who was a Princeton graduate. Upon his arrival, Hamilton met with Witherspoon and proposed that he be allowed to blaze through his studies at a rate only determined by his intellectual powers. When Witherspoon turned down his bold proposal, Hamilton made the same proposal at King’s College (today’s Columbia) and was accepted. His tutor there, Robert Harpur, was also a product of the Scottish Enlightenment, having studied at Glasgow before coming to America.

The ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment were studied and hotly debated just about everywhere in colonial America. In the words of the eminent scholar Douglass Adair, “At Princeton, at William and Mary, at Pennsylvania, at Yale, at King’s, and at Harvard, the young men who rode off to war in 1776 had been trained in the texts of Scottish social science.” James Foster’s admirable book Scottish Philosophy in America states it this way:

“The Scottish Enlightenment provided the fledgling United States of America and its emerging universities with a philosophical orientation. For a hundred years or more, Scottish philosophers were both taught and emulated by professors at Princeton, Harvard and Yale, as well as newly founded colleges stretching from Rhode Island to Texas.”

Foster’s thoughtful and useful work provides brief discussions of the major figures from Witherspoon, Benjamin Rush, and James Wilson in the Founders’ generation to James McCosh late in the nineteenth century. McCosh, the president of Princeton for twenty years beginning in 1868, continued to work in the tradition of common sense realism throughout his long career. He published prolifically, wrote in a clear and readable style, and exerted a significant intellectual influence on American thought.

It is well known that the Founders were on the whole remarkable for their learning. It is fair to say that by modern standards they were as a group almost unimaginably learned. They knew their Aristotle, they knew their Cicero, and they knew the Bible—and often read the texts in the original languages; Jefferson and Adams read Greek, Latin and Hebrew. They knew their Shakespeare, and they knew their Locke.

What is not so well known is how much the Scots contributed to the Founders’ thinking. In this book we will examine some of the best known writings of the Founders. And everywhere we look, we will encounter the imprint of the Scots. If you study the American Enlightenment it is difficult to avoid recognizing the contribution of the Scots. Those who overlook the Scots’ contributions to the American Founding end up overlooking the American Enlightenment itself.

Witherspoon is no doubt the most important example of the influence of Scottish educators. In the words of Jeffry Morrison in his biography of Witherspoon:

“No other founder (not even James Wilson) did more to channel the Scottish philosophy into the colonies and thus into American political thought.”

Witherspoon’s students by one count included, among many others, five delegates to the Constitutional Convention, twenty-eight U.S. senators, forty-nine U.S. representatives, twelve governors, three Supreme Court Justices, eight U.S. district judges, three attorneys general, and many members of state constitutional conventions and state ratifying conventions. Is it any wonder that the ideas and arguments of Reid and Smith and their Scottish colleagues are everywhere in the writings of the Founders?

Witherspoon’s course in moral philosophy, which he dictated year after year in largely unchanging form and which his students copied down faithfully, is almost certainly the most influential single college course in America’s history. It borrowed heavily from Hutcheson’s A System of Moral Philosophy, and at its core were the principles of Reid’s common sense realism:

“[There are] certain principles or dictates of common sense . . . These are the foundation of all reasoning . . . They can no more be proved than an axiom in mathematical science.”

Henry May, in his book The Enlightenment in America, points to Witherspoon’s lectures as the source of “the long American career of Scottish Common Sense” which was “to rule American college teaching for almost a century.”

Princeton was founded by the Presbyterians to provide a college in America for the training of its ministers for America. The American Presbyterian Church was a powerful and united religious organization in the Founders’ generation, and this was an era in which the pulpit mattered to an extent that is very nearly inconceivable to Americans today. As the de facto head of the Presbyterians in America, Witherspoon’s influence was enormous, reaching American communities far removed from college campuses.

Beyond his enormous influence as an educator and church leader, Witherspoon was also one of the most important of the Founders. He was an early and influential champion of American independence, and much more than merely a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In fact, he played a central role in the signing.

