In the conservative spirit of William F. Buckley asserting that “gratitude” for our national blessings should be a year-round and lifelong attitude, not just an afterthought while eating turkey, please accept this day-after-Thanksgiving appreciation.
The thanks go to the group of people collectively known as the “founders” or “framers,” who have come under cultural assault from a wretchedly ungrateful political Left. The Left condemns them via bizarrely “woke” modern standards without crediting them for how far they moved human affairs — from where they found those affairs toward greater liberty and human rights.
Most in America know at least generally the identities and contributions of six founders and three of their wives, so just naming them here should suffice: George and Martha Washington, John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James and Dolley Madison, Ben Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton.
These other founders, though, in no particular order, also by right should remain household names.
Roger Sherman may be the most underappreciated founder considering his signal and seminal contributions. He signed the Continental Association making the colonies a unified trading entity, served on the five-man committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and signed the Articles of Confederation. And, as one of the most active members of the Constitutional Convention, he authored the compromise that created the Senate as we know it.
Robert Livingston joined Sherman, Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson on the committee that drafted the declaration, presided over Washington’s swearing-in as the first president, and led the team that negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the nation’s size.
Gouverneur Morris spoke more often than any other delegate to the Constitutional Convention, was a fierce advocate of religious liberty, created the Constitution’s famous preamble, and was the primary draftsman and stylist of the Constitution’s final form.
Robert Morris risked his entire massive fortune as he all but financed the Revolution out of his own pocket, signed the declaration, the articles, and the Constitution, helped organize the new nation’s financial system, and served as a leader in the first Senate.
George Mason, perhaps better known than most on this list, was the principal author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights that was the primary model for both the declaration and the Bill of Rights. He was tremendously influential at the Constitutional Convention, but he refused to sign the document because it originally did not include the Bill of Rights or an immediate cessation of the slave trade.
James Wilson also was a major player at the Constitutional Convention, insisting on a strong executive and proposing the ingenious Electoral College for presidential elections. Nearly beaten to death during ratification debates by a mob opposed to the proposed new government, he recovered to become one of the six justices first appointed by Washington to the Supreme Court.
John Jay joined Hamilton and Madison to write the Federalist Papers, which remain perhaps history’s greatest-ever work of practical political theory. A great diplomat on behalf of the colonies during the revolution, he served as the interim first secretary of state, as the first chief justice, and later as the governor of New York who successfully passed legislation emancipating slaves.
John Dickinson’s writings for a decade laid out the colonies’ case for better treatment by the British king and parliament, and he played lead roles in the Continental Congress, the Annapolis Convention that catalyzed the Constitutional Convention, and at the great latter convention too. In later years, he contributed mightily to the abolitionist movement.
William Paterson played a significant role at the Constitutional Convention, served in the first Senate where he was the primary author of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that created the federal court system, and served both on the U.S. Supreme Court and as governor of New Jersey.
The list of worthies could go on for quite a while, including Sam Adams, John Hancock, James Otis, George Clymer, Elbridge Gerry, Benjamin Rush, Francis Hopkinson, James Monroe, Richard Henry Lee, Samuel Chase, Charles and John Carroll, Oliver Wolcott, Patrick Henry, Edmund Randolph, Thomas Paine, George Wythe, and Lafayette. What they collectively bequeathed to us was a nation and practical application of universal principles for human dignity and thriving, far better and more humane than any that had before existed. Many of them risked greatly, and some suffered grievously, for their courage and patriotic devotion.
Thanksgiving was created not as a day for general gratitude but specifically to thank God for our blessings as a nation. In that spirit, let us pay tribute to those first American heroes.
