EVOLVING OUR HEROES: AN ANALYSIS OF FOUNDERS AND "FOUNDING FATHERS" IN AMERICAN HISTORY DISSERTATIONS
John M. Stawicki
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
December 2019
Committee:
Andrew Schocket, Advisor
Ruth Herndon
Scott Martin
© 2019
John Stawicki
All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT
Andrew Schocket, Advisor
This thesis studies scholarly memory of the American founders and “Founding Fathers” via inclusion in American dissertations. Using eighty-one semi-randomly and diversely selected founders as case subjects to examine and trace how individual, group, and collective founder interest evolved over time, this thesis uniquely analyzes 20th and 21st Century Revolutionary
American scholarship on the founders by dividing it five distinct periods, with the most recent period coinciding with “founders chic.” Using data analysis and topic modeling, this thesis engages three primary historiographic questions: What founders are most prevalent in
Revolutionary scholarship? Are social, cultural, and “from below” histories increasing? And if said histories are increasing, are the “New Founders,” individuals only recently considered vital to the era, posited by these histories outnumbering the Top Seven Founders (George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and
Thomas Paine) in founder scholarship? The thesis concludes that the Top Seven Founders have always dominated founder dissertation scholarship, that social, cultural, and “from below” histories are increasing, and that social categorical and “New Founder” histories are steadily increasing as Top Seven Founder studies are slowly decreasing, trends that may shift the
Revolutionary America field away from the Top Seven Founders in future years, but is not yet significantly doing so. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This thesis, while credited solely to me and appearing only as a finished project, required many strenuous hours of collaborative writing, revising, and brainstorming. I would like to give a small notice to all those who have guided me throughout this process.
First and foremost, I remain indebted to my thesis advisor and close historical companion,
Dr. Andrew Schocket. Dr. Schocket’s expertise in the memory of the American Revolution, digital humanities, and database search functions proved invaluable. His wealth of knowledge and historiographical essay at the end of his monograph Fighting Over the Founders: How the
Americans Remember the American Revolution led directly to much of the secondary literature I surveyed. His mentorship and adaptability to my writing techniques made my thesis experience smooth and enjoyable. Bluntly, without his advice, knowledge and historical craft, this thesis would not exist.
The immense contributions from my two other thesis committee members, Dr. Scott
Martin and Dr. Ruth Wallis Herndon, are more than worthy of consideration. Dr. Martin provided excellent critiques that helped hone my thesis, introduced many new perspectives to my work, and provided invaluable recommendations and analysis. Dr. Herndon served as the initial head of my committee and helped craft the project.
Other professors I would like to thank include Dr. Benjamin Greene and Dr. Michael
Brooks, who went above and beyond to ensure I could graduate at an accelerated pace. Dr.
Amilcar Challu served as a professional mentor and gave input on statistical methods. Dr.
Rebecca Mancuso has been an amazing professor, mentor and friend throughout my career at
BGSU. One of the professors I assisted, Dr. Michael Carver, was incredibly understanding throughout the final writing process, allowing me to focus on my thesis rather than “work.” v Personally, my time at BGSU afforded me the opportunity to work with many talented and interesting individuals, none more so than my graduate student peers. The 2020 cohort provided friendship, entertainment and discussion throughout seminars and while in the computer lab. The 2019 cohort provided mentorship and insightful comments that gave fresh perspectives to my research.
Finally, my family was always there for me when I needed them the most. Whether I needed monetary, emotional, or informational support, I knew I could count on my mom (Diane), dad (John), sisters Erin and Brittany, and many wonderful friends to pick me up and keep me moving forward. My dogs Jax and Manny, and hamster Ricki, were constant companions and my best friends (despite being unable to speak English). Without my family, I would be significantly less sane than I am today (yikes). Thank you and I love you more than you will ever know.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………...... 1
CHAPTER I: DEFINING “FOUNDING FATHERS” ...... ……………………… 13
What is a “Founding Father?” ...... 13
The Founders Place in American Culture ...... 29
CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY…… ...... 34
Data and Study Limitations ………………………………………………………… 42
General (GEN or Gen) Search Limitations ………………………………………. .. 46
Abstract (AB) Search Limitations …...... 47
Title (TI) Search Limitations ...... 47
Keyword (DISKW) Search Limitations ...... 48
CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS ...... ………………………. 50
General Search Parameters…………………………………………………………. 50
General Findings……………………………………………………………………. 51
Location Findings……………………………………………………...... 63
University Findings…………………………………………………...... 64
Advisor Findings ...... 66
Era Periodizations ...... 67
CHAPTER IV: PERIOD ANALYSIS ...... ……………………………. 74
Methodology ……… ...... ……………………………………………………….. 74
Period 1: 1873-1925: The Early Days of American Academia ...... 78
Period 2: 1926-1953: The Steady Rise of American Academia ………………… ... 80 vii
Period 3: 1954-1974: The Early Boom of American Academia …………………... 85
Period 4: 1975-1992: The Post-War and Bi-Centennial Decline……...... 91
Period 5: 1993 to Present: Founders Chic ………...... 99
CHAPTER V: THE “NEW FOUNDERS?” ……………………………………… ...... 114
Methodology ………………………………………………………………………. 115
Findings ……………………………………………………………………………. 118
CONCLUSION……………………………… ..…………………………………………… 130
BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………… ……. 136
APPENDIX A: PERIOD DATA…………………………………………………………… 161
APPENDIX B: TOPIC MODELS ....……………………………………………………… 181 viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1.1 Use of Capitalized Singular and Plural Forms of “Framer,” “Signer,” and
“Forebearer” on Google Ngram Viewer from 1800 Forward ...... 14
1.2 Use of “Founding Fathers” and “founding fathers” on Google Ngram
Viewer from 1800 Forward...... 16
1.3 Use of “Founding Father” and “founding father” on Google Ngram
Viewer from 1800 Forward ...... 17
1.4 Interest in the Term “Founding Father” Globally in the Google Search
Engine, 2004-Present...... 18
1.5 Interest in the Term “Founding Fathers” Globally in the Google Search
Engine, 2004-Present ...... 19
1.6 Interest in the Term “Founding Fathers” in the United States in the Google Search
Engine, 2004-Present ...... 19
1.7 Interest in the Term “Founding Fathers” in the United States During an Election
Year in the Google Search Engine, 2018 ...... 20
1.8 Use of Several Analyzed Founders on Google Ngram Viewer from 1800
Forward...... 26
1.9 Use of Several Analyzed Founders on Google Ngram Viewer from 1800
Forward ...... 26
3.1 Home or Primary Associated States of Selected Founders...... 50
3.2 Percentage of Top Seven Founders to Whole, General Search Results ...... 52 ix
3.3 Thomas Jefferson Percentage of Abstract Results, Adjusted (Duplicate
Dissertations Removed) and Un-Adjusted ...... 52
3.4 Percentage of the Adjusted Abstract Search Results by Top Seven Founders ...... 53
3.5 Top Nine Resulting Founders in the General Search...... 54
3.6 Top Eight Resulting Founders in the Abstract Search ...... 54
3.7 Top Eight Resulting Founders in the Title Search ...... 55
3.8 Top Eight Resulting Founders in the Keyword Search ...... 55
3.9 Non-Top Seven Founder Appearances in the Title Search ...... 57
3.10 Non-Top Seven Founder Appearances in the General Search ...... 57
3.11 Total General Search Results ...... 58
3.12 Total Dissertations by State of Completion ...... 63
3.13 Top Degree- Granting Universities in the Title Search ...... 64
3.14 Top Degree- Granting Universities in the Abstract Search ...... 64
3.15 Top Degree- Granting Universities in the Keyword Search ...... 65
3.16 Most Dissertation Advisements in the Keyword Search ...... 66
3.17 Total Founder Appearances in the General Search by Decade
(Absolute Interest) ...... 68
3.18 Total American History Dissertations Yearly ...... 68
3.19 Absolute Total Founder Interest in the General Search Yearly ...... 69
3.20 Total Founder Appearances in the Title Search Yearly ...... 70
3.21 Total Founder Appearances in the Abstract Search Yearly ...... 70
3.22 Total Founder Appearances in the Keyword Search Yearly ...... 71
3.23 Relative Interest in the Founders in the General Search ...... 71 x
3.24 Relative Interest in the Founders in the General Search- Dot Graph ...... 72
4.1 Founder Interest in the General Search, 1873-1925 ...... 78
4.2 Founder Interest in the General Search, 1926-1953 ...... 80
4.3 Founder Interest in the General Search, 1954-1974 ...... 85
4.4 Founder Interest in the General Search, 1975-1992 ...... 91
4.5 Thomas Jefferson Compared to George Washington- Yearly General Results ...... 96
4.6 Founder Interest in the General Search, 1993 to Present ...... 99
4.7 Top Appearing Universities in Period 5’s Three Data Limitation Searches ...... 105
5.1 Average Group Search Results from the Abstract Search ...... 120
5.2 Average Group Percentage Search Results from the Abstract Search ...... 120
5.3 Average Group Percentage Search Results from the Abstract Search with the
“White Male” Category Removed ...... 121
5.4 Average Group Search Results from the General Search ...... 121
5.5 Average Group Search Results from the Title Search ...... 122
5.6 Average Group Search Results from the Keyword Search ...... 122
5.7 Total Appearances of Terms and “American Revolution” Since 1970 ...... 125
5.8 Total Percentage Appearances in “”Term” and “American Revolution”” to
“American Revolution” Dissertations Since 1970 ...... 126
5.9 Top Seven Founder Percentage of Total Dissertations Since 1970 ...... 127 xi
LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
2.1 John Doe Yearly Appearances, Example...... 41
4.1 Period 2 Topic Analysis Results- Title ...... 82
4.2 Period 2 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted), Limited to
Five Topics ...... 84
4.3 Period 3 Topic Analysis Results- Title ...... 87
4.4 Period 3 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted) ...... 88
4.5 Period 3 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted), Limited to
Five Topics ...... 89
4.6 Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted), Limited to
Five Topics ...... 92
4.7 Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted) ...... 93
4.8 Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Title ...... 94
4.9 Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract ...... 97
4.10 Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract, Optimized (Weighted) ...... 98
4.11 Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Title ...... 103
4.12 Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted) ...... 104
4.13 Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract ...... 108
4.14 Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract, Optimized (Weighted) ...... 109
5.1 Group Average Appearance Position Across All Searches ...... 118 1
INTRODUCTION American culture does not memorialize all the nation’s founders equally. Some founders,
such as Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, are routinely studied by professional and
prospective historians alike in American history dissertations. Other founders, such as John
Hancock and Thomas Paine, are subjects of graduate works less often, but still in significant quantities. Still others are rarely discussed; this includes men such as Carter Braxton, signer of the Declaration of Independence. Scholars routinely study well-remembered founders like
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and neglect individuals such as Braxton. Despite this separation, the number of individuals considered founders has been expanding in recent decades, although the top individuals continue to dominate discussion.
This study measures academic interest in the founders through the 20th and 21st Century
American history, something of which historian H.W. Brands stated, “such things are hard to
measure.”1 Tracing and analyzing specific periods of founder interest and supporting such
examinations with rigorous quantitative evidence has rarely, if ever, been done before. In an age when Americans are becoming increasingly divided politically, with many invoking the memory of “the Founding Fathers” to give credence to their way of thought, the study of the founders’ evolving place in American scholarly memory is vital to understanding ourselves.
To examine how American scholars discuss the founders, I used dissertations found
online on the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. In total, over 50,000 individual
dissertation (results) were analyzed in some form. Dissertations were chosen as proxies for the
1 H.W. Brands, “Founders Chic,” The Atlantic, September, 2003, Accessed online at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/09/founders-chic/302773/. Brands would himself go on to outline specific periods of interest in the founders, although they do not seem to be quantitatively or qualitatively researched. 2
Revolutionary America field because dissertation studies represent both a historiographic topic
that aspiring, soon to be professional historians deem important enough to research and
contribute to, as well as a topic that the aspiring historian’s committee chair (who is presumably
active in the historiographic field) has agreed is important and earmarked years of mentorship
towards.2
This study supplements and addresses many “founders chic” and the cultural shift of the
American historical field. While many historians have found it difficult to estimate the exact
beginning of the “founders chic” era, this study provides relative years of five distinct periods of
American academia, including the most recent “founders chic” era. These periods unique
characteristics are discussed extensively, with their existence suggesting a shift in American
Revolution study different than the one typically described by historians such as David
Waldstreicher and Gwenda Morgan. Although scholars often examine “founders chic” only as
explosion of founder popularity in American popular culture, a spike in founder discussion is
similarly observed in the American academic sphere. My outlined Periods 3 and 5 (1954-1975 and 1993-) are characterized by extreme interest in and discussion of the founders, years that
correspond with periods outlined by other historians. However, this thesis challenges the notion
that a radical shift towards “from below,” non-elite histories and away from the “Founding
Fathers” occurred in the Revolutionary America field during the 1970s through the 1990s, an
argument generally agreed upon in the field. The rise of total dissertations in the 1990s suggests
2 Using dissertations as a proxy for American Revolution historiographic has flaws. There are many factors that impact the dissertation topic selection process, many of which have nothing to do with purely academic interest or importance. For example, availability of sources, advisor interest and availability, personal bias and interest, program funding, etc. are just some additional factors that affect the selection process. Additionally, dissertations are usually not meant to be read by the public and are not often read widely in the scholarly field, unless its contents are reorganized into book form. As such, dissertations are not a perfect representation of any historiographic field, but I believe the benefits outweigh the negatives. 3
an renewed historical demand in new founders, as do the rise of social and cultural histories, but
the traditional Top Seven Founders (Washington, Jefferson, James Madison, Franklin, Hamilton,
John Adams, Paine) remain prevalent and in the majority throughout all periods, regardless of the subject matter discussed or historical questions asked.
