Instant downloads of all 1364 LitChart PDFs It’s not clear that any of the Founding Fathers would have considered themselves “politicians.”. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts. Patriotism is love of country that’s best expressed as active participation in its continued success. Ellis calls Benjamin Franklin the “prototypical American,” and mentions that people associated George Washington with the new nation so much that they feared that if Washington died, the republic would die with him. -Graham S. Below you will find the important quotes in, “Would not have made it through AP Literature without the printable PDFs. John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. . At the same time, Founding Brothers depicts a contradiction between this decisive assertion of American principles and a reality that was defined by confusion and conflict over what these principles actually were. Patrick Henry, speech before the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788: “Guard with jealous attention … Any attempt to take decisive action against slavery in 1790, given all these considerations, confronted great, perhaps impossible, odds. All the Founding Fathers professed to believe in the fundamentally American principle that “All men are created equal,” and that they have a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” yet none took decisive action in ending the institution of slavery. ~ All Rights Reserved. Interesting facts about the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence! LitCharts Teacher Editions. The permanent residence of the capital on the Potomac institutionalized political values designed to carry the nation in a fundamentally different direction. Again, one of the biggest examples of such contradiction is slavery. No event in American history which was so improbable at the time has seemed so inevitable in retrospect as the American Revolution. Five were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. . Madison was laid up with dysentery, Edmund Randolph remained in Virginia to care for his wife, who had nearly died delivering a stillborn baby, and, most ominously of all, George Washington came down with the flu and developed pulmonary complications that the physicians considered life-threatening. Instead, the revolutionary generation chose to put aside the issue of slavery, leaving the problem for future generations to deal with. But then the prospects for victory against the most powerful army and navy in the world had been remote in 1776, as had the likelihood that thirteen separate and sovereign states would create a unified republican government in 1787. And do the same for all of the heroes who have followed them, as their noble efforts allow us to continue to celebrate Independence Day as it was meant to be! He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. "You cannot conceive the public alarm on this occasion," Jefferson reported to William Short, his former secretary in Paris, adding that Washington's demise would in all probability have meant the abrupt end of the whole national experiment. The center could not hold because it did not exist. He was living the great paradox of the early American republic: What was politically essential for the survival of the infant nation was ideologically at odds with what it claimed to stand for. Ending slavery was a challenge on the same gigantic scale as these earlier achievements. Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Rutledge, and Middleton had their properties looted by vandals or soldiers. For example, Adams thought that Franklin was “naïve about French motives,” which he believed were in fact not sufficiently “pro-American.” Meanwhile, the fact that Washington arguably became a king-like leader of the American republic was itself a contradiction in terms. Teachers and parents! as its costs are the lives given valiantly to have it! They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!”, “This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased. At the same time, there is also a question over whether even the ultimate American leaders Franklin and Washington embodied Americanness in every way. Constitutional Convention | Founding Fathers' Biographies | Founding Fathers Today | America's Birth | Reference, Flag Shirt ... A USA Patriotism! . Eleven were merchants. They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Hindsight permits us to listen to the debate of 1790 with knowledge that none of the participants possessed. . . Ellis points out that the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were “designed to deport or disenfranchise foreign-born residents, mostly Frenchmen, who were disposed to support the Republican party” and made it a crime to publish any “false, scandalous, and malicious writing or writings against the Government of the United States” were “unquestionably the biggest blunder of [John Adams’] presidency.” Enforcing patriotic obedience was an unwise move precisely because demanding loyalty to American values goes against American values. . America's BirthMore About America's Birth | Heroes, Founding Fathers ... Signers of the Declaration of Independence, John Trumbull's painting depicting the drafting committee of the Declaration of Independence. ~ All Rights Reserved, Copyright © 2002-2020 ~ USA Patriotism! "For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.". Jefferson's position on political parties, like his stance on slavery, seemed to straddle a rather massive contradiction. The Compromise of 1790 is most famous for averting a political crisis that many statesmen of the time considered a threat to the survival of the infant republic. The greatest American scientist, the most deft diplomat, the most accomplished prose stylist, the sharpest wit, Franklin defied all the categories by inhabiting them all with such distinction and nonchalant grace. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months. For the Compromise of 1790 signaled the resumption of their political partnership after five years of separation. Washington’s presidency had become trapped within that contradiction. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. . The creation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution may have helped solidify a sense of Americanness, but—as Ellis points out—some major aspects of the republic, most notably slavery, violated these principles. What’s more, the shape and character of the political institutions were determined by a relatively small number of leaders who knew each other, who collaborated and collided with one another in patterns that replicated at the level of personality and ideology the principle of checks and balances imbedded structurally in the Constitution. In fact, Jefferson’s headache coincided with a veritable plague that seemed to descend on the leadership of the Virginia dynasty.