Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders

276 Pages·2021·2.249 MB·English

by  Dennis C. Rasmussen

fears of a setting sun
Detail of the Rising Sun Chair
Catalog INDE 11826. National Park Service. Courtesy of Independence National Historical Park.
F E A R S
o f a
S E T T I N G
S U N
the disillusionment of
america s founders
’
d e n n i s c .
r a s m u s s e n
princeton university press
princeton & oxford
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for sam

contents
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue. A Rising or a Setting Sun 1
Washington
1. The Demon of Party Spirit 17
2. Farewell to All That 31
3. Set Up a Broomstick 45
Hamilton
4. No Man’s Ideas 61
5. Struggling to Add Energy 73
6. The Frail and Worthless Fabric 86
Adams
7. Such Selfishness and Littleness 103
8. His Rotundity 116
9. The Brightest or the Blackest Page 132
Jefferson
10. Weathering the Storm 149
11. The Knell of the Union 162
12. A Consolidation or Dissolution of the States 179
Interlude. The Other Founders
13. No Cheering Prospect 197
vii
contents
Madison
14. Far from Desponding 205
15. Grounds for Hope 218
Epilogue. A Very Great Secret 225
Notes 233
Index 267
viii
acknowledgments
L
ike many Americans, I have long enjoyed reading pop-
ular biographies of the founders— the kind that academic
historians sometimes deride as “founders chic.” Until fairly
recently my own research centered on the Scottish and French
Enlightenments— Adam Smith, David Hume, Jean- Jacques Rous-
seau, Montesquieu, Voltaire— so these books on the founders mostly
served as a pleasant diversion. It often struck me, however, that while
the stories were generally meant to be inspiring and uplifting, the
endings were never entirely happy. On the contrary, almost all the
leading founders ended up being, for one reason or another, rather
disappointed in the government and the nation that they had helped
to create. This seemed like a point worth pursuing, and I was surprised
to find that no one had done so in a systematic way. I decided to have
a go at it myself, and this book is the result.
As a relative newcomer to the study of the American founding, I
benefited enormously from the voluminous scholarship on the pe-
riod, above all the magnificent collections of the major founders’
papers. I hope that my intellectual debts are made clear in the notes,
but special mention must be made of Gordon Wood, whose dual
biography of Adams and Jefferson, Friends Divided, was one of the
immediate inspirations for this book, and who reassured me at the
outset that the disillusionment of the founders was a topic worth
pursuing. Jeremy Bailey, Ian Boyko, Ari Kohen, Howard Lubert,
Peter McNamara, Peter Onuf, Rich Rasmussen, John Rhodehamel,
Jean Yarbrough, and an anonymous reviewer all generously provided
comments on the manuscript, for which I am deeply grateful. I am
also thankful for the support of my colleagues at Tufts University,
where I began this project, and at Syracuse University, where I com-
pleted it. My editor Rob Tempio has been an enthusiastic backer
of this project since the day I conceived it, and I appreciate all that
he and the whole team at Princeton University Press have done to
bring it to fruition.
ix
acknowledgments
As always, my deepest debts are to my family and friends for all
their love and support. My first three books were dedicated to my
parents, my wife, and my friends, respectively, so it is only appropriate
that I dedicate this one to my son, Sam. Watching him grow up gives
me greater confidence in the future than the founders ever had.
x