Undoubtedly, the study of neglected groups and histories have grown, but they pale in comparison to the study’s of Washington, Jefferson, and the like. For example, noted Native
American Joseph Brant and female Mercy Otis Warren appear in significantly less quantities than their Top Seven counterparts. While female, Native American, and African American individual subject dissertations are growing sd those of the Top Seven Founders is decreasing,
but is not a large enough difference to indicate a rapid shift in founder historiography. Instead,
these results suggest the recent diversity of subject matters considered in the field serve the expansion of the historiography of the “Founding Fathers” rather than the Revolutionary period, contradicting the argument posited by Alfred Young and Gregory Nobles in Whose Revolution
Was It? Historians Interpret the Founding and Gwenda Morgan in Beyond the Founders: New
Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic.3 The “Founding Fathers”
have remained prevalent into the 21st Century, with the recent peak in discussion occurring due
to the recent expansion of the early American and American Revolutionary fields. With that said,
while the top founders continue to dominate founder dissertations, their percentage of the whole
has been decreasing in recent years, whereas individuals such as Warren, Brant, and broad social
topics have been increasing. If such trends continue, Young and Nobles may eventually be
3 Young, Whose Revolution Was It? Morgan, Beyond the Founders. 4
proven correct, but currently men such as Jefferson and Washington remain at the top of
Revolutionary America dissertations.
This studies’ findings illustrate aspects of the scholarship of the American Revolution.
First and foremost, within the study is the tier system of founder popularity. While these tiers (or
clusters) have been implicit in American culture for some time, they have yet to be explained.
The tier system can be best summarized as the implicit ranking that impacts how Americans rate or remember the “Founding Fathers.” For example, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington almost always receive more attention than John Hancock or Roger Sherman. This system can be applied widely in studies of the American Revolutionary period and aid in public understanding of the founders’ place in American scholarly and collective memory. For example, this system helps explain and supplement the phenomenon of “founders chic.” The tiers of founder importance, while hardly an “end-all be-all” explanation of Americans’ memory of their founders, is an answer to a question implicit in the scholarship on the founders: are some founders remembered more than others?4 The answer; yes, and they always have been.
This study serves as a study of American culture by examining scholarly discussion of
cultural icons (the founders). Using the highly cited founders as subjects and examining shifts in
founder popularity, we can further understand ourselves as individual scholars and as members
of an academic community within American culture. One of this study’s main findings suggests
that scholarly memory of the founders is heavily weighted towards a select, consistent few who,
in fact, are the same individuals who appear most often in the American public. In other words,
4 As scholars, historians of the American Revolution are not impervious to outside factors or inherent bias. Whereas the logical assumption and ideal situation would call for historians to cover all historical events and founders evenly, this data suggests that no matter the time period or historical approach, the top, most well-known founders continue to dominate American dissertations. 5
scholars discuss well-respected founders just as much as the public memorializes them.
Inherently, dissertations are extensive works of research history that are of little interest to the
public or anyone outside of the author’s research range. Often, no one other than select historians
care or will ever see most history dissertations. Yet, the same trends and individuals seen in
American culture appear most often in American dissertations. Logically, this points to one very
important, yet largely unexplored, aspect of American academia: Scholars, while historically
trained, are still members of the public, susceptible to similar forces and interested in similar
events.
In addition to the unique findings and conclusions of this study, it contributes to
scholarship on the American founders, public memory, the American Revolution, and the most
“important” or “known” founders. Other historians have studied memory, both specific to the
American Revolution and the founders broadly, with the rise of public and memory historians
vastly deepening the existing historiography. My study engages these historians by examining
American academic memory and its fascination with the “Founding Fathers.”
First is scholarship discussing the American “Founding Fathers” and founders. This
historiographic includes studies of individual men and discussions of their stories and
importance. “Founders chic,” a term coined by Evan Thomas in the Newsweek piece “Founders
Chic: Live From Philadelphia” (2001), is discussed at length by H.W Brands in his The Atlantic article “Founders Chic” (2003).5 Brands explores the phenomenon of popularity surrounding the
founders, which has spread rampantly the last thirty years.6 Biographers such as David
5 Evan Thomas, “Founders Chic: Live From Philadelphia,” Newsweek, (July 2001), Accessed online at: https://www.newsweek.com/founders-chic-live-philadelphia-154791. 6 H.W. Brands, “Founders Chic,” The Atlantic, September, 2003, Accessed online at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/09/founders-chic/302773/. 6
McCullough, Ron Chernow, and Joseph Ellis are popular authors whose works can be
considered typical of “founders chic,” with their studies bringing mainstream interest to
individual founders (usually, the most well-known founders). In particular, Ellis has written
numerous biographical works, including American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
(1996) and Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (2000).7 The Broadway musical
Hamilton (2015) is another example of “founders chic”—it tells the story of founder Alexander
Hamilton in a way that inspires reverence and respect. Jeanne Abrams’ Revolutionary America:
The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health (2013) and Kenneth Bernard
Umbreit’s Founding Fathers: Men who Shaped our Tradition (1969) further illustrate the
importance the founders have in American culture, with Umbreit’s work showcasing the
founders’ impact prior to “founders chic.”8
With the recent emergence of public interest in the founders, the idea of “founders chic”
itself has spawned multiple scholarly works. David Waldstreicher’s article in Radical History
Review, “Founders Chic as Culture War,” (2002) explains the battle among academics, best-
selling book authors (such as Ellis) and the American public over the memory of the founders,
with the public often only being familiar with positive aspects of the founders’ lives and
achievements.9 Allan Kulikoff in “The Founding Fathers: Best Sellers! TV Stars! Punctual
Plumbers!” (2005) explains the abundant influence the founders have in American society.10
Founders are invoked as TV characters, titular biographical personalities, memorials, subjects of
7 Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Vintage, 1998). Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Random House, 2000). 8 Jeanne Abrams, Revolutionary America: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health (New York: New York University Press, 2013). Kenneth Bernard Umbreit, Founding Fathers: Men Who Shaped Our Tradition (New York: Kennikat Press, 1969). 9 David Waldstreicher, “Founders Chic as Culture War,” Radical History Review 84, (2002): 185-194. 10 Allan Kulikoff, “The Founding Fathers: Best Sellers! TV Stars! Punctual Plumbers!,” Journal of the Historical Society, vol. 5 no. 2 (2005): 155-187. 7
children’s books— maybe one day, even plumbers. Steven Jaffe’s Who Were the Founding
Fathers? Two Hundred Years of Reinventing American History (1996) succinctly traces how
American history has been taught in the last two hundred years, reaching the conclusion that
American debate over the founders is heavily influenced by what values the founders embodied
rather than their life’s work.11 David Sehat in The Jefferson Rule: How the Founding Fathers
Became Infallible and Our Politics Inflexible (2015) expands upon this idea. In his monograph,
Sehat argues that Americans invoke the founders in various ways to support their mode of
thought without fully understanding the founders as historically complex individuals.12 The
debate over the founders and the cultural phenomena of “founders chic” continues to be a major
historical topic, with no consensus opinion or theory to explain why it has occurred.
The next histography this thesis engages is the scholarship on American public
(historical) memory. This includes scholarly work related to the study of American historical
memory and values. Andrew Schocket’s Fighting Over The Founders: How We Remember the
American Revolution (2015) serves as an overview of Revolutionary America studies and
examines how Americans today, through various public means, view the founders and the
American Revolution.13 Schocket also penned an overview of relevant historiography related to
memory, “founders chic,” the founders, and media at the end of his monograph, which serves as
a starting point for those looking to research Revolutionary America. Geoffrey Cubitt’s History
and Memory (2008) and Maurice Halbwachs’ On Collective Memory (1992), are insightful
11 Steven Jaffe, Who Were the Founding Fathers?: Two Hundred Years of Reinventing American History (New York: H. Holt & Co., 1996). 12 David Sehat, The Jefferson Rule: How the Founding Fathers Became Infallible and Our Politics Inflexible (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015). 13 Andrew Schocket, Fighting over the Founders: How we Remember the American Revolution (New York: New York University Press, 2015). 8
foundational studies on the field of historic memory.14 On American collective memory, Michael
Kammen in A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination (1988)
and George Lipsitz in Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (1990)
examine how Americans remember their past—both serve as potential expansions and additional analysis that is beyond the scope of this thesis.15 Joanne Freeman’s “Will the Real Alexander
Hamilton Please Stand Up?” (2017), Barry Schwartz’s George Washington: The Making of an
American Symbol (1990) and Henry Wiencek’s An Imperfect God: George Washington, His
Slaves, and the Founding of America (2003) explore American values, memory, and how
Americans have become enamored with certain aspects of the founders, although none trace total
founder interest.16 In general, although not exclusively, these sources all argue for an evolving and shifting memory of the founders, an argument that will be explored in depth throughout the thesis.
Historiography of the American Revolution is equally important to this study. Most critically, I examined historiographical essays on the era to understand how historians write
about and discuss Revolutionary America. “Revolution in the Quarterly? A Historiographical
Analysis” by Michael A. McDonnell and David Waldstreicher and The Debate on the American
Revolution by Gwenda Morgan explore the historiography of the American Revolution in a
14 Geoffrey Cubitt, Geoffrey, History and Memory (New York: Manchester University Press, 2008). Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, Translated by Lewis A. Coser. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 15 Michael Kammen, A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination (New York: Random House, 1988). George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990). 16 Joanne Freeman, “Will the Real Alexander Hamilton Please Stand Up?,” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 37 no. 2 (Summer 2017): 255-262. Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Founding of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003). 9
broad context, examining trends in a field that has become increasingly diverse and complicated
since the 1960s and 1970s.17 Both argue that, around the 1970s, the study of the American
Revolution shifted, with a steady diversity in founder scholarship resulting in new subject matter
and insights. Morgan explores the modern debate between “neo-Whig” conservative historians,
who argue for elite-driven origins of the Revolution, and “neo-Liberal” progressive historians,
who stress the importance of ordinary people. Expanding upon these ideas are Alfred T. Young
and Gregory Nobles in Whose Revolution Was It? Historians Interpret the Founding and the
introduction of Jeffery Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher in Beyond the
Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic.18 While
different in exact conclusions and methodologies, they argue that political histories of the
founders are becoming rarer as the early American and Revolutionary fields become more
interested in ordinary people’s daily lives and experiences. While the founders remain prevalent
in culture and scholarship, both studies agree that the field shifted from the1970s to 1990s, with
the current explosion in elite founder literature being a cultural rather than academic
phenomenon.
Finally, scholarship on the famous or most well-known “Founding Fathers” played a
crucial role in the development of this thesis. Specifically, this scholarly literature explores the idea, both explicitly and implicitly, of the “popular,” or more well-known, founders. One of the
17 McDonnell, Michael A. David Waldstreicher. “Revolution in the Quarterly?: A Historiographical Analysis,” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 74 no. 4 (October 2017). Gwenda Morgan, The Debate on the American Revolution (England: Manchester University Press, 2007). 18 Alfred Young, Gregory H. Nobles, Editors, Whose American Revolution Was It? Historians Interpret the Founding (New York: New York University Press, 2011). Jeffery L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, David Waldstreicher, Editors, “Introduction: Beyond the Founders,” in Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic (North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 10
central works in this historiography is Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as
Revolutionaries by Richard B. Morris (1973).19 In his study, Morris argues that Washington,
Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Franklin, John Jay, and Madison are the most important and vital
founders. Essentially seven separate biographies, Morris’ book examines the impact each man
had in forming the early American republic. Unfortunately, Morris examined political works and
primary sources prior to memory studies questioning and examining a hierarchy of significance.
He excluded other founders from his analysis due to a lack of high-level political posts and
public works, which caused his analysis to have a post-revolutionary bias. For example, John
Hancock was quite influential prior to the ratification of the federal Constitution and served as a
President of the Continental Congress but is not mentioned as one of the seven by Morris due to
his relative lack of political significance post-Constitution. In Morris’ mind, this makes Hancock
less significant than John Jay, who held executive and cabinet positions after the Constitution. Is
Jay more significant than Hancock and thus deserving of study? Perhaps, but further analysis
would be necessary to determine founder relevance or significance. The lack of diversity and
inclusivity in Morris’ “Founding Fathers” served as one of the key components in my later
adoption of a broad definition for the term, a definition whose broadness is employed by some
recent historians. Many historians have penned works attempting to provide exposure to second
tier founders such as Roger Sherman, with Gary Gregg and Mark David Hall’s America’s
Forgotten Founders (2011) being a recent example.20 These have failed to shift public memory
or pique scholarly interest. In popular media, Jason Mandresh mentions “first and second tier”
19 Richard Morris, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). 20 Gary Gregg, Mark David Hall, America’s Forgotten Founders (Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2011). 11
founders on his hobby website “Founder of the Day,” however the website is not academically significant or supported by scholars.21 The Juntocast episode 15, “Founders in Early America” further discusses a two-tier system of founders but neglects to provide evidence of its claim or go beyond the labels of first and second tier founders.22 Finally, Peter Coclanis mentioned the idea
of “tier 1” or top cluster founders briefly in his review essay of Madison, Hamilton, and
Jefferson: Reinterpreting America’s Founding Fathers, but only in passing.23 The idea was not
discussed further.
Due to the importance this study places on “Founding Fathers,” the discussion
immediately following this paragraph will introduce and define the term, including associated
and synonymous terms. Once the term is defined and examined in several contexts, I will explain
the research methodology used to examine the ProQuest database, which serves as the study’s base data. This section explains and states the studied individuals (founders), with the definition discussed in the “Definition” chapter applying to each individual selected. “Methodology” also provides a discussion of methodological limitations, as well as general limitations associated with big data analysis. Then, general findings from the ProQuest search, including which founders appeared most often, is considered in broad contexts. The final of these initial general findings is an explanation of five distinct periods of American academia, determined by the
ProQuest searches’ data trends. These periods serve as the organizational method of the chapter entitled “Period Analysis,” which utilizes topic modeling to analyze each period’s dissertations,
21 Jason Mandresh, “The Second Tier of Founding Fathers,” Founderoftheday.com, March 19, Accessed online at: https://www.founderoftheday.com/founder-of-the-day/second-tier. Jason Mandresh, “The Big Six- The Leading Founding Fathers.” Founderoftheday.com, February 27, Accessed online at: https://www.founderoftheday.com/founder-of-the-day/the-big-six. 22 The Juntocast. Episode 15: “Founders” in Early America. B Park, MD Hattem, S Georgini, R Herrmann. Accessed online at: https://thejuntocast.com/archives/ep-15-founders-in-early-america/. 23 Peter Coclanis, “Madison, Hamilton, and Jefferson: Reinterpreting America's Founding Fathers,” Business History Review 91, (2017): 575-587. 12
determine period trends, norms, and topic interests, and study scholarly opinion of the founders.
