Probing the Sex Lives of the Founders, and Other Intellectual Atrocities

When the men of the Second Continental Congress put their quills to the crinkled parchment of the Declaration of Independence, the image conjured is a room full of immortals etching their names into history.

But Philadelphia's Independence Hall was not cloaked in the cool breezes and comforting clouds of Olympus. The signers were still men burdened with all the frailties and foibles of Adam's progeny – so much so, in fact, that John Adams once quipped that he would "give more for a perfect painting of the terror and horror upon the Faces of the Old Majority at that critical moment than for the best Piece of Raphelle."

As Adams joke tells us, America's Founders lived and breathed. Even in the waning years of his life, Adams yearned for a history of the revolution that showed the internal springs and real lives of that generation.

It is one of the sad facts of America circa 2000, that the men, women, and ideas of 1776 are nearly a complete mystery to us today. To what would be Adams's chagrin, most Americans have little more than a cartoonish sense of the "Founding Fathers" – more and more clouded by the academic assaults of race and gender on dead, white slaveholders. Thus, I was one of those who welcomed the History Channel's "Founding Fathers" as a much-needed general re-introduction to the ideals of these extraordinary men.

So much for hope in the face of the television experience.

"Founding Fathers" attempted to do in just four hours in 2000 what the best British propagandists couldn't do in 1776: destroy the reputations of the American Revolution's great leaders.

"Founding Fathers" is part of that peculiar genre of biography that purports to give viewers the "human side" of its subject. In today's world, that means unleashing the liberal New Deal scholars' urine stream on history by obsessing on the sex lives, dress habits, and personal animosities and peccadilloes of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin.

But this description makes "Founding Fathers" sound far more interesting than it is. Devoid of any intellectual biography, "Founding Fathers" fails to make even the smear tactics anything more than unconnected trivialities, shouted at the heroes like hippies at a parade of veterans.

The opening images show the faces of the Founders float by the screen with scholars, authors, and historians describing what is to come: "In another era, John Adams would have needed Prozac." "Alexander Hamilton had the first sex scandal." And so on.

But it is the deeper message of "Founding Fathers" that is far more troubling – and hardly the lesson intended by the producers or writers. It shows that America's intelligentsia is almost incapable of understanding the Cause or the minds of the Revolutionaries. It is debatable whether we shower too much or too little credit on those men.

But the key to understanding what's wrong with "Founding Fathers" is this: the writers don't understand the ideas that made the Founders what they were. In this sense, how can we judge?

That generation of "American Whigs" as they called themselves was made up of men of ideas, who spoke with more clarity and wrote more prolifically than any of their blessed posterity.

But by ignoring their ideas, temperment, and the books they read and lives they lead, the writers and producers are lost. Lacking these intellectual moorings the Founders' personalities, actions, and even sins are utterly inscrutable. The History Channel quest to make them "human" soon leads away from the Founder's 18th century aspirations as classical heroes into the more familiar and fetid jungles of 20th century psychotherapy and mocking cynicism.

Making the Revolution Human

Hence, we are introduced to the cause of the Revolution through Samuel Adams. Here was a "frumpy," failed businessman. A "Columbo" type character. A bad dresser bent on revenging himself for British actions against his father.

Like so many leftwing character assassination efforts, the "politics of personal destruction" begins by building up the importance of the target. Thus, Adams is portrayed as the founder of the "Sons of Liberty" and the architect of the Revolution. By focusing on Adams, "Founding Fathers" gives him godlike sway over the two decades of events leading to Lexington and Concord.

The writers forget South Carolina's Christopher Gadsden, New York's Isaac Sears, and the other leaders leading their own bands of the "sons of liberty." What's more, "Founding Fathers" dismiss the eloquent pens and words of Massachusetts' James Otis and Pennsylvania's John Dickinson who defined the principles at issue.

The truth is the Revolution wasn't the work of one rabble-rouser – even if Adams were a rabble-rouser.

What's strange is that "Founding Fathers" interviewed historian Pauline Maier without bothering to read any of her books or taking the time to listen to what she says. Maier writes in The Old Revolutionaries that the real Samuel Adams loved the British constitution, spoke eloquently of British freedoms, and opposed independence.

As Maier put it, "Successful revolutionary leaders are not violent and irresponsible anarchists but politic persons of intense discipline for whom the public cause purges mundane considerations of self."

Adams was careful and passionate, measured and eloquent. He believed, as so many of that generation, that the people must resist unlawful encroachments on their liberty or political elites will come back for more. But the reader never learns of British betrayals of basic liberties.

The advantage of such cartoon television is that every gripe in Adams' life or any other founder is that it becomes the secret, nudge-nudge scoop for why they rebelled.

In the modern effete intellectual's view, none of the Founders were motivated by a love of liberty or the valor of sacrifice. So it was that the rich John Hancock becomes a greedy accomplice and dupe of Adams' one-man temper tantrum against Britain.

Thus, "Founding Fathers" turns the infamous taking of John Hancock's ship the Liberty into another leftwing historian's smear. Smuggling wine and rum, the Liberty was taken by customs officials while in Boston harbor. While inspecting the vessel, the meddling bureaucrats were locked in the hold, while Hancock's goods were carted away to safety.

The clear message of "Founding Fathers" is that Hancock and Adams were revolutionaries for the petty reasons of money and power. It is true the founders were smugglers, but it was because they believed that unjust laws require resistance – or government will just grow and take more.

Sex, Lies, and Videotape

"Founding Fathers" also reveals a second constituent part of intellectual decadence. Unconscious or uninterested in their ideas, the soi-disant sophisticates obsess on trivial details that have little or no bearing on the intellectual, professional, or public accomplishments of great men. What we get is a voyeur's focus – and occasionally smug speculation – about the sex lives of the founders.

