Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

Thomas Jefferson is contemplative, conflict-averse, and idealistic. He wants America to realize the fullest potential of its Revolution and replace the monarchical system inherited from the British with a true meritocracy. He also predicts American-style republican revolutions all over world and is excited by the possibilities of the French Revolution. Despite his idea of continuous revolution Jefferson does not use his influence to help the abolition movement and thereby push the Revolution to its fullest conclusions in the United States. 

Abigail Adam, wife of Jefferson’s friend and political rival, John Adams,  likens Jefferson to “a willow who bent with every political breeze” (190). Being willow-like, flexible, and receptive works in Jefferson’s favor, especially when it comes to his statements on the French Revolution. While he initially supports the overthrow of the French monarchy, Jefferson cannot continue to be in favor of the revolution when Napoleon fashions himself after other monarchs.

A “short, stout, candid-to-a-fault” New Englander, John Adams wins the first contested presidential election in America and succeeds George Washington in 1796 (163). Adams is the pragmatic counterpart to Thomas Jefferson’s idealism. While Jefferson wants to realize the full scope of the Revolution as quickly as possible, Adams foresees an evolution, whereby the transition from monarchy to republic will be more gradual. He is also able to accept that post-revolutionary America will still have its inequalities in terms of money and power. Where Jefferson wavers, Adams is a staunch supporter of the antislavery movement.

Adams is also a symbol of the old system in the sense that he prefers to form a government of intimates, with his wife as unofficial chief advisor and his political rival Thomas Jefferson as vice president, over one based on shared ideology.

Slight Alexander Hamilton “had a light peaches and cream complexion with violet-blue eyes and auburn-red hair, all of which came together to suggest an animated beam of light” (22). He is the illegitimate son of a bankrupt Scottish merchant and a French beauty, and his impoverished roots give him a “dashing and consistently audacious style,” whereby he regards public problems as personal challenges (22). Hamilton is a prominent member of Washington’s government and prepares a bill of assumption, by which the federal government will assume all state debts accrued while fighting the Revolution. A proto-capitalist and committed unionist, Hamilton has the idea that debts, and therefore the economy, are best handled at a national level, rather than at the level of the individual states. 

Hamilton becomes infamous for being Aaron Burr’s reluctant competitor and then a martyr in the duel of 1804, fought after Hamilton insulted Burr in The Albany Register. Though he begrudgingly participates in the duel, and most probably fires his shot up into the air, Hamilton’s inflexible sense of honor means that he finds it impossible to refuse Burr’s challenge. 

Of a similar slight build to his rival, five-foot–seven-inch Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr “had […] dark and severe colouring […] with black hair receding from the forehead and dark brown, almost black, eyes that suggested a cross between an eagle and a raven” (22). An elegant dresser, he is from a noble (for America) bloodline, and his grandfather, Jonathan Edwards had been a great theologian. But nevertheless, Burr’s “entire life had been a sermon on the capacity of the sagacious spider to spin webs that trapped others” (21). He ascends to the role of colonel for his service in the American Revolution, but contrary to the Revolution’s general doctrine of the resolution of differences with debate rather than with violence, he pursues Hamilton relentlessly for a public apology after Hamilton’s public insult of him in The Albany Register. When that is not forthcoming, Burr thinks that the inevitable resolution to the problem is violence—the old-fashioned duel. Burr shows himself to be caught between eras, perhaps, when he feels remorse for Hamilton after he delivers him the fatal blow. 

Ellis writes, “At five feet six and less than 140 pounds ‘little Jemmy Madison’ had the frail and discernibly fragile appearance of a career librarian or schoolmaster,” Ellis w(52). Nevertheless, Madison becomes a leading Virginia congressman who helps mobilize the movement from the Constitutional Convention and earns the honorary title “‘Father of the Constitution’” (52). He leads the debate on the question of assumption and the question of where the capital should be located. He argues strongly for its location in the center of the Eastern seaboard, on the Potomac River, near his state, Virginia. When it is time to choose a president in the first contested US presidential election, Madison comes out strongly in support of his fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson’s view of pursuing the American Revolution to the furthest ends possible.

The earthy, intelligent Abigail Adams (née Smith) is her husband John’s closest advocate. She marries him in 1764, and together they create a “partnership of remarkable equity and intimacy” (164). She plays a crucial role in encouraging Adams’ presidential aspirations, and when he is in office, acts as “his chief domestic minister without portfolio,” a crucial example of Adams’ preference for the politics of intimacy over those of ideology (190). Quick to defend her husband against slander, when one of the newspapers describes him as “‘old guerelous, bald, blind and crippled”’ she “joked that she alone possessed the intimate knowledge to testify about his physical condition” (190). She is also instrumental in pushing forth the Alien and Seditions Acts, which cost Adams German and Irish support and, with it, the election in 1800.