A chapter entitled “The New Founders?” exploring the historiographic proposition of an increase
in “from below,” non-political elite individuals being considered founders and whether treatment
of women, Native Americans, and African Americans has grown in American Revolutionary
scholarship like Gwenda Morgan, David Waldstreicher, Michael McDonnell, Alfred Young, and
Gregory Nobles claim, completes the primary research portion of the thesis. The study concludes recapping the study’s findings, restating project significance, and pondering what the study’s
findings indicate about American scholarly culture and America’s evolving relationship with its
founders.
13
CHAPTER I: DEFINING “FOUNDING FATHERS”
Given the methodological emphasis on the founders and “Founding Fathers,” it is
necessary to define the terms, examine their origins and use, discuss each term’s connotations, determine individuals considered founders and “Founding Fathers,” and briefly explore their impact on American culture.
What is a “Founding Father?”
Despite its rampant use in modern American culture, the phrase “Founding Fathers” did
not receive mainstream attention until the early 20th century, when Warren Harding first uttered
the phrase at a political convention. In 1916 Harding, then a junior senator from Ohio, was a
rising member of the Republican Party. Harding was active at the 1916 Republican Convention,
formally introducing Charles Hughes as the Republican presidential nomination for the 1916
presidential election.24 Sometime later during the convention, Harding addressed the audience in
a keynote address. In an otherwise forgettable speech, Harding expressed admiration for the
nation’s “Founding Fathers,” forever associating the term with the Revolutionary era political
leaders who crafted the United States’ republican government. Harding’s speech is widely
accepted as the first time “Founding Fathers” was used to describe George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and the like.25 Harding would further stitch “Founding Fathers”
into the fabric of American culture when he used “Founding Fathers” in his presidential
24 Warren Harding, Speech of Notification (speech, Chicago, Illinois, August 8, 1915), The Library of Congress. 25 Jill Lepore, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010), 16. There is some mild debate on if and when Harding first said “Founding Fathers.” For example, Mike Sutton, “The Warren Harding 1916 Founding Fathers Myth is Bust,” Dysology, December, 2017, Accessed online at: http://dysology.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-warren-harding-1916- founded.html is a post arguing that Harding first used the term in 1914 or 1915 with the term itself being used as early as 1895. I was unable to independently confirm his findings, and hence am abiding by the academically accepted date. 14
inauguration speech in 1921, stating “I must utter my belief in the divine inspiration of the
founding fathers. Surely there must have been Gods intent in the making of this new-world
Republic.”26 Harding’s speech marked the first time “Founding Fathers” was used at a
presidential inauguration. Prior to Harding coining the term, “Framers,” “Founders,” “Fathers,”
“Forebearers,” and “Signers” were used relatively interchangeably to describe the same group of
individuals.27
Figure 1.1: Use of Capitalized Singular and Plural Forms of “Framer,” “Signer,” and “Forebearer” on Google Ngram Viewer from 1800 Forward. “Framers” and “Signer,” both capitalized to show reference to an individual, are the most widely used terms besides “Founding Fathers.” However, both terms can be and are used to reference other groups of individuals, inflating the data percentages. As can be seen, most of the terms have seen percentage discusses in the last few decades, with the notable exception being “Framers.” It is unclear whether “Framers” high percentage represents the term being used to describe the Revolutionary era leaders or another group of individuals. This screenshot was captured and the data was collected in December 2018. The Y-Axis is the frequency of the Ngram Viewer in the Google Books corpus. All graphs were created multiple times throughout the month of December to ensure data accuracy and remove any necessary outliers. A methodological interlude: the above graph was created using Google Ngram Viewer, a
Google operated database that houses and allows individuals to search books from the Google
Books corpus. In 2015, Google Books had over 25 million books scanned into its database, with
26 Warren Harding, Inaugural Address (speech, Washington, DC, March 4, 1921), The American Presidency Project, Accessed online at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural-address-49. 27 The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle American History, 16. 15
many more coming each year.28 Google Ngram has been described as a “digital storehouse [that]
contains 500 billion words from 5.2 [25] million books published between 1500 and 2008 in
English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Chinese. It lets anyone search for words and
short phrases, and chart how they have been used over time.”29 Given the vastness of Google
Books and the power of the Ngram Viewer, the potential exists to track language use and shifts
quickly, efficiently, clearly, and quantatively, with the program’s user interface being accessible
and simple to understand.30
Unfortunately, there are many limitations when using Google Ngram Viewer, issues that
Sarah Zhang succinctly describes in “The Pitfalls to Using Google Ngram to Study Language.”
Zhang explains Optical Character Recognition (OCR) complications, an overabundance of
scientific literature, automated and prone to incorrect metadata, and the difference between what
“people are talking about…. [and] what people are publishing about,” of which Ngram Viewer
measures the latter.31 These issues may impact the data and allow certain individuals to appear
more often than they are actually discussed in American culture. Nonetheless, the Google Ngram
Viewer is an incredibly powerful word engine that serves as an excellent broad analysis tool, if
its limitations are considered.32
28 Stephen Heyman, “Google Books: A Complex and Controversial Experiment,” New York Times, October 28, 2015. 29 Mark Russell, “Google Database Tracks Popularity of 500B words,” Newser, December 17, 2010, Accessed online at: http://www.newser.com/story/107766/google-database-tracks-popularity-of-500b-words.html. Given that Russell wrote this article in 2010, about 6 years prior to Ngram’s wide public release, it is likely many more books and words comprise Ngram’s database. 30 For those interested in learning how to operate Google Ngram, see “What Does Google Ngram Viewer Do?” Google, 2013, Accessed online at: https://books.google.com/ngrams/info. 31 OCR refers to the conversion of text and images to electronic and online text. In other words, Google Ngram may not always correctly identify word appearances in text due to a translation issue. 32 Sarah Zhang, “The Pitfalls to Using Google Ngram to Study Language,” Wired, October 12, 2015, Accessed online at: https://www.wired.com/2015/10/pitfalls-of-studying-language-with-google-ngram/. 16
Even considering Google Ngram Viewer’s pitfalls, one thing is evident: In contrast to
Figure 1.1’s declining use of various terms associated with Revolutionary era leaders, Figures
1.2 and 1.3 (below) show massive percentage increases for the term “Founding Father” and its affiliates post-1920, soon after Harding gave his inaugural address.
Figure 1.2: Use of “Founding Fathers” and “founding fathers” on Google Ngram Viewer from 1800 Forward. “Founding Fathers” and “founding fathers” are used at higher average percentages than any other associated terms, with the term almost exclusively being associated with the American Revolutionary Era. The screenshot was captured and the data collected was collected in December 2018. The Y-Axis is the frequency of the Ngram Viewer in the Google Books corpus. All graphs were created multiple times throughout the month of December to ensure data accuracy and remove any necessary outliers.
17
Figure 1.3: Use of “Founding Father” and “founding father” on Google Ngram Viewer from 1800 Forward. The screenshot was captured and the data collected was collected in December 2018. The Y-Axis is the frequency of the Ngram Viewer in the Google Books corpus. All graphs were created multiple times throughout the month of December to ensure data accuracy and remove any necessary outliers. Interestingly, these graphs show that the plural form of the term (“Founding Fathers” and
“founding fathers”) appear more frequently than the singular terms, suggesting the phrase usually references a group of people rather than a singular individual. In other words,
Revolutionary Era leaders are usually referred collectively as the “Founding Fathers,” not as a singular “Founding Father.” Additionally, both graphs show the lower-case version of the term appear in higher percentages than the upper-case version. Due to these findings, further chapters refer to the broad group of individuals surveyed as “founders,” with the term “Founding Fathers” usually referencing the top founders (Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams,
Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, etc.).
Another Google data tool, Google Trends, illustrates that “Founding Fathers” is primarily an American and Nigerian term. Google Trends is described by Simon Rogers as “an unbiased sample of… Google search data…… It’s anonymized (no one is personally identified), categorized (determining the topic for a search query) and aggregated (grouped together).” He goes on to explain that “this allows us to measure interest in a particular topic across search, from 18 around the globe, right down to city-level geography,” with Trends operating as an easy, succinct program to measure recent usage of search terms. Using either “real time [or] non-real time” filters, one can “take a sample of the trillions of Google searches….. [to] look at a dataset representative of all Google searches.”33 Entering the term “Founding Father” into Google Trends reveals the American and Nigerian nature of the term.34
Figure 1.4: Interest in the Term “Founding Father” Globally in the Google Search Engine, 2004-Present. The screenshot was created with Google Trends. The screenshot was captured, and the data was collected, in December 2018. Accessed online at: https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US As seen in Figure 1.4, Nigeria is the highest users of “Founding Father.” The United
States was a distant second, with Singapore, Indonesia, and Ghana distant third-fifth finishers.
While Figure 1.4 suggests Nigeria as the largest user of “Founding Father,” the plural “Founding
Fathers” is of interest primarily in the United States.
33 Simon Rogers, “What is Google Trends Data – And What Does it Mean?” Medium – Google News Lab, July 1, 2016, Accessed online at: https://medium.com/google-news-lab/what-is-google-trends-data-and-what-does-it-mean- b48f07342ee8. 34 All Google Trends data is from 2004-present. 19
Figure 1.5: Interest in the Term “Founding Fathers” Globally in the Google Search Engine, 2004-Present. The screenshot was created with Google Trends. The screenshot was captured, and the data was collected, in December 2018. Accessed online at: https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US Centering on Uthe nited States at the state level, Indiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas,
and the District of C olumbia (Washington D.C.) mention the term “Founding Fathers” most
often, with Washington D.C. predictably showing more interest during the recent election year
(2018).
Figure 1.6: Interest in the Term “Founding Fathers” in the United States in the Google Search Engine, 2004-Present. The screenshot was created with Google Trends. The screenshot was captured, and the data was collected, in December 2018. Accessed online at: https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US 20
Figure 1.7: Interest in the Term “Founding Fathers” in the United States During an Election Year in the Google Search Engine, 2018. The screenshot was created with Google Trends. The screenshot was captured, and the data was collected, in December 2018. Accessed online at: https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US Except for Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania, the other top five states shown in Figures
1.6 and 1.7 are conservative leaning, often voting for Republican presidential candidates post-
1960. From this admittedly limited sample, conservative states and their population seem more
likely to reference the “Founding Fathers” than liberal populations.
In the same vein, “Founding Fathers,” either in its plural or singular form, invokes certain
connotations, especially in the American political realm. As Andrew Schocket found in Fighting
Over the Founders upon conducting an in-depth survey of recent (1968-) political speeches,
“Republicans have used [Founding Fathers] roughly four times more often than Democrats.”35
Oftentimes, the term had “racial strings attached,” with “Founding Fathers” suggesting “a
romanticized, white, male-dominated past that some Republican candidates clearly believed held
considerable appeal for their audiences,” emphasizing their masculinity and religion.36 In contrast, “Founder” and “Framer,” terms whose academic usage has increased over the last thirty
35 Andrew Schocket, Fighting over the Founders: How we Remember the American Revolution (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 28. 36 Ibid. 30. 21
years, are more neutral terms that strip away gender and masculinity while maintaining the core
element of explanation.37 On the political left, Democrats often invoke the “Founding Fathers”
memory using a separate term; “created equal.”38 In contrast to Republican connoting the
founders racially and in regard to gender, Democrats associate the founders as agents of change who created something that requires “continual refinement.”39
While “Founding Fathers” has been used extensively in American culture for over 100
years and is invoked often in American politics, no precise definition exists. Some sources define the “Founding Fathers” solely as drafters of the U.S. Constitution. Others define them as leading political leaders during the Revolutionary period of American history. Still others believe the term should apply to any creator of an idea or business. Scanning five popular dictionary definitions, as well as common definitions provided or accepted by historians, creates a good basis for the term.
The Collins Dictionary defines a “Founding Father” as “[someone] who first develops it
[an institution]. Founding Fathers of [the] U.S [were] members of the Constitutional
Convention.”40 Dictionary.com echoes a similar definition as the Collins, defining a “Founding
Father” as, “delegates of Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787…. Or any group of
founders.”41 The Merriam-Webster Dictionary also states that a “Founding Father” is “an originator of an institution or movement, a leading figure in the founding of the U.S, specifically
37 Ibid. 30. 38 Ibid. 35. 39 Ibid. 43 40 Collins Dictionary, s.v. “founding father,” accessed May 20, 2019, https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/founding-father 41 Dictionary.com, s.v. “Founding Father,” accessed May 20, 2019, https://www.dictionary.com/browse/founding- fathers 22
a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.”42 Two of the most respected dictionaries in the world, the British Cambridge Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, give an
international perspective and state that a “Founding Father” is simply “a founder of a country,
organization or idea,”43 and “A person who starts or helps to start a movement or institution,”
with the Oxford English Dictionary providing a second definition stating “A [founding father is
a] member of the convention that drew up the constitution of the US in 1787.”44 From these five
dictionaries, it appears a “Founding Father” is either the broadly defined creator of any
organization or the 1787 signers of the U.S. Constitution. Given most dictionaries mentioned the
signers of the U.S. Constitution (often as a secondary definition), it seems said group of
individuals are those most associated with the term.
In the academic profession, historians have similarly failed to agree on a precise
definition, especially in recent years. In the December 1, 2015 historian survey “How Do You
Define Founding Father,” definitions range from “a small group of 6” to “[the] first English
settlers in North America” to “anyone who helped bring on the American Revolution.”45 Leading
founder historian Joseph Ellis defines “Founding Fathers” as “[a] small number of leaders who
all knew each other, collaborated and collided,” being “mostly male, all white, public figures.”46
In his 1973 study Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries,
Richard Morris assumes the term refers to “conservative, wealthy member[s] of the
42 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “founding father,” accessed May 20, 2019, https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/founding%20father 43 Cambridge Dictionary, s.v. “founding father,” accessed May 20, 2019, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/founding-father 44 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “founding father,” accessed May 20, 2019, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/founding_father 45 Thomas Fleming, “How Do You Define Founding Fathers?” Journal of the American Revolution, (December 2015). Fleming asked many different Revolutionary era historians how they would define a “Founding Father.” 46 Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 13. 23
establishment… who rebelled and started a revolution.” This is further evidenced in his central
questions of the study: “What made an elite prosperous and conservative, member of the
Establishment, one might say, turn against their king and start a revolution?”47 In recent decades,
historians such as R.B. Bernstein and Joanne Freeman, who study the same group of individuals
in overarching founder studies, have aimed to humanize the founders rather than place them on
the “demigod”-like pedestals so many in the public do.48 With the rise of “founders chic,” the
variety of opinions on the founders are as diverse as ever. However, historical disagreements on the amount of reverence Americans should show towards the founders is not the only roadblock preventing a unifying definition of “Founding Father.”