When the Declaration was completed and ready to be signed, the signers-to-be wavered. For two days they hesitated to affix their signatures. To sign it, after all, was to provide the British with documentary evidence of treason, punishable by death. Witherspoon rose to the occasion, speaking in his famously thick Scottish accent:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, a nick of time. We perceive it now before us. To hesitate is to content to our own slavery. That noble instrument upon your table, which ensures immortality to its author, should be subscribed this very morning by every pen in this house. He that will not respond to its accents and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions is unworthy the name freeman.”

His speech broke the logjam and, as we all know, the delegates then swiftly signed the Declaration.

BENJAMIN RUSH’S STORY

“The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people . . . This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.”

—JOHN ADAMS

The people of the thirteen colonies had to break free of the idea that they were subjects in order to become citizens. As Gordon Wood writes in The American Revolution:

“Since the king, in the words of the English jurist William Blackstone, was the ‘pater familias of the nation,’ to be a subject was in fact to be a kind of child . . . [The people] had to be held together from above, by the power of kings who created trains of dependencies and inequalities, supported by standing armies, strong religious establishments, and a dazzling array of titles, rituals, and ceremonies.”

To declare, as the Founders did, that the people are sovereign was to think and feel in a new way. After all, at that time “the sovereign” was the chief of state, that is, the king or the queen.

Benjamin Rush provides a fascinating example of how that change in feeling and thinking occurred, and at the same time his story tells us something very important about the American Founding.

A signer of the Declaration of Independence and surgeon general in Washington’s army, Rush was an early and influential agitator for American independence who wrote of “the absurdity of hereditary power.” Yet when he had set out for Scotland to study medicine, he was a thoroughgoing monarchist: “I had been taught to consider [kings] nearly as essential to political order as the Sun is to the order of our Solar System.” By the time he returned home to Philadelphia in 1769 he was a revolutionary committed to republican government.

After graduating from Princeton, Rush traveled to Scotland to study medicine at Edinburgh. In the colonial era, Scottish universities were generally recognized as the world’s best, and Edinburgh was considered the world’s foremost medical school. Rush studied there under William Cullen, then the medical school’s star attraction. Cullen was one of the luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the other luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment were his patients and friends. A cousin of Thomas Reid became one of Rush’s closest friends. Rush had, quite characteristically for him, landed in the center of the action.

Rush had an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of John Witherspoon’s role in the Founding—and Rush, while studying in Scotland, played a key role in persuading Witherspoon to accept the invitation to become the president of Princeton and also in overcoming Mrs. Witherspoon’s resolute opposition to moving to America.

It is equally difficult to overestimate the importance of Tom Paine’s Common Sense. Common Sense was read by virtually every American who could read, and read aloud to those who could not. It had a decisive influence on American public sentiment in favor of the Revolution. In it Paine elevated the idea of common sense thinking in America while at the same time subjecting monarchy and especially hereditary monarchy to a devastating critique:

“One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is that nature disproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an Ass for a Lion.” [Italics in original]

After Rush returned to America, he urged Paine to write Common Sense, supplied Paine with many of the ideas and even convinced Paine to use that title.

Rush seemed always to be where the action was, even when it came to the effort of getting the Constitution approved. At first, the prospects for approval looked dim. As the struggle played out, the battle in Pennsylvania became critical. Pennsylvania’s eventual vote for approval helped to turn the tide. How did that vote come about? Much credit goes to Rush. With James Wilson playing the lead, together they conducted the very effective campaign that made the difference in Pennsylvania.

Rush was what today we would call a networker. He knew everybody, and everybody knew him. What is remarkable about his network is the story it tells about the Founding. Rush’s network of contacts is a who’s who of the Scottish Enlightenment and of the American Founding. Before leaving this page, ponder for just a moment the fact that Rush’s network included Adam Smith and David Hume, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION AS DRAMA

“After Madison, [James] Wilson’s was the most important hand in shaping the Constitution . . .”

—PAUL JOHNSON, A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Remarkably, the actual course of events during the Constitutional Convention, as if by dramatic intent, seems designed to draw our attention to the enormous importance of the Scottish Enlightenment in America’s Founding.

