Remembering Our Founders on America’s 250th Anniversary

We have been through an unhappy interlude in which statues of America’s founding generation have been toppled.  It is strange indeed that the people who created the framework of the world’s brightest light for freedom and prosperity should have their names blackened by people who themselves have accomplished nothing for the benefit of mankind.  Nevertheless, it is true that each of our founders had shortcomings. There were men of their times and human beings as well.  We acknowledge, as do all honest human beings, that even as we ourselves have faults, so, too, did they. It is also true that among the founders there are some whose views we prefer, others not as much. But they each made meaningful contributions to the establishment of this new relationship of individual human beings to the State.

Leading up to our July 4^th 250 Anniversary, we are sharing  with you some appreciations of the Founders and their inspiration, from my book REAL MONEY FOR FREE PEOPLE: The American Gold Story.

It is not just we who say that this generation of American founders were a breed apart. As the gifted historian Paul Johnson writes, “Great events in history are determined by all kinds of factors, but the most important single one is always the quality of the people in charge; and never was this principle more convincingly demonstrated than in the struggle for American Independence.”

That the founders prevailed against the mightiest nation on earth was also due in part to the quality of the people they were up against. Although British himself, Johnson does not shrink from an honest appraisal of George III and his retinue. They were “second raters,” “boobies,” and “a dismal succession of non-entities.” In contrast, behind great men like Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, America had a second rank, and even a third, “solid, sensible, able men capable of rising to great occasion. In personal qualities, there was a difference as deep as the Atlantic between the men who led America during these years, and it told from first to last.”

Although the colonies were already at war with the British Empire, the new union of thirteen colonies announced its independence on July 4, 1776. While the Articles of Confederation, which established a new Continental Congress, was ratified in 1781, it was not until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 that the War for Independence officially ended.

There remained the issue of money, a monetary system that would enable the newly independent American people to prosper.  And the Founders knew from bitter experience that paper money was not the answer.

Next week in this space we will look at what they did about the monetary system.

– From REAL MONEY FOR FREE PEOPLE: The American Gold Story by Jim Clark.