Revolutionary historians have been expanding the scope of the term “Founding Fathers” in the last couple decades, with the term now being used to reference many previously neglected individuals and lesser-known politicians of the era. As previously noted, in 1973 Richard Morris referred to the “Founding Fathers” as a group of conservatives, middle-class male elites, with only seven being historically significant. Prior to the 21st century, Morris’ “Founding Fathers”
occupied the predominant scope of the term and comprised the bulk of the historiography.49
Sometime in the late 20th century, the historical academy started referring to a wider range of
American politicians as founders, not just Washington, Jay, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson,
47 Richard Morris, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). 48 R.B. Bernstein, The Founding Fathers: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Joanne Freeman, “Will the Real Alexander Hamilton Please Stand Up?” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 37 no.2, (Summer 2017): 255-262. 49 For example, the number of Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton biographies (and hence historical significance) far outnumbers people who have only recently been considered “founders.” In the last ten years alone, there have been many Hamilton biographies. In contrast, lesser known founder Roger Sherman has had had one biography, and individuals such as William Whipple have none. While overarching founder literature does seem to be shifting towards inclusion and diversification at-large, in-depth biographical studies still heavily favor the elite founders. 24
Franklin, and Madison.50 Recently, many historians have written works attempting to provide
exposure to a second-tier of academically “forgotten” founders such as Roger Sherman and
Thomas Paine, with Gary Gregg and Mark David Hall’s America’s Forgotten Founders (2011)
being an example.51 These tiers of founders, with Morris’ seven at the top and all others in lower tiers, has further garnered analysis and broadened the scope of the term. Popular podcast The
Juntocast, which explores historical issues and is operated by academically trained historians, discussed this two-tier system of founders extensively on Episode 15, “”Founders” in Early
America.”52 Popular media, including Jason Mandresh’s popular website founderftheday.com,
has multiple articles that illustrate the expansion of individuals considered founders while
acknowledging the existence of a tier system of founder popularity in American culture, with
men like Thomas Paine and Paul Revere garnering recognition as second tier and Washington,
Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, and Madison constituting the “Big-Six.”53
Moving beyond white male political figures, Revolutionary Era founders have become
academically synonymous with historically neglected groups. Joan Gundersen’s To Be Useful to
the World: Women in Revolutionary America, 1740-1790 (2006) and Carol Berkin’s
Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence (2014) outline
female impact in the era, providing context on the immensely important roles women played
during the American Revolutionary period.54 In particular, Abigail Adams has seen an increase
50 The individuals outlined by Morris in Seven Who Shaped our Destiny. 51 Daniel Dreisbach, “Founders Famous and Forgotten,” Intercollegiate Review, vol. 42 issue 2, (Fall 2017): 3-12 is an example of this recent trend in founder historiography. 52 The Juntocast. Episode 15: “Founders” in Early America. B Park, MD Hattem, S Georgini, R Herrmann. Accessed online at: https://thejuntocast.com/archives/ep-15-founders-in-early-america/. 53 Jason Mandresh, “The Second Tier of Founding Fathers.” Jason Mandresh, “The Big Six- The Leading Founding Fathers.” 54 Joan R. Gundersen, To Be Useful to the World: Women in Revolutionary America, 1740-1790 (North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 25
in academic significance in recent years, often being invoked as a “Founding Mother.”55 Other neglected groups, including African Americans and Native Americans, have also began being
discussed by the academy, including being referencedd by Ray Raphael, Alfred Young, and Gary
Nash in Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation
(2012).56 Google searching a neglected group and “Founding Fathers,” such as “African
American Founding Fathers,” unearths large, recent collections of public and historical essays
proclaiming individuals of the era significant, illustrating the continued expansion of the term.57
These neglected groups recent appearance in founder historiography will be examined in-depth
in the final chapter of this thesis.
Even with the expansion of the term to include neglected groups and lesser-known
individuals, most individuals, both in the public and academic spheres, still refer to the core
group of roughly seven men solely as ”Founding Fathers.”58 As can be seen from Figures 1.8 and
1.9 below, there is a stark distance in Google Book appearances of the core six of George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and
James Madison and everyone else, including known and respected founders such as John Jay and
Carol Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence (New York: Vintage Publishing, 2014). 55 Many women have recently been coined “Founding Mothers,” including Adams and Martha Washington. Cokie Roberts wrote an entire study on the term, Cokie Roberts, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation (New York: Harper Publishing, 2005). 56 Ray Raphael, Alfred F. Young, Gary Nash, Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation (New York: Vintage, 2012). 57 Including; LaGarrett J King, “More Than Slaves: Black Founders, Benjamin Banneker, and Critical Intellectual Agency,” Social Studies Research and Practice, (Winter 2014). 58 “How Do You Define Founding Fathers?” 26
Roger Sherman, noted female individuals of the era such as Mercy Otis Warren and Abilgail
Adams, and African or Native Americans such as Prince Hall and Dragging Canoe.
Figure 1.8: Use of Several Analyzed Founders on Google Ngram Viewer from 1800 Forward. The screenshot was created with Google Trends. The screenshot was captured, and the data was collected, in December 2018. Accessed online at: https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US
Figure 1.9: Use of Several Analyzed Founders on Google Ngram Viewer from 1800 Forward. The screenshot was created with Google Trends. The screenshot was captured, and the data was collected, in December 2018. Accessed online at: https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US Unfortunately, whereas the expansion of “Founding Fathers” is easy to track
chronologically, it is difficult to unearth the reasons for the expansion. “Founders chic” and the
explosion in traditional founder popularity likely has some influence on renewed focus of the
term—with more people interested in the most well-known founders, it is logical to see
exploration and expansion beyond the core list. The general shift of the historical academy 27
towards cultural and social histories helps explain the inclusion of neglected individuals in recent
years, with the study of non-elite, “from-below” voices being a central tenet of such historiography. Perhaps the divided political culture, coupled with a general understanding of social and gender structures, has led many to champion a representation of “Founding Fathers” far beyond the traditional white, male, conservative, middle-class elite. Whatever the case may be, examining the “Founding Fathers” no longer means solely examining Washington, Jefferson,
Adams, Hamilton, Jay, Franklin, Madison, and maybe a few others—it now entails a more complete, diverse, and varied group of individuals who impacted the era in a variety of ways.
The previous examination of the various uses and definitions of “Founding Fathers” illustrates several underlying aspects of the term. First and foremost, English speakers, especially those from the United States, tend to associate the term with those who attended the
Constitutional Convention of 1787, despite often referring to politicians not at the event (such as
Thomas Jefferson) as a “Founding Father.” Second, the term is broad and un-specific. “Founding
Fathers” can refer to not just the Founding Fathers of the United States, but any founder of an institution. Third, the term is inherently masculine. Not only does the term refer most often to only males (those at the Constitutional Convention) via the word “Father,” but the opposing term
“Founding Mother” is rarely found in formal dictionaries and has scarce source materials surrounding it, especially scholarly publications.59 Even if “Founding Mother” were used more
59 Abigail Adams could be considered the prototypical “Founding Mother.” However, even she is not nearly as discussed as her husband, John Adams. When she is the topic of a popular narrative or monograph, it is often in conjunction with John. For example, see Edith Gelles, Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriage (New York: HarperLuxe, 2009) Joseph Ellis, First Family: Abigail and John Adams (New York: Vintage, 2011) or the picture book David Adler, Michael Adler, A Picture Book of John and Abigail Adams (New York: Holiday House, 2010). 28
often, it would suggest a separation between the gendered groups, with the “Founding Fathers”
likely taking priority and being of higher consequence than the “Founding Mothers.”
With the above discussion in mind, this essay defines “Founding Father” as any key
United States’ Revolutionary era political leader, especially those who signed or were involved
in writing the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, or U.S Constitution.60
This definition will be used for a few reasons. Most obviously, the definition is broad enough to
include high-ranking politicians of the era. When the definition that appears in Merriam-Webster
Dictionary, for example, states that a “Founding Father” was someone specifically who attended
the Constitutional Convention in 1787, it excludes a whole range of civilians typically thought of
as Founding Fathers, such as Patrick Henry (who neglected to appear), John Adams and Thomas
Jefferson (who had foreign assignments), John Hancock or Samuel Adams, all of whom are
traditionally known as “Founding Fathers.” My definition of “Founding Father” reflects said
public opinion and is inclusive enough to apply to those at the Constitutional Convention as well
as anyone who played a large role in the creation of the political United States—be that the
Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, U.S Constitution, or other political
achievements. Another aspect of the above definition is it puts a magnifying lens on the United
States and its Revolutionary Era leaders. Given this study is solely concerned with American
scholarly memory of its “Founding Fathers,” emphasizing the American aspect of the term is
crucial. The final aspect is that it focuses on political figures of the era. In other words, primarily
white males. Narrowing the group of individuals considered “Founding Fathers” to white male
political figures allows this thesis to separately analyze and answer two core historiographic
60 Whereas the term “Founding Fathers” is usually used in reference of a core group of individuals, the term “founders” can be used in a much broader context. 29 questions: Have the traditional “Founding Fathers,” particularly the “Big Six” or the Top Seven
Founders (as I describe them), increased in popularity during the “founders chic” era? And have neglected individuals, specifically females, Native Americans, and African Americans, seen an increase in dissertation discussion as is suggested by the expansion of the term’s “founder” and
“Founding Father” and the general historiographic trend towards social or “from below” histories? The first question will be examined throughout the thesis. The second question will be examined solely in the final chapter, “The New Founders?” in conversation with previous chapters.
Applying said definition, many notable individuals qualify as a “Founding Father.”
Some prominent individuals include George Washington, John Adams, Samuel Adams, John
Hancock, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Lesser known individuals include Carter
Braxton, George Clinton, Lyman Hall, and William Paca. Even lesser known individuals include
Robert Coram or William Williams.
The Founders Place in American Culture
The Founding Fathers occupy a mythical place in American history. Ask a high school student, average American, or American history buff to name a Founding Father and they will likely list some of George Washington’s Revolutionary War accomplishments that were taught to them during their formative years. George Washington is a cultural icon—present in school curricula and textbooks, memorialized extensively in stone, and generally serves as a symbol of the United States. However, Washington is not alone in the annals of American Revolutionary memory. Thomas Jefferson is routinely invoked, revered, and mentioned in U.S history textbooks. Benjamin Franklin appears in a significant number of children’s books, has numerous biographies written about him, is the subject of a national memorial in Pennsylvania, and 30
formerly lent his name to a university in Virginia.61 John Adams and Alexander Hamilton each
have recent, popular mass entertainment art depicting their lives, as well as a bevy of literature
depicting their character and political importance.62 Even Samuel Adams, one of the more
controversial founders due to his radical views, has a popular brand of beer named after him—
Samuel Adams Beer, a division of the Boston Beer Company.
The Founding Fathers, at least the most well-known founders, live on to this day in the public sphere, popular as ever.63 There remains an “irresistible urge to capitalize and mythicize
the “Founding Fathers” as the most prominent members of the political leadership.”64 That is to
say, the Founding Fathers are often thought of as potentially greater and more important than
their actual identities, with the public largely remembering positive events in the founders’ lives and forgetting (selectively or not) the negative events. This idolization of the mythical founders can be characterized as the “Master Narrative” of the American Revolution.
The concept of “Master Narrative,” often called the “Metanarrative” or “Grand
Narrative,” was introduced by Jean-Francois Lyotard in the introduction of his 1979 study, The
Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.65 According to Lyotard, a metanarrative is a
61 Benjamin Franklin University closed and was absorbed by George Washington University in 1987. The George Washington University (GWU) Library has a treasure trove of information on the history of GWU, most of which can be found online at: Library.gwu.edu. Many founders, not just Washington and Franklin, lend their name to important colleges, universities, departments, and buildings, further illustrating Founder importance in American culture. For example, John Adams and the Adams family a “House” at Harvard- The Adams House. Alexander Hamilton is memorialized by name by Hamilton College. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice is a well- respected college in New York. The list is numerous and could go on for many pages. 62 Alexander Hamilton was recently the subject of Hamilton: The Musical (2015), a Broadway and national musical sensation exploring Alexander Hamilton’s life. It was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. John Adams is the titular subject of the HBO Series John Adams (2008), an immensely popular mini-series that received mostly favorable reviews. 63 H.W. Brands, “Founders Chic.” In Brands’ own words, founder “stock (is) at an all-time high.” 64 Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 12. 65 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Post-Modernism has seen a reduction in historical significance throughout the late 20th and 21st centuries. 31
theory that gives a totalizing, comprehensive account of life, usually based upon universal truth
and values. The metanarrative is used to explain many historical events, connecting them together under certain basis universal truths (as explored in the narrative), with a master idea (or ending) being the core tenet of the narrative. It aims to explain and encompass all smaller narratives associated with it. For example, Marxism can be considered a metanarrative of history—Marxists believe that class struggle has shaped all of human events (universal truth), with a revolution being the only step forward (master idea). Lyotard and his fellow Post-
Modernists largely viewed metanarratives as negative, preferring smaller narratives that could tell a more complete, local, and “accurate” version of history. Today, the term is used extensively in cultural theory, sociology, and historic memory historiography in addition to Post-
Modernist doctrine.66 As such, the term’s meaning has shifted slightly, expanding upon
Lyotard’s core elements. Using “Master Narrative” in a cultural sense, the “Master Narrative” of
the American Revolution and “Founding Fathers” this essay refers to can be understood as the
collective memory of the American Revolution and its “Founding Fathers”—the commonly held
story, history, or opinion of the founders. Naturally, the “Master Narrative” is shaped at the grade-school level, where many Americans are exposed to the founders for the first time.
Identifying the exact master narrative of the founders is tricky. Because every teacher, school, and state differ on exactly what and how they teach their students, there is no written guideline or doctrine to analyze. As such, one cannot specifically point to a singular “Master
66 For an introduction and explanation of the differences between narratives, master narratives, and stories, see Jeffry Halverson, H.L. Goodall Jr., Steven Corman, “What is a Master Narrative?” Chapter in Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 11-26 or Anna Green, Kathleen Troup, “The Question of Narrative,” Chapter in The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory, New York: New York University Press, 1999, 204-230. For an overview and explanation of the term “Master Narrative” as used in a cultural sense, see Kate McLean, Jennifer P. Lilgendahl, Chelsea Forham, Elizabeth Alpert, Emma Marsden, Kathryn Szymanowski, Dan P. McAdams’ “Identity Development in Cultural Context: The Role of Deviating from Master Narratives,” Wiley Journal, (August 2017). 32
Narrative” of the founders. However, American culture, specifically American politics, does
illuminate certain aspects of the master narrative.