If we consider the Constitutional Convention as a dramatic work, James Madison and James Wilson got the roles that drove the action. Madison opened with the Virginia Plan; Wilson played a central role in the debate and in the final decisive action, the drafting of the Constitution by the committee that gave it the shape we know today.

Their central roles dramatize the impact of the Scottish Enlightenment because Madison and Wilson taken together perfectly symbolize that impact.

Madison symbolizes one half of the story of the Scots in America. He represents the Revolutionary generation of Americans trained by the wave of Scots who brought the Scottish Enlightenment to America. As we have seen, Madison’s tutor, Donald Robertson, was a product of the Scottish Enlightenment at its peak, and Madison’s mentor was the Scottish educator John Witherspoon. Madison was steeped in the Scottish tradition. His education was so strongly Scottish in its character that until the end of his life he spoke French with a marked Scottish accent.

As for Wilson, he is a perfect symbol for the other half of the story. He was actually a part of that wave of Scots in America. A member in good standing of the Scottish Enlightenment, he was educated at St. Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh at the height of the Scottish Enlightenment. On stage, in our Constitutional-Convention-as-drama, we would be constantly reminded of the Scottish influence by Wilson’s strong Scottish accent.

It is important to remember that Wilson was not a second-tier figure. Wilson is only slightly outside the small circle of the Founders we all know. His contemporaries would be surprised to learn that he is not better remembered today. He was a member of that most select group of the Founders; he was one of only six men who signed both the Declaration and the Constitution. Washington appointed him to the very first Supreme Court, making him a member of yet another very select group among the Founders. So great was Wilson’s standing at the time that many Americans expected, and it was rumored in the press, that Washington would select him to be America’s first Chief Justice. In the event, Washington selected John Jay instead and that is perhaps the reason Wilson’s name eventually fell from the list of the Founders everyone knows.

For our Constitutional-Convention-as-drama, the main point is that these two characters who symbolize the story of the Scottish Enlightenment in America drive the action. In addition, our production includes two dramatic devices that brilliantly highlight the significance of Madison and Wilson.

First, they are elevated by being closely associated with the two most esteemed men in the room—George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Everyone in the room knew that Madison spoke for Washington; he was even seated to Washington’s right and beside the dais from which Washington presided. In much the same way, Wilson was paired with Franklin. This was also clear to everyone in the room. Wilson read Franklin’s prepared statements for him. To appreciate the dramatic power of these pairings, we only need to keep in mind just how much Washington and Franklin were the very symbols of America. Washington, “the Father of the Country,” and Franklin, “the First American,” were for Americans of that time their country’s two iconic figures.

In addition, the dramatic impact of Madison and Wilson’s pairing with Washington and Franklin is greatly enhanced by the comparative silence of the two icons. Washington rarely spoke, confining himself to the role of president of the Convention. Except for the prepared statements Wilson read for him, Franklin also limited his remarks to a few critical moments when his enormous prestige was needed to make a way forward. Their brilliant junior associates conducted the campaign. Madison and Wilson, our symbols of the Scottish Enlightenment’s impact on America, are given center stage.

Considered purely as drama, pairing Wilson the Scot and Madison the Scottish-educated American with the two great icons of America, and giving Wilson and Madison their key roles in the debate seems designed, as if by Providence, to send us today a potent reminder of the importance of the Scottish Enlightenment to the American Enlightenment and, therefore, to America’s Founding.

THE FOUNDERS’ TRADITION

“We have had to the present day two different traditions in the theory of liberty . . . [one] was made explicit mainly by a group of Scottish moral philosophers . . . Opposed to them was the tradition of the French Enlightenment.”

—F. A. HAYEK, THE CONSTITUTION OF LIBERTY

Hayek’s point is important because it highlights the decisive influence of the Scottish Enlightenment on the Founders’ thinking on liberty. The Founders were steeped in the Scottish tradition. As Daniel Walker Howe put it, “the Scots spread a rich intellectual table from which the Americans could pick and choose and feast.”

The Scottish Enlightenment was made up of men who delighted in vigorous debate. And yet, as Samuel Fleischacker has written in his outstanding essay “Scottish Philosophy and the American Founding”:

“The Scots did tend to share some general views—on the sociability of human nature, on the importance of history to moral philosophy and social science, on the dignity and intelligence of ordinary people—that were of great importance to their followers in America and elsewhere.”

