Acknowledging this inherent weakness in man, the Founders sought to diffuse governmental power so that no single person, group, or governing branch could accumulate enough to encroach on the people’s unalienable rights. In Federalist no. 51 James Madison wrote,[W]hat is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
Similarly, in his presidential farewell address, George Washington stressed that the American people needed to develop the “habits of thinking” that would preserve limited government:It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.
A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.
The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes.
To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them.
If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates.
But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.
Controlling the federal government through checks and balances, and arraying the governing branches’ power against each other, was a crucial innovation by the Founders to keep man’s natural corruptibility from consuming the people’s liberties.
Nevertheless, Madison candidly acknowledged that these constitutional safeguards were only “parchment barriers” to man’s desire to accumulate power. Despite all its innovative bulwarks, the republic would still be administered by imperfect men whose vulnerability to corruption had to be tempered by a culture of virtue and responsibility.
FIVE AMERICAN HABITS OF LIBERTY
The Founding Fathers understood that governmental safeguards were not enough to defend the people’s natural rights—the republic’s survival ultimately depended upon the good character of its citizens. The preservation of liberty in a republic would require personal responsibility, a vital quality they called “virtue.” John Adams maintained that “religion and virtue are the only Foundations, not only of Republicanism and of all free Government, but of social felicity under all Governments and in all Combinations of human society.”5
Another signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, declared that “the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
Likewise, Alexander White, a Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention, wondered whether the American people had the qualities demanded by republican governance: “Have we that Industry, Frugality, Economy, that Virtue which is necessary to constitute it?”6
Virtuous, responsible citizens are indeed indispensible for sustaining a free republic. They not only take responsibility for their own lives, but also are concerned for the welfare of their families, friends, and community, especially for those in need and those who have difficulty taking care of themselves.
In terms of politics, virtuous citizens become knowledgeable about the issues of the day so they can make informed decisions at election time, and so they will know how and when to hold their government officials accountable. When holding office, virtuous citizens exercise authority responsibly, recognizing and abiding by the proscribed limits of their power.
Crucially, since virtue is instrumental to our republic’s survival, the Founders believed the people must develop and maintain institutions that cultivate virtue and responsibility in its citizenry. George Washington spoke of the need for sources outside of government that nurture these qualities. In his farewell address, he cited religion and morality as vital buttresses of liberty:Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.
In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.
The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?
And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
Washington clearly understood the importance of religion and morality, but what are the “dispositions and habits” to which he referred? Looking through four hundred years of American history, back to the first colonists’ arrival at Jamestown, we find five habits of liberty that have been crucial to sustaining American Exceptionalism. They are:• faith and family
• work
• civil society
• rule of law
• safety and peace
Tempering man’s worst impulses, these distinctly American habits are vital to cultivating an engaged, informed citizenry, which is needed to sustain a free republic and secure the unalienable rights asserted in the Declaration of Independence. The emphasis on these habits set America apart from its European counterparts, where monarchs were intent on cultivating passive, obedient subjects unlikely to challenge their rulers’ claim to power.
EXEMPLARS OF LIBERTY
The Founders encouraged these habits of liberty both through policy and by personal example. Recognizing that a virtuous republic must be based on a virtuous citizenry, they assumed the American nation would not prosper, regardless of its governing structures, unless the people vigorously practiced these habits and inculcated them in future generations. We can see these habits in action through the lives of five members of America’s founding generation.
JOHN ADAMS AND THE HABIT OF FAITH AND FAMILY
As God endowed man with rights, the Creator also gave man the first and most durable of human institutions: the family. God repeatedly affirmed the family as the best means to secure a happy, just, and moral life. Faith and family grew up in tandem as the twin pillars of Judeo-Christian civilization.
Faith gave th
e Founders context and meaning in their lives; families gave them an outlet for expressing their understanding of the world, and the obligation and privilege to love and be loved in return. The Founders laid their greatest hopes for the American republic on a commitment of free men to faith and family, since these two pillars defend liberty against licentiousness and tyranny.
John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and later vice president and president of the United States, was a devoted husband of Abigail and father of six children. The couple had known each other since childhood, basing their marriage upon mutual respect and admiration. As they witnessed the birth of a new republic and experienced the fatigue and separation of war, John and Abigail continually looked to each other for emotional, spiritual, and intellectual support.
The struggle for American independence kept Adams away from his family for long periods, sometimes years at a time. But the couple maintained an extensive correspondence, particularly during his time in Philadelphia during the Continental Congress. Their letters reveal an unshakeable commitment and devoted love for one another. They shared a mutual appreciation for philosophy, poetry, and politics, and their letters show how much John valued Abigail’s counsel on matters of government and public life.
The Adams also understood the importance of education in the lives of their children, and their own responsibility to instill in them the virtues and values vital to the new nation’s success. Early in his legal career, John wrote about the importance of the proper education of youth:It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.
In a letter to Abigail in 1780, he likewise explained why he supported the armed struggle to secure the nation’s independence:I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
Adams’ love of family compelled him not only to study politics and war, but to engage in both, to ensure that his children could enjoy the blessings of liberty. He believed that the education of children was central to the maintenance of liberty, and he hoped a free republic would provide an environment where his children could study the greatest expressions of human culture and man’s God-given creativity—painting, poetry, music, architecture, and other arts. Both John and Abigail understood that the cultivation and protection of these virtues all begin in the family.