Politically, modern politicians invoke specific qualities and values of the founders
extensively, especially during political rallies and speeches. Barack Obama, 44th President of the
United States, claimed in one of his speeches that the founders were “heroes who forged our
documents of freedom” and encouraged Americans to follow in their footsteps.67 His wife,
Michelle Obama, referenced the founders’ heroism in a speech in 2016 when she stated that “you
are the fruits of the “Founding Fathers’” vision.”68
Admiration of the heroic fathers’ crosses party lines. Mitt Romney, 2012 Republican
Presidential nominee, gave multiple speeches in 2007 referencing the “Founding Fathers” as his
heroes, including his well-known “Faith in America” speech.69 Reverence of the “Founding
Fathers” is not new—many 20th century politicians have invoked the founder’s legacy to garner
political and cultural support. Ronald Reagan, in a speech seemingly designed to gain support
for the contras of Nicaragua, called the contras the “moral equivalent or equal of our Founding
Fathers.”70 Lyndon B. Johnson invoked the “Founding Fathers” in his 1965 inaugural address in
relation to the Civil Rights movement.71 Many, including Dwight Eisenhower, express support
67 Barack Obama, Endorsement of Hilary Clinton, (speech, Hilary Clinton Campaign Rally, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, November 7, 2016), CSPAN, Accessed online at: https://www.c-span.org/video/?417997-1/clintons- obamas-campaign-philadelphia. 68 Michelle Obama, Commencement Address (speech, City College in New York, New York, July 3, 2016), CCNY, Accessed online at: https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/commencement/commencement-address-first-lady-michelle-obama. 69 Mitt Romney, “Faith in America” (speech, George Bush Presidential Library, College Station, Texas, December 6, 2007, NPR, Accessed online at: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16969460. 70 Ronald Reagan, Conservative Political Action Committee Annual Dinner/Conference Address, (speech, Maryland, March 1, 1985), Reagan Presidential Library, Accessed online at: https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/30185f. 71 Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965 Inaugural Address, (speech, Washington, DC, January 20, 1965, Miller Center, Accessed online at: https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/january-20-1965-inaugural- address. 33
and faith in the “founding documents,” indirectly supporting the founders and their political
vision.72 However, idolizing the founders is not solely a 20th century political reality—according
to David Sehat, admiration and invoking founder qualities can be traced back to Thomas
Jefferson. Sehat explains, “The Founders’ words become [political] weapons,” with their original
hypothesized moral and political intent being of consistent importance in American society.73
Even in the small snippet of political speeches mentioned, it becomes apparent that the founders’ memory is a force in the American political world. Since politicians must gain the support of the people, the founders’ looming presence in the political world tells us something about the “Master Narrative,” or the general, public opinion of them—their ideas are often treasured, revered, loved, and immovable. In many ways, it seems the founder’s public reputations are contested yet infallible, serving both as cultural icons (especially Washington) and moral compasses. In the simplest of phrases, the founders are role models to many
Americans, with their actions during the American Revolutionary Era being commended.
Now that the term “Founding Fathers” has been defined, dissected, examined, and traced, the question arises: if the individuals traditionally held as founders often hold a mythical, praise- worthy place in American culture that leads to national attention, does the same prevalence exist in the academic sphere? To determine the answer to this and many other questions, I surveyed the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database.
72 Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953 Inaugural Address, Washington, DC, January 20, 1953, Miller Center, Accessed online at: https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/january-20-1953-first-inaugural-address. 73 David Sehat, The Jefferson Rule: How the Founding Fathers Became Infallible and Our Politics Inflexible (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 2. 34
CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY
To determine academic discussion of the founders, which was the basis for every finding and conclusion found throughout the rest of this study, I surveyed and tracked over 50,000
American Revolutionary dissertations found online on the ProQuest database. In total, fifty-nine founders were searched for on the database. These founders were divided into four distinct groups, with each group being examined for different reasons. The groups:
Group 1: This group constitutes individuals typically thought of as “Founding Fathers” and hence merit study in this project.74 While they vary in scholarship beyond dissertations, all are
considered political leaders of the era. The subjects (12):
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander
Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, Roger Sherman, John Dickinson,
Samuel Adams, John Hancock.
Group 2: This group contains individuals who are less well-known founders but have garnered
academic and/or public attention.75 The subjects (10):
74 To determine men typically considered “Founding Fathers,” I used Ranker lists, a glance of recent U.S. History textbooks, and general scanning of founder historiography (explored extensively in “Defining” section). The Ranker.com lists, of which there are three, constitute the public perception of a “Founding Father.” The historiography of the founders and mentions in U.S. history textbook constitute the academic perception of the “Founding Fathers.” The Ranker lists provided a baseline for who is considered a “Founding Father” in the public sphere. 75 See Gary Gregg, Mark David Hall, America’s Forgotten Founders (Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2011) for a recent example of a monograph aiming to provide exposure for the less well-known founders. All the Group 2 founders appear in said book, with the exception of Paul Revere, who appears frequently in American culture and hence merits analysis. 35
Paul Revere, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, James Wilson, George Mason, John
Witherspoon, Henry Knox, Nathanael Greene, Elijah Clarke, John Stark.76
Group 3: This group contains largely unknown founders who signed either the Declaration of
Independence or U.S. Constitution. At least one individual was randomly chosen from each state for each document. The subjects (28):
Caesar Rodney, Benjamin Rush, Elbridge Gerry, Ethan Allen, William Whipple, Stephen
Hopkins, Lewis Morris, George Walton, Richard Henry Lee, Carter Braxton, John Penn,
Edward Rutledge, Abraham Clark, Oliver Wolcott, Samuel Chase, George Clinton,
William Johnson, George Read, Abraham Baldwin, Daniel Carroll, Rufus King, John
Langdon, William Livingston, Hugh Williamson, William Blount, George Clymer,
Charles Pinckney, John Blair.
Group 4: This group constitutes individuals who were not considered “Founding Fathers” in the
academic sphere until recently (even now, minimal studies discuss these individuals) and are
largely not discussed in American culture.77 They are mostly lesser-known political and cultural
leaders from the era. The subjects (9):
Timothy Bigelow, Ebenezer Mackintosh, James Cleveland, John Waller, Herman
(Harmon, Holman) Husband, George Wythe, Samuel Thompson, Robert Coram,
Jedediah Peck.
76 The last four names in this group (Knox, Greene, Clarke, Stark) are names typically seen in “Revolutionary War Heroes” articles, including “8 Key Figures from the Revolutionary War,” Norwich University Online, April 3, 2017, which is one of the first Google search results of “American Revolutionary War Heroes.” 77 To determine this group, I selected ten random names discussed in Ray Raphael, Alfred F. Young, Gary Nash, Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation (New York: Vintage, 2012). The summary of the book states its aim is to “give voice and recognition to a generation of radical thinkers and doers who revolutionary ideals outstripped those of the “Founding Fathers”. 36
Individuals not studied include famous men such as Aaron Burr, James Monroe, John
Marshall, and Benedict Arnold. This is due to their significant political, cultural, or military
achievements occurring after (or in direct contrast to) the adoption of the Constitution or a
general lack of literature referring to them as “Founding Fathers.” Dolley Madison and
Tecumseh, often considered trailblazers of their era, are similarly not included due to their
accomplishments occurring in a different era (post-1789). Given that this study focuses on the
American “Founding Fathers,” defined in Chapter I as those individuals who significantly
impacted the American Revolutionary era (1763-1789) by helping shape the political and
cultural landscape of the American republic, and/or signed the Declaration of Independence,
Articles of Confederation, or U.S. Constitution, all other individuals beyond the fifty-nine
outlined above were not analyzed. The fifty-nine individuals were carefully chosen following
extensive research to represent a diverse, inclusive, and large sample-size that would yield
reliable results. An additional twenty-two individuals, all of whom are women, Native American,
African American, or non-American, were studied in the final chapter entitled “The New
Founders?” to further satisfy study inclusivity and diversity.
For the purposes of this study, subject dissertations were limited to history topics
(American History and History).78 The dissertations were written at American universities in
English between 1873 and 2019.79 These criteria ensure the sole focus of the study is the
American academic treatment of the founders within the historical discipline. In general, any
78 Similar disciplines such as Political Science, American Studies (American Culture Studies), Geography, etc. were not considered. Due to “Founding Fathers” being an American term, most of the dissertations surveyed were American History. However, due to some universities grouping all history subject dissertations under the banner “History,” many relevant dissertations were solely listed as “History,” making it impossible to exclude the term from the study. “Early America” or other similar terms were not ProQuest dissertation subjects and hence not included. 79 These are the dates of the first and last History or American History dissertations present on ProQuest. 37
dissertation that discussed the founders in significant capacity constituted a “founder”
dissertation and was considered. For a dissertation to discuss a founder in significant capacity,
the founder must appear as one of the primary themes of the study. Such studies include, but are
not limited to biographies, political, social, or cultural works on the founders, ideological
examinations of founder ideals, discussion or examination of political events with a founder
being mentioned as a keyword, etc. In the general search (founders could appear anywhere in a dissertation), the search was not limited to dissertations of “significant capacity,” instead examining all dissertations mentioning the founder in any way. Practically, this was enacted as it would have been nearly impossible to confirm each individual dissertation significantly discussed the searched founder. Methodologically, each search was used for different portions of this thesis, with the general search being used to analyze general founder popularity and interest.
Said search appears prominently in the “Data Analysis and Findings” portion of this thesis, whereas the other three searches provided specific topic analysis of dissertations and feature prominently in the “Period Analysis” portion of this thesis.
Dissertations were the only scholarly documents from ProQuest examined, despite
Masters-level theses’ presence in the database. Masters theses were excluded from the search results for a few reasons: Theses cannot be considered an accurate portrayal of American historians' memory of the founders due to the non-doctoral training of the authors, inclusion would balloon the study to unmanageable size, and ProQuest has an incomplete list of theses on its database.80 In addition, many of the core questions this study asks cannot be answered using theses, including the framework methodological question of the study, how do trained American
80 Despite the logical assumption of more master theses in existence than doctoral dissertations, ProQuest has significantly more dissertations than theses. Meaning, many schools and authors likely do not submit their theses to ProQuest, instead using other databases or none. Inclusion of such a dataset would limit the studies usefulness, as it would raise questions about the data’s sample size, biases, etc. 38
historians remember the founders? The majority of dissertations were from history doctoral
programs, although a few (less than 2%) were completed within other doctoral programs such as
education. These were included due to their listing as primarily American history or history
based.
Moving to the search itself, I individually data-searched the ProQuest database, using
each of the fifty-nine founders as a subject. Each individual founder was entered into the search
engine using text mining and REGEX techniques.81 The database was examined using four
database functions, the last three of which were limitations. The functions are General, Abstract,
Title, and Keyword.
The General (GEN or Gen) search has no limitation code, meaning it was not a limited
search.82 The General search included any mention of the founder in subject dissertations within
its hits. Therefore, this search included any mention of a founder in abstracts, keywords, titles,
dissertation content, research, citations, notes, etc. Each individual founder’s name was searched
for as such; “FirstName LastName,” which ProQuest interprets as ““(FirstName LastName).””
For the other searches, no quotation marks were used. The quotation marks helped ensure search
results only included those for which the founder’s full name (say, William Whipple) occurred in
sequential order somewhere in the dissertation, indicating discussion of the founder.
The Abstract (AB) search had a ProQuest database limitation code of AB, meaning the
search was limited to dissertations within the AB bin of the database.83 Specifically, this search entailed any mention of the founder in available abstracts. Due to ProQuest’s data engine, all
81 For an explanation of and introduction to REGEX techniques, see Shawn Graham, Scott Weingart, Ian Milligan, “Getting Started with Topic Modeling and MALLET,” The Programming Historian, September, 2012, Updated September, 2018, Accessed online at: https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/topic-modeling-and-mallet. 82 Meaning, there was no database prefix such as “ab” or “diskw.” 83 Meaning, when searching on ProQuest I searched for ”ab(founders name)“ as opposed to “(founders name).” 39
dissertations with both names (say, “Benjamin” and “Franklin,” but not necessarily “Benjamin
Franklin”) of the founder appearing in an abstract entered the original data pool. All such
instances that did not refer to the founder by their full name in sequential order or
“AB(LastName, FirstName)” were manually removed, unless I was able to independently
confirm the dissertation’s discussion of the founder during data retrieval. The abstracts
themselves have been exported from Excel and text-mined in a different program. On ProQuest,
abstracts were only available for dissertations from 1977 onwards. Of the three limitation
searches, the Abstract search was the largest.
The Title (TI) search had a ProQuest database limitation code of TI, meaning the search
was limited to dissertation titles. As such, this search solely tracks mentions of any given founder in the title of dissertations. For the most part, names must have appeared in full (for example,
“George Washington,” not just “Washington”) unless the dissertation was discovered independently. Searching solely for first or last names was impractical given the commonality of many last names (for example, Washington could mean Washington D.C., Washington State,
Washington State University, Booker T. Washington, etc.).
Finally, the Keyword (DISKW) search had a ProQuest database limitation code of
DISKW, meaning the search was limited to dissertation keywords. This search entailed any
mention of the founder in available dissertation keywords (index terms). A minority of dissertations listed keywords, making DISKW the smallest and most incomplete dataset. Only those dissertations that included the founders name in the form of “Last Name, First Name” or
“FirstName LastName” were included.
