American family feud: Our fighting Founding Fathers

Ron Chernow recently published a remarkable essay in The Wall Street Journal on our infighting Founding Fathers that should be read by everyone who imagines them as all but flawless men.

Chernow is the author of “Alexander Hamilton” and has a new book coming in October on George Washington.

Writes Chernow, “However hard it may be to picture the founders resorting to rough-and-tumble tactics, there was nothing genteel about politics at the nation's outset. For sheer verbal savagery, the founding era may have surpassed anything seen today. Despite their erudition, integrity, and philosophical genius, the founders were fiery men who expressed their beliefs with unusual vehemence. They inhabited a combative world in which the rabble-rousing Thomas Paine, an early admirer of George Washington, could denounce the first president in an open letter as ‘treacherous in private friendship … and a hypocrite in public life.’ ”� 

After reading the essay, “The Feuding Fathers,” you won’t think less of the great pillars of the Republic, but I’ll wager you’ll feel more comfortable with the so-called “negative” nature of modern politics.