Indeed, above their status as citizens, workers, or statesmen, the Founders cherished their role in their families. The family was prized as the best incubator for love, charity, religion, work, and safety, and a model for all other social relations. As John Adams wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1814, “As long as Property exists, it will accumulate in Individuals and Families. As long as Marriage exists, Knowledge, Property and Influence will accumulate in Families.” Once again, Adams demonstrated that he saw the institution of family as the cornerstone of a free society, and marriage as the fundamental building block of the family. He also believed that the family was inextricably linked to economic prosperity.
Family is the most basic social unit, and for the Founders, the model for all society and the locus of work, education, religion, love, discipline, and national memory. The Pilgrim settlers described the family as “a little commonwealth” whose constituent members had deep and abiding obligations to themselves and to each other for their mutual prosperity, safety, and happiness. These values, developed in the home, extended to society at large. According to Adams, “The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families.”
Strong and healthy families created strong and healthy citizens and taught those citizens their responsibilities to society. A mid-eighteenth-century Protestant preacher explained, “As the Civil State, as well as the Churches of Christ, is furnished with members from private families: if the governors of these little communities, were faithful to the great trust reposed in them, and family-religion and discipline were thoroughly, prudently and strictly, maintained and exercised . . . the Civil State would prosper and flourish from Generation to Generation.”7 The preacher’s assertion implied that if the family ever faltered, the colonists’ virtues could be erased in one generation.
Experience had taught the colonists the value of extended families as a stabilizing force in society. After the disaster at Roanoke and early stumbling at Jamestown, the colonies were settled not by individuals, but almost exclusively by family units that were stable, productive, and self-sustaining. 8 The division of responsibilities among family members created mutual dependence within the family but independence from the outside community, allowing families to raise children to be free and self-sufficient citizens.
Both liberty and family life derived from something greater than their constituent parts. In 1813, looking back on his life, Thomas Jefferson observed, “The happiness of the domestic fireside is the first boon of Heaven; and it is well it is so, since it is that which is the lot of the mass of mankind.”
The Founders viewed liberty as a special privilege from God that was inextricably tied to their family and their faith. George Whitefield, the renowned preacher of the Great Awakening and close friend of Benjamin Franklin, summed up why Americans should be thankful: “Your situation in life, every one must confess, is one of great blessing: the providence of God has given you a wonderful heritage, above many of your fellow-creatures.” 9 Faith and family both secured and gave meaning to the blessings of liberty.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND THE HABIT OF WORK
The colonies’ first settlers were adventurers and frontiersmen who established an American tradition of pursing fortune and knowledge through work. Labor, whether manual or intellectual, increased man’s dignity and liberty as he became self-sufficient and availed himself of self-made opportunities. Ever since John Smith introduced the “Law of Work” at Jamestown, a strong work ethic was more than a moral maxim—it was a necessity for survival and a route to prosperity.
Benjamin Franklin stands out among the Founders as the embodiment of this ethic of work, industry, and innovation. For Franklin, the key to prosperity lay in his Thirteen Virtues, among them Industry and Frugality. Industry, as Franklin defined it, was to “lose not time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”10
Franklin lived that ethic of work and encouraged his countrymen to do the same. As a young man, he became a successful printer and author, writing Poor Richard’s Almanack at the age of twenty-six. He became the celebrated inventor of bifocals and the Franklin stove, as well as an authoritative scientist on subjects such as lightning, ocean currents, and meteorology. In his distinguished career as a diplomat and statesmen, Franklin guided the colonies toward revolution and unity, navigating them through the treacherous waters of European diplomacy.
Franklin’s greatest legacy, though, is the ethos of self-made success that he advocated and exemplified. To him, the pursuit of happiness was best understood as an unalienable right to pursue property; and consequently he understood the accumulation of wealth as evidence of a “moral striving” that benefitted society.11 This notion was fundamentally democratic; a man was to be judged solely by what he produces, not by his social class or some other artificial criteria. As Franklin advised immigrants, “People do not inquire concerning a Stranger, What is he? but, What can he do?”12
Franklin suggested the government’s rightful role was to defend liberty and opportunity, allowing man to improve his condition through his own initiative: “I think the best way
of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.... The less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”13
Ingenuity and discovery, as Franklin showed by example, were part and parcel of this American work ethic. The relentless quest for scientific discovery and economic opportunity also provided an animating force for exploring and settling America, from the Northwest Ordinance to Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase to the Lewis and Clark expedition.
The Founders considered innovation and invention so important that they wrote protections for inventors into the Constitution—the document that articulated our society’s most precious and protected liberties. The Patent and Copyright Clause reads, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
The American republic was conceived as a commercial republic in which hard work and innovation would create a level of prosperity unrivaled in history. As Alexander Hamilton observed in Federalist no. 12, “The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.”
The Founders, especially Benjamin Franklin, revered work as a moral virtue and a great habit of liberty. With industry and ingenuity, work was the great means by which the American people could achieve independence and pursue happiness.
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