During the AB (Abstract), DISKW (Keyword), and TI (Title) data retrievals, I manually confirmed every dissertation was relevant to the project. Dissertations deemed borderline or not 40
significantly founder-related were considered eligible independently. During the GEN (General
Search) data retrieval, no such process occurred. Specific dissertations with certain index terms
and themes were eliminated on an individual basis to ensure dissertations focused primarily on the founders themselves.84 Each included term or theme must have answered “yes” to at least two of the following three questions: Is the term or theme related directly to or considered important by American Revolution historians based upon existing historiography? Is the term or
theme likely to provide studies in which the founders appear as a central subject? Is the term or theme American focused? An abbreviated list of the excluded index (key identifier) terms appear
in Appendix A. The excluded terms listed are those terms that appeared in more than two-plus
search result dissertations in the general search and all search result dissertations in the other
(AB, TI, DISKW) searches.85
The results of each database criteria search were analyzed (via Excel Pivot Tables,
graphs, and formulas) according to three measures or set of questions. First, what was the total
number of times each founder appeared in dissertations by year and in general? This question
will be answered with graphs of dissertation publishing location, publishing university, author,
advisor, and number of appearances in dissertations. Second, what is the relative interest in each
founder, what are the key works and ideology of each era, and what information can be gleaned
from Excel data summation? This set of questions was determined by examination of dissertation
84 For example, many George Washington dissertations had “California” or “George Washington University” as primary keywords. One example is Michael D. Block, “New England Merchants, the China Trade, and the Origins of California,” PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2011. Given that such dissertations rarely discuss Washington at length, they were removed from the study. 85 It is important to note that ProQuest only lists the top 100 (roughly) themes for each topic. During the three smaller searches (AB, TI, DISKW), this was not an issue, as most Founders did not have 100 individual themes. In the GEN search, the same cannot be said- for example, Thomas Jefferson’s last viewable theme had more than two dissertations associated with it. As such, there may be many additional dissertations that needed to be removed from the GEN search, especially in the larger-resulting founders. While the impact is likely minimal (even removing 100 topics with three results each would yield only 300 less dissertations for Jefferson, who had over 7,000 total- an impact of less than 5%), it should be noted. 41 titles, abstracts, and keyword searches. Third, is there a noticeable shift in any founder’s popularity or scholarly interest? If so, how and why? These final questions were answered with data analysis and topic models (used in the “Data Analysis and Findings” and “Period Analysis” chapters).
Graphs shown have been formatted both in absolute value and relative percentages. In absolute terms, the graphs show the total number of times each founder appeared in each search.
To determine relative percentages, the total number of founder appearances was divided by the total number of history and American history dissertations. This was done for every year and era.
See the example below for an approximation of the data technique this study employs:
Table 2.1: John Doe Yearly Appearances, Example86
Total # of
History or
Amer. History Absolute # of Relative %
Year Limitation Dissertations Appearances (Absolute/Total)
1905 Title 1,000 200 20%
1976 Title 2,000 200 10%
2001 Title 3,000 275 9.2%
86 Numbers for the example were chosen explicitly and are not representative of research findings or expectations. John Doe is a fictional founder name chosen solely for example purposes. 42
As can be seen in the above example, John Doe appears in the same number of
dissertations in both 1905 and 1976—200. However, when compared to the overall number of
history dissertations, his relative percentage is much smaller in 1976. This means the percentage
of doctoral students interested in Doe was significantly higher in 1905 than 1976, despite Doe
appearing in 200 dissertations both years. Given the obvious growth of the historical academy
throughout the 20th Century and the limitations of comparing absolute numbers over periods of
expected growth, relative percentage statistics and graphs appear in greater quantities throughout
the study than absolute number of appearances.
After completed each data retrieval, I exported the data to Microsoft Excel, where most numerical analysis was completed.87 Data analyzed includes founder appearances in each year
and era (as determined by peaks and valleys of relative percentages), state of dissertation
completed, and university, both individually and collectively. Dissertation advisors were also
analyzed. Notable findings are discussed within the appropriate chapter section. The complete,
uninterpreted results from each search appear in Appendix A.88
Data and Study Limitations
While I have done my best to ensure this is a fair and accurate study, there are shortfalls.
By itself, data does not tell a story—it is neutral, raw, and complicated. Data captures and can be
used as pieces of evidence, but without a flowing narrative or logical endpoint, numbers are
87 Unfortunately, ProQuest does not export directly to Excel. To solve this problem, I exported the ProQuest searches (in the form of sources) into RefWorks. I then exported the sources from RefWorks into an XLM file, which was then saved and imported into Excel under the “Data-From Other Sources-XLM” tab. For the purposes of adjusted percentages and specific dissertation analysis, duplicate dissertations (dissertations that were counted for multiple Founders but need not be examined more than once) were searched for and removed twice- once in RefWorks and once in Excel. These two processes removed all duplicate dissertations. 88 A complete list of analyzed dissertation titles from the three limitation searches will be available upon request. The list is vast and cumbersome. 43
useless. Throughout this thesis, I interpret evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, that strongly supports my conclusions and findings. The qualitative evidence will be easy to track and replicate by following footnotes. Unfortunately, it will be difficult to duplicate my exact quantitative process.
To mitigate such complications and addresses concerns about data inaccuracy or unreliable evidence, the next few paragraphs will be devoted to examining this studies’ research limits, including discussing and acknowledging potential methodological pitfalls and each search’s individual limitations. This conversation, in addition to my methodology section and transparent sharing of data results, was crafted to allow readers to clearly understand my historical methods.
First, personal biases may have impacted the data. I am a white male, heterosexual, and college educated American citizen. I was born into a middle middle-class family. While my family is Catholic, I have been Agnostic Atheist since I was a teenager. Politically and socially, I lean left. As a researcher and American student of history, I naturally have preconceived notions of what qualifies as a “Founding Father” embedded from my childhood education—I was always led to believe the only important Revolutionary era political leaders, and hence the only
“Founding Fathers,” were Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Franklin, and Madison. I have chosen to survey an expansive list of fifty-nine (plus twenty-two in the final chapter) individuals in part to counteract said notion.
Furthermore, I am naturally making implicit assumptions as to what evidence, in this case data and graphs, are pertinent to consider the questions I have raised. Aside from pointing readers to Appendix A and B to view additional data, it is my belief that each chosen graph succinctly illustrates my findings. Meaning, while only a single graph from one of the four 44
searches (AB, TI, DISKW, GEN) may be shown, my interpretation represents the sum of the
data I collected.
I have previously mentioned the possibility of user error but will expand upon the previous discussions. Dissertations that could have an argument to be included or excluded were
decided upon by me, presenting potential errors. For example, “John Quincy Adams” was oft
excluded from “John Adams” searches, despite the likelihood of John Quincy Adams
dissertations also discussing John Adams centrally. I have attempted to include all relevant
dissertations for every founder, but because I did not have time to view every dissertation, there
are undoubtedly dissertations that should have been included but were not. Through
standardizing my methodology, I was able to find what I believe to be consistently accurate
results regardless of methodical errors.
On an individual data level, some dissertations that should not have been reviewed
inevitably entered the data pool. A few A.M. (Masters of Art), M.A (Master of Arts), and some
non-History doctoral dissertations were counted among the three data limitation searches, despite
the focus of this study being American historians. A few other dissertations were written in
Canada and England. In total, between fifteen and twenty-five dissertation results that did not fit
the methodological restrictions entered the data-pool due to some combination of personal and
database error.89 Most of these were from the earlier periods (1873 to the early 1950s).
There are also problems inherent in metadata—specifically, inexact findings. Even if one
were to repeat my exact process, the nature of working with metadata often leads to non-exact
89 There were 539, 263, and 203 total dissertation results (duplicates removed) in the Abstract, Title, and Keyword searches, respectively. In total, 1005 individual dissertations were found. Even by taking the high-end of the estimate (25) and assuming all were found in all three searches (75 inaccurate results), the data-error percentage would be 7%, within the 5-10% generally accepted percent-error. If you consider the likelihood that all searches did not contain the same dissertations (say, 55), percent-error falls to 5%. 45
results. In other words, the same search may yield twenty-five results for Benjamin Banneker one time and twenty-seven another time. These differences are common in metadata analysis and rarely affect the data or data analysis in significant quantities. Although there are limitations and shortfalls to the methodology, I remain steadfast in my beliefs in this study’s findings and usefulness as a succinct and clear tracking of founder popularity.
With that in mind, I want to highlight what this study is not and what it should not be considered. It was only a search for individuals in dissertations, meaning other kinds of searches, such as broad studies of the “Founding Fathers,” may not appear.90 While focusing on historical
topics such as slavery and women’s studies would likely increase African American and female
percentages, there was no clear method of integration of such searches into my methodology (an
abbreviated methodology of these groups was attempted in the “The New Founders?” chapter).
Similarly, this study is not a definitive search of early American or American Revolution
historiography, it is only a search of founders in dissertations. For a study of early American
historiography, see “Go West: Mapping Early American Historiography” (2008), which tracks
historical journals of early America.91 As I only examined American dissertations, American
popular and public memory is not a primary finding of this search.92 Finally, this study does not
consider media’s involvement in memory creation, nor does it aim to fully explain or explain
90 For example, Bethany Leigh Johnson, “Regionalism, Race, and the Meaning of the Southern Past: Professional History in the American South, 1896-1961.” PhD diss., Rice University, 2001, is a study that focuses on subsections of population rather than individuals. 91 Claudio Saunt, “Go West: Mapping Early American Historiography,” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol 65 no 4. (October 2008): 745-778. 92 For studies examining popular and public memory of the American Revolution era, see Fighting Over the Founders (2015) or Michael A. McDonnell, Clare Corbould, Editors, Remembering the Revolution: Memory, History, and Nation Making from Independence to the Civil War (Boston, University of Massachusetts Press. 2013). 46
why Americans remember the founders in such ways. I am merely concerned with showing the
results, briefly analyzing them, and connecting to existing phenomena and historiographies.93
General (GEN or Gen) Search Limitations
The largest search, the General search, had several minor complications. The issue of
dissertation results appearing that did not actually reference the founder (i.e. George Washington
and George Washington Carver) were abundant and removed to the best of my ability.
Additionally, the nature of searching anywhere in dissertations means this search repeated the other three searches. Meaning, however minimally, the three searches directly impacted the
General search results. However, the other three searches combined for approximately 1,500 search results, representing only 3% of the total results from the General search.
Due to the large size of this search (over 50,000 results), the dissertations were not exported from ProQuest to Excel. There are undoubtedly repeat results, duplicate dissertations, and inflated search sizes. The vast size rendered me unable to independently confirm each dissertation as valid, something I was able to do with the three prior searches. These problems apply to all fifty-nine founders examined (the methodology was standardized), so, in theory, repeat dissertation inflation should have occurred in equal percentages across all results, ensuring the basic findings remain the same.
Due to the lack of exported dissertations, this search lacked yearly tracking data from
ProQuest, a key feature of the other three searches. To counter this issue, I independently surveyed yearly dissertations results for the top seven resulting founders (explained later as
Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, Adams, Madison, and Paine), who constituted over
93 For a study that does consider media’s involvement in the memory of the Revolution, see Janice Hume, “Media, Memory and Revolution,” Journal of the American Revolution, (October 2013). 47
50% of the General search results. General search decade totals were completed for all other
founders. Finally, given the lack of concrete and specific dissertation results, this search was
only used to examine broad and general trends in founder scholarship rather than period analysis
or specific characteristics.
Abstract (AB) Search Limitations
This search only found dissertations dated 1977 forward. Seemingly, 1977 was the first
year ProQuest linked abstracts for all uploaded dissertations. I did not find any specific
information on ProQuest supporting this claim but given the lack of abstracts associated with
dissertations prior to 1977 in any of the three limitation searches, it is safe to assume that is the
case. This does not mean dissertations written prior to 1977 did not have abstracts or were not
uploaded in-full, but rather that ProQuest did not associate a separate abstract with pre-1977
dissertations. As such, this search can only be used to examine trends from 1977 on, and I was
forced to rely on the smaller Title and Keyword searches, as well as the larger but less concrete
General search, when examining founder interest prior to 1977.
Title (TI) Search Limitations
Titles did not always indicate a dissertation’s main topic. For example, a dissertation discussing Benjamin Franklin could simply be titled “An Analysis of the First American
‘Renaissance Man.’” Franklin would likely appear as a main subject, yet the dissertation would not appear in this search due to not referencing Franklin in the title. Hopefully, one of the other
searches (Abstract, Keyword, or General) found and counted such dissertations, but it did not count in this search. 48
In addition, dissertations with only last or first names (such as “Hancock” or “Henry
Lee”) would not be found in this search, despite their obvious discussion of a founder. While the standardized methodology ensures the same subset of dissertations were not counted for each search, someone such as George Washington may have had many additional dissertations not counted because dissertations solely referenced his popular last name in the title. This is a database variable that cause minor variations in the results.
Keyword (DISKW) Search Limitations
The Keyword search returned the fewest results. Given that the data sample is only between 203 and 211 individual dissertations (depending on removal of error-permitted dissertations), the DISKW search needed to follow a similar trend in one of the largest searches to be cited in this thesis.
One of the other main factors affecting the Keyword search was the abundance of dissertations that did not cite associated keywords. For the dissertations that did associate keywords, many only had one or two keywords covering general themes or topics rather than specific founders, despite the founder appearing prominently in the dissertation. Unfortunately, there was no succinct way to avoid this issue without reading each abstract or dissertation.
Reading each dissertation was impractical and reading the abstracts un-standardized this search from the other searches. As such, I chose to solely include those dissertations that listed a founder as a keyword for simplicity, accuracy, and transparency. Finally, this search also has a heavy recency bias, like the Abstract search. Only four dissertations were dated prior to 1991, with none appearing in the years 1954-1975, one of the larger eras of founder discussion. This recency bias was considered, and due caution was taken prior to analyzing and using DISKW search graphs. 49
With the above limitations discussed, methodology explained, and definition of
‘Founding Fathers” explored, this study will now shift to data analysis and findings, both of which will be discussed in the following two sections, “Data Analysis and Findings” and “Period
Analysis.” 50
CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
This chapter discusses and examines general findings gleamed from basic data analysis of the four database searches. The findings paint a picture of an oligarchical patriarchy of founder literature, with the Top Seven White Male Founders (Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Franklin,
John Adams, Hamilton, Paine) dominating discussion and research and the rest (including known individuals such as John Hancock and not well-known individuals such as Ebenezer Mackintosh) trailing significantly behind.
General Search Parameters
The study included at least one founder from each of the original thirteen colonies, including Vermont and Rhode Island, which were primary or secondary residences for at least one founder.
