Anne Quirk - The Good Fight: The Feuds of the Founding Fathers (and How They Shaped the Nation)

They seem so sure of themselves, looking out at the twenty-first century from coins or dollar bills or big bronze statues. Their eyes are steady, their faces are calm, their backs are straight. Only their collars are ruffled. Washington and Jefferson. Hamilton and Franklin and Adams. These are some of the great men who together founded a great nation.

At least, thats how it looks to us now. But go back a couple of centuries, back to before those coins were minted and those statues were raised, back to before the United States was a nation. Back then, the founding fathers hadnt founded anything, and they werent at all sure that they ever would.

All of them, even cocky Alexander Hamilton, doubted themselves. All of them, especially cocky Alexander Hamilton, doubted each other.

The founding fathers argued about when to fight the English. They argued about how to fight the English. They tussled over taxes. They disagreed about foreign affairs. They fought each other in private. They fought each other in public. They used essays. They used whispers. One of them even used a pistol.

Some of the fights were settled in their own time. Some of them are still being fought in ours.

Good fights can be long and frustrating, full of disappointments and setbacks. But they are also exciting, especially when you win.

Nothing short of Independence, it appears to me, can possibly do.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

I feel the justness of our cause.

KING GEORGE III

It hurts to be on the wrong side of history. Winners, like George Washington, have great cities named for them and spiky monuments built in their honor. Losers, like King George III, are the butt of jokes. They lose the respect of their people. They lose power.

They can even lose their minds.

In the summer of 1788, nearly seven years after he lost his American colonies, fifty-year-old King George III started acting very strangely. He did not, as some insisted, mistake an oak tree for the king of Prussia. But he did talk for hours on end to no one in particular, pausing only for the occasional breath. He stopped sleeping. He barked orders at people who were long dead or completely imaginary.

I am going to be mad, he reportedly told one of his sons, then sobbed.

Physicians from across England were summoned to the palace. Leeches were attached to the kings forehead. His scalp was shaved and blistered. He was placed in a straitjacket, his legs tied to his bedposts.

Parliament discussed replacing King George with his oldest son, the prince of Wales. Few were enthusiastic about this idea besides the prince of Wales.