What America’s Founders Understood About Sound Money

On June 7, 1776, the Continental Congress took a clear step forward to separating the people of the Thirteen Colonies from British Rule. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia read his resolution that began: “Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States,.. “

The resolution was tabled, and awaited the next step, the drafting of the Declaration of Independence principally by Thomas Jefferson.

American prosperity was birthed in the wisdom of our Founders and on their insistence on an honest, gold-based monetary system.

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

The founders of this country were a gift of the ages to us. They were men of character, learning, accomplishment, and vision. 

It is one of the great mysteries of life, and a breathtaking coincidence of history, that when a remarkable group of people appears at one time and in one place, a providential period flourishes because of them. Only barbarians can fail to notice this. In fifth century BC Athens, it was the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the physician Hippocrates, and many other remarkable souls. 

The Florentine Renaissance of the fifteenth century is another such period. Just imagine Leonardo, Botticelli, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo all showing up at around the same time in a town no bigger than Rogers, Arkansas or Casper, Wyoming.

And then there were American colonials of the eighteenth century, the remarkable group consisting of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and John Adams. Without them there  likely would have been no great American Republic. In its place we might have seen a land carved up by European powers with their constant wars and petty interests, kings and potentates vying for power and striving to conquer and rule the continent. But for that remarkable handful of colonials, who knows what European madness might have taken root in the new continent: perhaps the divine right of hereditary monarchs; the Jacobin socialist reign of terror that began at the time the US Constitution was written, turning the streets of France into rivers of blood; something as bad from later Germany; or even a reign of Bolshevism such as Russia endured. 

Instead, our founders did something that had never been achieved before. They stood the old-world order on its head and proclaimed that people are not the pawns or property of the many kings, chieftains, churches, emperors, tyrants, or states.

Always before in the relationships of people and their governments, such rights as people had were assumed to have been conferred upon them by the ruling authority. This was the case even in the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. The rights that King John was forced to sign over were assumed to have been his to bestow or withhold to begin with.

But the great figures of America’s founding saw things differently: all rights reside first with the people, who in turn may bestow some powers upon the State for the accomplishment of specific purposes; or they may withhold those powers from the State.

That was the real revolution the founders accomplished. It was good to be rid of the insane British king and the peacocks of Parliament. But that was secondary to this real revolution.

There will be more in this series celebrating American Freedom, Sound Money, and Prosperity!

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