Home or Primary Associated States of Selected Founders 20 18 16 18 14 12 10 12 8 9 6 8 4 2 5 5 4 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 RI NJ SC VT PA DE NY VA CN NC GA NH ME MA MD France Oneida Mohawk Germany Cherokee Sierra Leone
Figure 3.1: Home or Primary Associated States of Selected Founders. Some founders have two associated states or locations. For example, John Dickinson was both a President of Delaware and Pennsylvania, as well as a congressman from both states. Hence, he was counted as from Delaware and Pennsylvania. Vermont was represented by Ethan Allen, who also represented Connecticut. Maine was represented by Samuel Thompson, who lived there both when it was a part of Massachusetts. As such, he was counted towards both Massachusetts and Maine. Non- 51
American states such as Sierra Leone were home to individuals discussed in the final chapter entitled, “The New Founders?” Germany was not a unified country during the American Revolution and the “Germany” entry actually refers to Prussia, but Germany remains in the graph for ease of understanding. As can be seen in Figure 3.1, Massachusetts had the most representation in the study,
with many individuals residing in Boston, including John Adams. Virginia had twelve founders,
with Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, and Maryland rounding out the top five.
Geographically, all but Virginia and Maryland were considered northern or middle colonies, meaning there is a possible northern basis to this study and founder literature in general.94
However, given that many of the most well-known founders are from these states, with Virginia,
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York being political and population powerhouses from
the era, it was logical to represent these states the most.
General Findings
Of the total search results, the top white-male founders, who will formally be referred to
as the Top Seven Founders (or Top Seven White Male Founders) unless otherwise noted, always
constituted at least 50% of the non-adjusted search results—the total search results without
duplicate dissertations removed.95 Using adjusted search results (all of the graphs represent
94 Maryland was a Union state during the Civil War but is located below the Mason-Dixon Line and was considered a border state. As such, it is possible to consider Maryland as either a Northern Union state or a Southern slave state. During the American Revolution, Maryland was largely governed by southern values and norms. For a analysis of the complexities associated with Maryland’s history, see Mark A. Swank, Dreama J. Swank, Maryland in the Civil War (South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing Company, 2013). 95 Duplicate dissertations refer to dissertations that were imported to Excel multiple times due to appearing as a search result for multiple founders. For example, an abstract may have mentioned both John Adams and John Dickinson——therefore, the same dissertation would appear when searching for both individuals on ProQuest. Unless otherwise noted, the percentages expressed in the graphs represent adjusted search result percentages. With that in mind, the exact percentages of unadjusted search results for the Top Seven White Male Founders were: 77% in the Abstract search, 62% in the Title search, 75% in the Keyword search, and 52% in the General search. 52
adjusted search results), that number balloons to over 60% in the Abstract, Title, and Keyword
searches.96
Percentage of Top Seven Founders to the Whole, General Search Results
Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, Jay 48.01% 51.99% Other 74 Founders
Figure 3.2: Percentage of Top Seven Founders to Whole, General Search Results. This was the smallest percentage relative to the whole the Top Seven Founders constituted, illustrating their dominance of founder dissertations. This graph includes the additional twenty-two individuals examined in the final chapter.
Thomas Jefferson Percentage of Total- Abstract 35.00% 30.00% 25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.00% 5.00% 0.00% 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
% to Total AB % of Total AB Adj
Figure 3.3: Thomas Jefferson Percentage of Abstract Results, Adjusted (Duplicate Dissertations Removed) and Un-Adjusted. As can be seen, the percentage difference is rather small until the
96 The exact percentages of adjusted search results for the Top Seven White Male Founders were: 105% in the Abstract search, 66% in the Title search, and 88% in the Keyword search. 53
middle of the graph (total dissertation appearances), when there is a 5% difference between unadjusted and adjusted percentages. The Top Seven White Male Founders, called such because of their placing within the top
seven of all search results, are Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin,
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Adams, and Thomas Paine. John Jay did appear in
more search results in the General search than Thomas Paine (1931 to 1544), as did Benjamin
Rush (1586 to 1544), but Thomas Paine outpaced both in the Abstract, Title, and Keyword
searches significantly enough that I feel comfortable placing him above the other two.97
Percentage of the Adjusted Abstract Search Results by Top Seven Founders 35.00% 30.00% 25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.00% 5.00% 0.00%
Figure 3.4: Percentage of the Adjusted Abstract Search Results by Top Seven Founders. As can be seen, these men comprise well over 50% of the adjusted search results, with a sizable drop-off between Washington and Madison, Madison and Franklin, and Adams and Paine.
97 Jay and Rush fared poorly compared to Paine in the other searches. Paine had twenty-eight dissertations in the abstract search compared to Jay’s fourteen and Rush’s ten, sixteen to seven and two in the title search, and fifteen to one and four in the keyword search. The reason I am coining the “Top Seven” rather than the “Top Six” is twofold; In the general results a seventh founder was needed to reach over 50% of total results and Thomas Paine outpaced Alexander Hamilton (a perennial top resulting founder) in the Title search, appearing in the top six of search results. However, there is a dip between the top six founders (Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Franklin, Madison) and Thomas Paine. As such, the Top Seven Founders is tiered as such: Jefferson and Washington, Hamilton and Adams and Franklin and Madison, then Paine. Alternatively, Paine could be considered the top founder of the next group (Jay, Rush, Morris, etc.). 54
Not only did the Top Seven Founders always appear in a majority of the adjusted search results, but there was always a sizable gap between the Top Seven Founders and the next resulting individual in each search.
GEN Search Total, Top Nine Most Results 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 7029 3000 6576 2000 4440 3154 2861 1000 2298 1931 1586 1544 0
Figure 3.5: Top Nine Resulting Founders in the General Search.
AB Search Total, Top Eight Most Results 180 160 167 140 145 120 100 80 60 80 40 53 48 47 20 28 14 0
Figure 3.6: Top Eight Resulting Founders in the Abstract Search. Mercy Otis Warren and other “New Founders” from groups such as African Americans and Native Americans will be examined in the final chapter of this thesis entitled, “The New Founders?” 55
TI Search Total- Top Eight Most Results 60
50
40
30 54 20 28 26 10 19 18 16 14 9 0
Figure 3.7: Top Eight Resulting Founders in the Title Search.
DISKW Search Total- Top Eight Most Results 70 58 60
50
40 28 28 30 20 19 18 20 15
10 6
0
Figure 3.8: Top Eight Resulting Founders in the Keyword Search. Regardless the search or individuals ranking 7th and 8th, there was always a 25%+ dip between the two ranks. There was roughly a 25% drop-off from John Jay to Benjamin Rush and
Thomas Paine in the General search (Figure 3.5) and a 50% drop-off from Thomas Paine to 56
Mercy Otis Warren in the Abstract search (Figure 3.6). In the Title search (Figure 3.7) there was roughly a 35% drop-off between the seventh highest result-getting (Hamilton) and the eighth
(Dickinson), and the Keyword search saw a massive drop from Paine to Mercy Otis Warren
(Figure 3.8). No individual beyond Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Adams, Madison, Paine,
Hamilton, or Jay ever appeared within the Top Seven, with Mercy Otis Warren, Benjamin Rush, and John Witherspoon finishing 8th in at least once search each, but never coming close to
hopping into the seventh spot. The clear drop-off between the Top Seven and the rest of the
founders illuminates two important characteristics of Revolutionary American scholarship.
First, the drop-off definitively indicates the existence of a tier system of founders in
American academic dissertations, which is also prevalent in American popular culture. These tiers may also be called clusters of importance or significance—those individuals in higher or top
clusters are discussed more often than those in lower clusters.
Residing in the top tier are Thomas Jefferson and George Washington: they outpaced all
other founders in the total search results. The next tier consists of Franklin, Madison, Hamilton,
and Adams. These men finished with the third to sixth most search results in all four searches,
with the only exception being Hamilton finishing seventh in the Title search (Figure 3.8). Next is 57
Thomas Paine, who does not fit neatly into the above three groups but appeared more than every other founder. After those seven, the tiers start to get muddier.
Non-Top Seven Founder Appearances in the Title Search 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0
Figure 3.9: Non-Top Seven Founder Appearances in the Title Search.
Non-Top Seven Founder Appearances in the General Search 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0
Figure 3.10: Non-Top Seven Founder Appearances in the General Search. There are notable drop-offs in multiple places, with each dip indicating a tier of discussion in American Revolution scholarship. After the Top Seven Founders (or Top Nine in the General search), there are significant drops in total results between the next resulting founder 58
(the drop from Hamilton to Witherspoon is about 40% and the drop from Wilson to Hancock is
about 30%). This drop-off is the basis for my rationale of the Top Seven Founders—following their results, which are always north of 50% of the total, there are large and steady declines.
Examining the full General search results provides a clear picture of which founders were discussed the most.
Figure 3.11: Total General Search Results. Obvious trends and “tiers” or clusters of founders emerge, indicating each founder’s place in American dissertations. Individuals considered “New Founders” were included in this graph to allow for relative placement. Again, the Top Seven Founders, all white males, appear the most. Then, there is a
grouping of other well-known white male founders (Samuel Adams, Rufus King, John
Witherspoon). Following them are founders who have little, but still some, academic appeal
(William Blout, Caesar Rodney, etc.) and following them are the truly unknown or unheralded
individuals—James Cleveland, John Waller, etc. It would be impractical to place every founder into an arbitrary tier, but there is some form of founder selection grouping, unconsciously or 59
consciously, that is embedded within American Revolutionary scholarship that impacts what
scholars write about, whom they discuss, and whom they see as most important.
Second, while Washington may be a lynchpin of American culture, Jefferson is the most
discussed founder by American history researchers. Unquestionably, George Washington
remains a pillar of America. George Washington University, Mount Vernon, the Washington
Monument, the nickname “The Father of Our Country,” and many other public monuments are
dedicated in his honor. He has a state (Washington) and the nation’s capital (Washington D.C.)
named after him. Many children’s books tell the story of George, who shows up regularly as
America’s favorite and most well-known Founding Father.98 Jefferson, popular as he may be, has
never seemed to eclipse Washington as the prototypical founder in the public sphere. For
example, Jefferson also has a monument in Washington D.C.—the Jefferson Memorial.
However, the Washington Monument was built in 1848, roughly 95 years prior to the Jefferson
Memorial. Jefferson has many children’s books and biographies where he appears as the main
subject— Washington has more. Jefferson is commonly viewed as the sole author of the
Declaration of Independence and polls as one of America’s best presidents—one of the few
presidents often ranked above him is Washington.99 Jefferson is loved in American culture—but
98 For example, Amy Boal, “The Best American Founding Fathers,” Ranker.com, Accessed online at: https://www.ranker.com/list/best-founding-fathers/amylindorff has George Washington as the top “Founding Father” with over 1,400 “Up” votes. Another Ranker.com list, Mel Judson, “The Most Important Leaders in U.S. History,” Ranker.com, Accessed online at: https://www.ranker.com/list/most-important-leaders-in-us-history/mel- judson has Washington second (behind Lincoln), although he has the most “Up” votes. Two other top Google search result lists, Josh Herr, “12 Founding Fathers, Ranked!,” The Fiscal Times, July 2, 2015, Fiscal Times, Accessed online at:http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Media/Slideshow/2015/07/02/15-Founding- Fathers-Ranked and Miyako Singer, “Our Founding Fathers, Ranked,” The Daily Californian, July 2, 2015, Accessed online at: http://www.dailycal.org/2015/07/03/our-founding-fathers-ranked/ have Washington second behind Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, respectively. These are obviously biased and personal opinions, but it does speak to the inherent admiration many Americans have for Washington. 99 For example, the “2017 Presidential Historians Survey,” CSPAN, Accessed online at: https://www.c- span.org/presidentsurvey2017/ voted Washington the second-best President, Jefferson the seventh. 60
there is only one George Washington. However, these results indicate that in the world of
American academia, Jefferson is regularly more discussed than Washington.
What explains the pluralistic rule of the Top Seven Founders? Speculation leads to few
definitive conclusions but does provide many potential reasons. Seemingly, there is an element
of self-fulfilling prophecy associated with these results. George Washington has well over 30
bound collections of his works and multiple archival collections across the country. The same
can be said for Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and the other Top Seven
Founders. Roger Sherman, a respected and influential politician in his own right but not one of
the Top Seven, only has one volume of works (released in 2012) and few archival collections
bearing his papers.100 Similar stories can be told for Paul Revere, John Hancock, John Dickinson,
etc. Whether these individuals simply left less papers, their work was destroyed, or historians did
not care to preserve them, there is less accessible primary sources by non-Top Seven founders.
Given the lack of primary material, it is expected that Sherman and Hancock would appear in
fewer dissertations than Washington. However, these collections and published works of the
founders are deceptive. Washington may be written about more now that his works are collected,
but why were they originally collected in such volume? They were collected because there was
Ranker Community, ‘Greatest U.S. Presidents of All-Time," Ranker.com, Accessed online at: https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-u-s-presidents-from-best-to-worst had Washington first, Jefferson third. Robert Murray, Tim Blessing, Greatness in the White House (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 1990) found that liberals ranked Washington third and Jefferson fourth, conservatives Washington second and Jefferson fourth. “Washington, Lincoln Most Popular Presidents: Nixon, Bush Least Popular,” Rasmussen Reports, July 4, 2007, Accessed online at: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/people2/2007/washington_lincoln_most_popular_preside nts_nixon_bush_least_popular, a poll conducted Rasmussen Reports, found that Washington scored a Net Favorable ranking of 92%, Jefferson an 85%. Consistently, Jefferson is near the top, but behind Washington. 100 Mark David Hall, Collected Works of Roger Sherman (Indiana: Liberty Fund, 2016). 61
demand for his works, indicating his popularity even prior to the 20th Century. Access of archival collections in determining these results are no doubt a factor, but they do not tell the entire story.
There is also the role of precedent in determining whom American historians discuss and study. See the role of Mason Locke Weems, the first biographer of George Washington. Weems published the Life of Washington in 1800, with multiple editions quickly following. One of these editions contained the “cherry tree” myth, which states that Washington, when asked if he cut down a cherry-tree, allegedly “could not tell a lie” and indicted himself.101 The myth was created
by Weems to sell books and capitalize on the nation’s desire to learn about the former
president—there was, and remains, no evidence of such an event occurring. The myth would
continue to gain traction, with educator William McGuffey expanding upon it in the 1830s and
1840s by publishing and teaching it in his classroom textbooks.102 The “cherry tree” myth
continues to this day. This story, besides being endlessly entertaining and telling of American
culture, points to the vital role of precedent in founder literature. Weems was the first biographer
of Washington—his work potentially set the structure, layout, and importance of future
Washington biographies (the book was a best-seller and further solidified Washington in
American culture), as well as guided the form and type of discussions historians have held on
Washington since. Even though the myth has largely been viewed as false, it continues to occupy
historian’s time and persists as a form of cultural heritage. It is possible similar precedents and
cultural stories led to specific founders being remembered more than others.
