Founders

Who are America’s Founders?

A more holistic and inclusive definition of who is a founder is emerging among Revolutionary Era scholars and their readers.

Traditionally, historians and the general public regarded the men who signed the 1776 Declaration of Independence, served in the Continental Congress, or fought in the American Revolution to be founding fathers. Most notably pre-twenty first-century history books refer to George Washington as the father of his country. In some cases, founders refer to the men who signed the Declaration of Independence.

However, today “founders” has replaced “founding fathers” in our lexicon to denote the place of women in America’s founding properly. Further, under-represented groups such as African-Americans and Native Americas are recognized as founders. Lastly, the founders’ definition includes all those who contributed to our country’s development regardless of income, social status, race, or gender.

Books on Founders

Larry P. Arnn, The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012)

Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Fiftieth anniversary edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017)

Michael Barone, Mental Maps of the Founders (New York, N.Y.: Encounter Books, 2024)

Alexis Coe, You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington (New York: Viking, 2020).

Cogliano, Francis D. A Revolutionary Friendship: Washington, Jefferson, and the American Republic. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2024.

Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall, eds., Faith and the Founders of the American Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)

Joseph J Ellis, American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic (New York: Vintage Books, 2008)

Andrew Farmer. Ordinary Greatness: A Life of Elias Boudinot (American Bible Society, 2022).

For a Journal of the American Revolution book review.

Ordinary Greatness: A Life of Elias Boudinot

Lorri Glover, Founders as Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the American Revolutionaries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014)

Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1999)

Bruce E. Johansen, Forgotten Founders: Benjamin Franklin, the Iroquois, and the Rationale for the American Revolution (Ipswich, Mass: Gambit, 1982)

Mark E. Kann, A Republic of Men: The American Founders, Gendered Language, and Patriarchal Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1998)

Thomas S. Kidd, Patrick Henry: First among Patriots (New York: Basic Books, 2011)

Eli Merritt, Disunion among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2023)

William P. Murchison, The Cost of Liberty: The Life of John Dickinson, Lives of the Founders (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2013)

John M. Murrin and Andrew Shankman, Rethinking America: From Empire to Republic (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018)Craig Bruce Smith, American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018)

Paul J. Staiti, Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution through Painters’ Eyes (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2016)

Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (New York: Penguin Press, 2006)

Alfred F Young, Gary B Nash, and Ray Raphael, Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation (New York: Vintage Books, 2012)