Those shared general views informed the American debate, and provided the basis of a fundamental agreement among the Founders.

This fundamental agreement is a matter of the utmost importance. In the words of Thomas West in his brilliant essay “The Universal Principles of the American Founding”:

“One of the striking things about the leading men [of the American Founding] is how different they were in their particular preoccupations, and yet how much they agreed on principles.”

How different our history might have been if there had been a significant party among the Founders committed to the ideas of the French Enlightenment. It was our great good fortune that there was not.

THE FOUNDING

“The Americans are the first people whom Heaven has favored with an opportunity of deliberating upon, and choosing, the forms of government under which they shall live.”

—JOHN JAY

The great political writings of the American Enlightenment—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and The Federalist Papers—are quite properly included in collections of Enlightenment writings. They are among the greatest works of the Enlightenment era. Yet even Americans who are interested in American history usually do not see them as having anything to do with the Enlightenment.

How did this happen?

Although the Enlightenment began in England, with the passage of time the French Enlightenment gained prominence, eventually eclipsing all of the other developments in the Enlightenment era. More and more, the French Enlightenment came to be identified with the Enlightenment itself. As a result, generalizations about the Enlightenment today all too often end up actually being generalizations about the French Enlightenment.

It is easy to find examples of even those who should know better falling victim to this tendency. The Portable Enlightenment Reader is an excellent collection of writings of the Enlightenment era. In his introduction to the book, the editor, Isaac Kramnick, writes: “The Enlightenment was an international movement that included French, English, Scottish, American, German, Italian, Spanish, and even Russian schools.” On the very next page he also writes: “What was the message of these Enlightenment intellectuals? . . . They believed that unassisted human reason, not faith or tradition, was the principle guide to human conduct.” This is a perfectly fair characterization of the French Enlightenment, which the noted scholar Gertrude Himmelfarb aptly calls “the ideology of reason.” However, as for the Scottish and the American Enlightenments, it completely misses the mark.

The Founders did not believe that unassisted human reason was the principle guide to human conduct, nor did the Scots. For the Founders and for the Scots, human reason is able to function as a guide to human conduct only when grounded in the moral sense. For example, here is Thomas Jefferson on this subject:

“State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.”

In precisely the same way, they believed reason can provide knowledge and human understanding only when reason is grounded in common sense.

Because they did not assign primacy to unassisted human reason, the Founders do not fit the prevailing image of Enlightenment thinkers. The Founders were not like the French philosophes, and the philosophes are now the very models of the Enlightenment.

Yet it seems to me that there is another reason why Americans today tend not to recognize The Federalist Papers, for example, as a classic of the Enlightenment. It is not for us a curious antique document that is marooned in that era in the remote past. The French remember the French Enlightenment, but no one today reads the Encyclopédie, the work that symbolized the French Enlightenment. The philosophes of the Enlightenment era have been displaced many times over by new fashions in French thought—romanticism, socialism, existentialism, postmodernism—but The Federalist Papers continues to play a living part in the political and intellectual life of our republic today.

It is also true that the Founders did not labor to draw out for us the connections and the differences between their thinking and the thinking of others of the Enlightenment era. Had they very carefully done so for us there would be little need for this book, but they had more urgent and important tasks.

Jay was one of the authors of The Federalist Papers and the first Chief Justice of the United States. He, like the other Founders, was not concerned to trace for us the philosophical background of the Founding. The Founders were in the act of creation. They were focused on the great task before them, the urgent challenge and enormous opportunity of founding a republic that would not fail, as Athenian democracy and the Roman Republic had, but would survive to reach our own time and beyond.

Consequently, the Founding can be thought of as a kind of historical Big Bang, the brilliance of which eclipses its antecedents, obscuring even the American Enlightenment itself. Not guessing that we would eventually lose sight of the American Enlightenment, and therefore of the debt the American Enlightenment owed to the thinkers of Scottish Enlightenment, the Founders cannot be faulted for keeping their focus instead on making clear to us what they had given us: as Franklin famously said, “A republic, if you can keep it.”