FEARS OF A SETTING SUN

Why the Founding Fathers believed the political system they created was “an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation.”

Making the striking argument that all but one of the major founders of the U.S. died disillusioned with their creation, Rasmussen nevertheless offers hope for our current predicaments. Focusing on George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, the author scrutinizes their surviving papers for a single element of their thought: their confidence in the future of the federal republic. His distinctive approach yields something overlooked by historians. All of them—and there were others—save Madison died pessimistic about their country’s future. The partisanship that broke out during Washington’s presidency deeply troubled him. Hamilton’s dark mood arose from what he saw as the government’s feebleness. Adams was forever despondent about his fellow citizens’ lack of virtue. Jefferson became deeply anxious about disunion; he went to his death “riddled with doubts” about the young nation’s survival. Only Madison—a man less troubled by partisanship, weak government, and the union’s breakup and more confident that institutions could offset a lack of public virtue—escaped the other founders’ dark forebodings. But should we see their misgivings as the realism of mature reflection or as an indication of an inability to adjust to changes in a distinctive nation whose future has never been foreseeable? While offering an authoritative and convincing argument in disarmingly artful prose, Rasmussen doesn’t answer that question. However, while emphasizing the founder’s “late-life despair,” he ends on a hopeful note. Despite systemic problems that have existed since the nation’s founding, our current woes “are less likely to ultimately doom the republic than we often fear”—as long as we follow these great men who, despite their fears, forged ahead until their deaths with “steadfast resolve” to strengthen the nation they’d established and led in its infancy.

A relevant history suggesting that the U.S. may be stronger than many of its citizens believe.