Benjamin Franklin was a "skirt chaser" and a "vegetarian" – an early hippy who "would have worn sandals a century later."

Washington wrote there was not much "fire between the sheets" with Martha. He married her, according to one "Founding Fathers" interviews, for "her lands, slaves, and Bank of England stocks."

Jefferson was a "male coquet." Hamilton joked about the best specifications for a wife, and Franklin's was relieved he never got syphilis.

Even the magnificent intellectual romance of John and Abigail Adams is reduced to a lifting of the skirt.

"Founding Fathers" spends a great deal of time, mining Adams' love letters for suggestive phrases of premarital sex, uncovering such amazingly explicit expressions of youthful passion as "I miss you" and "I miss you terribly."

Carol Berkin, professor at City University New York, insinuates moral hypocrisy by pointing out that Abigail gave birth to a son just a year after being married. Speculations aside, Berkin concludes triumphantly that the two had a "healthy sex life."

Why that is relevant or important is anybody's guess – unless you are just looking for prurient kicks and morally smug digs. And that seems to be the History Channel's idea of the "human side."

One of the most poignant moments in Jefferson's life is completely omitted, in favor of a story about how the author of the Declaration made a pass at a young woman in her bedroom. What does this reveal about Jefferson, his work, or his heart? He was young, impetuous, and a sentimental romantic.

Decades later he freely admitted it was "incorrect" behavior of a headstrong youth. What "Founding Fathers" misses however is Jefferson's conduct after his wife died. When Martha Jefferson passed away, Jefferson simply finished a poem she had been copying from a book – and then burned all of their correspondence.

It was this touching sentimentality and passion for privacy that led Jefferson to master pen instead of rostrum. He was a private man who hoped history would remember his public triumphs and not his private pains, errors, and sins.

While the sexual proclivities of the Founders are given an abusive workout, "Founding Fathers" entirely misses the real springs of action. Desperate to put these men through the meat grinder of Freudian psychotherapy, the program fails to communicate what truly motivated Washington, Hamilton, et al.

Washington, for instance, is presented as "cold, aloof, and arrogant" fellow. The reason given by the series is that his mother was "self-centered." Historian Marvin Kitman suggests that Washington sought release from his poor circumstances by becoming a "teenage werewolf" who ranged the countryside desperately asking "13 year olds" to marry him.

"Founding Fathers" presents Washington's acceptance speech after getting command of the Continental Army as an example of his "self-deprecating, pessimistic" nature. Washington declared himself, in typical 18th century, unworthy of the honor. But this wasn't some Freudian repression, as the History Channel suggests.

Honor was Washington's mainspring of action – or more correctly the honorable recognition of his character by worthy men. As a young man, Washington had copied out 110 "Rules of Civility," adhering to them scrupulously in his public conduct. (This is ignored by the series.)

True, Washington was an 18th century tough guy, prone to gambling and wenching. He had the typical red-headed man's hot temper and was the "most horrid swearer and blasphemer." But in public life, he sought to execute every duty with dignity and rectitude.

Washington, quite literally, sought honor in the full Roman sense. Washington's favorite work was not a book, but a play: Joseph Addison's Cato, the story of a Roman general who leads the Senate's resistance against the tyrannous usurpations of Julius Caesar.

If the History Channel were interested in Washington the man, the producers of "Founding Fathers" would have noted his continual quotations from the play, his requests to have it played before the troops, and his recourse to favorite passages in times of trouble.

What of Washington's aloof nature?

In this Washington's human vanity mixed with his noblest aspirations. He didn't like to talk, in part, because of his false teeth, so he learned a kind of aristocratic detachment, speaking only when necessary. Such self-control and his great charm and magnificent build made him a paladin in the eyes of that great generation.

Showing the "human side" of the Founders means using them against each other.

At every opportunity, "Founding Fathers" selectively presents those comments when rivals ridicule or insult each other. John Hancock envied George Washington, John Adams disliked Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson hated Patrick Henry.

But in their verve to "make human," the History Channel blithely passes over the compliments these rivals had for each other's skills. It was Jefferson who understood just how powerful Henry's oratory was when he described its almost hypnotic power:

His eloquence was peculiar, if indeed it should be called eloquence; for it was impressive and sublime, beyond what can be imagined. Although it was difficult when he had spoken to tell you what he had said, yet, while he was speaking, it always seemed directly to the point. When he had spoken in opposition to my opinion, had produced a great effect, and I myself been [sic] highly delighted and moved, I have asked myself when he ceased: "what the devil has he said?"

Thus, "Founding Fathers" isn't insightful for what it tells us about the men who fought and won the revolution. It is instructive for what it tells us about the state of the inheritors of their toil. This generation of intellectuals isn't the same as their progenitors. We find it hard to believe men would live and die for liberty, distrusted government, and trusted the citizen. We are smaller for it.

Social critic Jacques Barzun wrote 40 years ago, "The world greets with approval any discovery of a shortcoming, applauds the confession of mistakes, and indemnifies the spectator for any fleeting sense he may have a diminution by someone else's accomplishment. A truly modern dictionary would add under an entry under u2018human': u2018the opposite of admirable.'"

It was this quest for the ignoble that best explains the mindset of "Founding Fathers." Today's intellectuals can only understand those men defined by their petty motivations, self-serving critiques, and sexual appetites – the same drives that have come to dominate the effete class of today's cognoscenti.

March 8, 2000

Matthew Robinson is a Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellow. He just finished a book on the dangers of polling in American politics.