101 Jay Richardson, “Cherry Tree Myth,” Washington Library, Accessed online at: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/cherry-tree-myth/. Also see François Furstenberg, In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Penguin, 2006), which explores the role civic texts had in shaping early American nationalism, including positioning Washington as the primary leader of the era. 102 Quentin R. Skrabec, William McGuffey: Mentor to American Industry (New York: Algora Publishing, 2009). 224-226. 62
Shifting to the founders themselves, I posit that each of these individuals, at least the top
resulting ones, embody some form of value that Americans hold. As discussed in Andrew
Schocket’s Fighting Over the Founders, many different occupations and types of Americans
(politicians, workers, etc.) admire the founders for different reasons.103 All are used to incite
specific reactions and are held in high esteem for certain qualities they possessed. That is not to
say the founders who appeared less often do not embody American ideals, but it is no
coincidence that individual founders increased and decreased in popularity period to period,
decade to decade, year to year. This is because each embodies or represent different values, with these values shifting in importance in America culture. This assumption is beyond the scope of
this thesis’ analysis, but interesting to ponder and discuss.
The role of population and the state each founder resided must also be noted. Many
medium-to-large states (population wise during the American Revolution) are home to many of the top resulting individuals. Massachusetts, long one of the key political regions of the United
States, is home to top founders such as John Adams, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock.
Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, etc., all follow similar trends—they house either large swaths of people or operate as political powerhouses (or both), and hence see many of their ilk
discussed more often than smaller states. For example, New Hampshire’s John Langdon, signer
of the Constitution, appeared in almost no dissertations. New Hampshire is a small state, both
politically and population wise. Despite New Hampshire being an original state, its leaders were
less prevalent and discussed than those of larger states. Exceptions exist (Carter Braxton, a
Virginian signer of the Declaration of Independence, also saw scarce results), but all the top
103 Fighting over the Founders, 30, 35. 63
resulting founders were from medium-to-large population states or political powerhouses (with
the exception of John Dickinson, who had residences in both Delaware and Pennsylvania).
Location Findings
Total Dissertations by State of Completion
17 19 18 18 New York 24 California 30 118 Virginia 32 Illinois 34 99 Massachusetts 35 Pennsylvania 37 88 District of Columbia 42 New Jersey 44 71 49 58 Texas North Carolina
Figure 3.12: Total Dissertations by State of Completion. New York, a highly populated state with top universities such as New York University,
Columbia University, and Cornell University, appeared most often with 118 dissertations.
California, Virginia, Illinois, and Massachusetts round out the top five, with Pennsylvania,
Washington D.C., New Jersey, Texas, and North Carolina in the top ten. These states each house at least one marquee (they have many students) university in their ranks, sometimes including flagship state universities and Ivy League schools. In addition, all but Texas and California are eastern states, with the most common states by dissertation being in the eastern or midwestern regions of the country. This distribution echoes the U.S. educational system and population distribution, with the most college educated state population in America being centralized on the 64 coasts, eastern midwestern, northeast, and some specific southern regions of the United States, and swaths of the west, midwest, and south less collegially educated.104
University Findings
Top Title Search Degree-Granting Universities
Brown University The Catholic University of America University of Pennsylvania University of California, Berkeley Yale University Total Rutgers The State University of New… The University of North Carolina at Chapel… The University of Chicago 0 5 10 15 20 25
Figure 3.13: Top Degree- Granting Universities in the Title Search.
Top Abstract Search Degree-Granting Universities
University of South Carolina 10 10 New York University 10 11 Rutgers The State University of New Jersey -… 11 12 Yale University 12 16 University of Virginia 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
Figure 3.14: Top Degree- Granting Universities in the Abstract Search.
104 U.S. Department of Education, “State-by-State College Attainment,” July, 2012, Accessed online at: https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/new-state-state-college-attainment-numbers-show-progress-toward-2020- goal. For an analysis of the lack of diversity and eastern-centric focus of early America historiography, see “Go West: Mapping Early American Historiography.” 65
Top Keyword Search Degree-Granting Universities
Boston College Indiana University University of Connecticut
George Mason University Total Drew University State University of New York at Albany University of Virginia 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Figure 3.15: Top Degree- Granting Universities in the Keyword Search. Many of the top history doctorate programs were found to be the home of the most
completed dissertations. The University of Virginia, aided by large archival collections such as
the George Washington Papers and the interest associated with their founder, Thomas Jefferson,
topped the Abstract and Keyword searches. The University of Chicago and Columbia University
topped the Title search. Like the location findings, most of the universities awarding degrees for
founder dissertations are located on the East Coast, near the original thirteen colonies. This is to
be expected, given the likelihood that many of these universities house or are near founder
archival collections. In other words, the founders did not live in or near Oklahoma, so the
University of Oklahoma is less likely to have access to George Washington’s Papers than the
University of Virginia, which is located in Washington’s home state and associated with
numerous other founders, including university founder Thomas Jefferson.
These initial findings point to another interesting aspect of founder scholarship: size of an
institution matters less than founder location proximity, interest, and potential availability of
archival collections.105 It will be interesting to examine how increasing digitization and bound
105 For example, Texas A & M and the University of Florida, which are two of the largest universities in the United States, do not appear near the top of any search. The size of the program did not affect results as much as university location and archival proximity. Of course, the size of history PhD programs is also a factor in these rankings, 66
collections of founder writings impact future university founder interest. Will further western
and southern history departments be more active in the Revolutionary America doctoral field, or
do old and collection-rich institutions continue to dominate? For now, the founders are still most
likely to be studied at in eastern academic institutions.106
Advisor Findings
Most Dissertation Advisements in the Keyword Search 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Total
Figure 3.16: Most Dissertation Advisements in the Keyword Search. No specific advisor played an overly prominent role in any search. In the three searches
from which the dissertation results were exported from ProQuest (Abstract, Title, and Keyword),
the highest recurring advisor was Don Higginbotham in the Keyword search at five. The
Keyword search had 211 results, so Don Higginbotham advised roughly 2.4% of founder
dissertations in the Keyword search, hardly a monopoly. Even including all advisors who
however, due to the complexity and constantly evolving nature of doctoral programs, exact tracking of early American or American Revolution program significance is difficult. For a list of top current history doctoral programs, see “Best History Programs, 2017,” U.S. News & World Report, 2017, Accessed online at: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/history-rankings. 106 The size of history programs from each university was not fully considered, given the impracticability of completing such extensive research in the time allotted to complete a thesis. 67
advised more than one dissertation (seen above in Figure 3.16), they advised only 11.4% of the
search results. While five-plus dissertations advised is a significant workload, the data does not suggest one single advisor significantly impacted founder dissertation results.
With that said, this data is far from complete. Unfortunately, many dissertation search results either did indicate the advisor or ProQuest did not export advisor information. In every search, most resulting dissertations had “[blank]” or “no advisor” listed as their dissertation advisor. While the data currently does not point to any significant impact of current advisors on
American Revolution literature, there remains the possibility that someone such as Don
Higginbotham may have had an outsized impact on founder studies, despite no direct correlation found.
Era Periodizations
From an absolute appearance standpoint, the number of dissertations discussing founders
increased from 1880 to 1970, briefly dipped in 1980, then rose significantly after 1990. There may be another slight dip from the 2000s to the 2010s, but because the decade is ongoing, that cannot be clearly determined. Additionally, the absolute number of American history and history dissertations (Figure 3.18) is almost the exact same shape as the Decade Absolute Interest graph
(Figure 3.18), suggesting that American founder scholarship is significantly positively correlated with the historical field at-large. 68
Figure 3.17: Total Founder Appearances in the General Search by Decade (Absolute Interest).
Total American History Dissertations by Year 1600
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0 1873 1879 1885 1891 1897 1903 1909 1915 1921 1927 1933 1939 1945 1951 1957 1963 1969 1975 1981 1987 1993 1999 2005 2011 2017
Figure 3.18: Total American History Dissertations Yearly. As can be seen, yearly American History trends (3.18) are similar to the founder decade trend (3.17). 69
Absolute Yearly Founder Interest 2040
2020
2000
1980
1960
1940
1920
1900
1880 0.00% 0.50% 1.00% 1.50% 2.00% 2.50% 3.00% 3.50% 4.00%
Figure 3.19: Absolute Total Founder Interest in the General Search Yearly. The Top Seven Founders were used as subjects given their 51% majority of results. Moving beyond the General search, the three limitation searches are remarkably similar.
All three show significant upticks in 1990, with consistent high totals in the following decades.
Furthermore, the Abstract and Title searches mimic the General search in that they show slight peaks in the 1970s to early 1980s. In the absolute sense, there is a rising trend in the late 1960s and mid-1970s, followed by a dip from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, followed by massive growth. 70
Total Founders Appearences in Title Search Yearly 8
7
6
5
4 Ph.D. 3
2
1
0 1895 1913 1927 1930 1935 1938 1943 1948 1953 1956 1959 1963 1966 1969 1972 1975 1978 1981 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016
Figure 3.20: Total Founder Appearances in the Title Search Yearly. The Title search was the only limitation search encompassing the entire 20th century. It largely mirrors the General search results trends. As the only two searches encompassing the entirety of surveyed dissertations and showing similar trends, the General and Title searches served as the largest influencers on my era periodizations, which divides the entirety of 20th century early American dissertation historiography into five distinct historical periods. Because I divided the entire 20th century, it was necessary to have multiple and complete dissertation statistics for the entire period to ensure accuracy and numerical evidence.
Total Appearences in Abstract Search Yearly 30
25
20
15 Ph.D. 10
5
0 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017
Figure 3.21: Total Founder Appearances in the Abstract Search Yearly. 71
Total Appearences in Keyword Search Yearly 16
14
12
10
8
6 Ph.D. 4
2
0
Figure 3.22: Total Founder Appearances in the Keyword Search Yearly. Both the Abstract and Keyword searches are heavily biased towards recent dissertations given the lack of results pre- 1977, which these graphs reflect. However, even with the bias, it is evident that interest in the founders peaked in the mid-to-late 1990s. Shifting to relative interest, specific groupings and era periodizations can be established by examining the graph of yearly founder relative interest (Yearly Top Seven Founder
Total/Yearly Total of American History and History Dissertations).
Figure 3.23: Relative Interest in the Founders in the General Search. 72
Relative Interest in Founders Yearly, General Search 100.00% 90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020 2040
Figure 3.24: Relative Interest in the Founders in the General Search- Dot Graph. Figures 3.23 and 3.24 were determined using only the Top Seven Founders, who constituted 51% of the total results. For this study, relative interest was determined by total dissertations mentioning the founders divided by total early American dissertations. Unfortunately, that means the relative interest percentage counts one dissertation multiple times. For example, a dissertation may mention Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Sherman, Braxton, Franklin, and Jay. In that case, said dissertation would be counted seven separate times, hence inflating the relative interest percentage. Regardless of the inflated interest percentages, the relative interest general slope should remain the same. In other words, all the other data and historiography suggests that a similar shift has occurred. However, there is also the possibility that dissertation writers are simply associating more keywords, making it more likely these seven individuals will appear frequently. So, it could be that Washington is mentioned four times more than he used to be in keywords, because more keywords are being used now. There is not sure way to figure this out, but the possibility must be considered. From the above graphs and taking into consideration the absolute number of dissertations, I have divided founder scholarship into multiple periods. These periods are grouped according to similar data trends, totals, and characteristics. There are five total periods, each representing a unique era differentiated by academic interest, values, discussion, and other factors. Period 1 covers the years 1873 to 1925. The period is characterized by very low total
American Revolution dissertations and minimal relative interest in the founders. As such, I describe the period as, “The Early Days of American Academia.” Period 2 extends through the years 1926 to 1953. The period is characterized by mostly low dissertation totals and low relative 73
interest in the founders. The end of the period sees a slow and steady rise that would prove to be
the beginning of an academic boom in founder-related dissertations. I titled the period as, “The
Steady Rise of American Academia.” Period 3 covers the years 1954 to 1974 and is
characterized by a rapid rise in founder dissertations. Both total dissertations and founder relative
interest rose to record-levels, with the years preceding the 1976 Bicentennial leading to a lull in
American academia. I refer to the period as, “The Early Boom of American Academia.” Period 4 begins in 1975 and ends in 1992. These years saw a decline in total dissertations from the previous era, although relative interest in the founders stayed mostly the same. The end of the era is the beginning of the largest boom in American founder dissertations. The period is classified as, “The Post-War and Bicentennial Decline.” Period 5 is the present, ongoing period and started in 1993. It is characterized by huge increases in both total dissertations and interest, dwarfing the overall numbers of the previous boom of Period 3. Interest in the founders, and American history at large, has never been higher. The period is referred to as “founders chic.” 74
CHAPTER IV: PERIOD ANALYSIS
The Revolutionary America and founder historiographies have shifted dramatically in recent years with the emergence of “from below” social histories and an increased focus on forgotten or unheard historical voices (women, poor, minorities, middle-class, laborers, etc.).
Since 1873, there have been five distinct and unique periods of American Revolutionary scholarships; Period 1 (1873 to 1925), Period 2 (1926 to Period 3 (1954 to 1974), Period 4
(1975-1992), and Period 5 (present), with the stated shift towards “from below” histories bringing new individuals and subject matters to the surface while still focusing primarily on the
Top Seven Founders.
Methodology
Prior to detailing each period, I will briefly discuss the process I used to create the topic
models seen throughout this chapter. Topic analysis, also known as topic modeling, is a data
methodology which allows for individuals to search large swaths of data or documents for
clusters of words—“topics.” For example, a researcher may analyze presidential farewell
addresses and find independence, guns, safety, defense, department, foreign, insular, democracy,
battle, and ships constituted a significant cluster or “topic” of words. Peering deeper into the
topic cluster and using the data it provided (say, for example, this cluster appeared in 50% of
farewell addresses), it can be surmised that presidential farewell addresses often discuss war and
protection. These topics and their associated percentages are analyzed independently and used to
explain trends, examine cultural and personal values, understand past events, etc. To simplify,
the topic analysis algorithm identifies clusters of words, and the individual using the software
assigns and analyzes meaning of the clusters. In the case of this study, topic analysis was used to 75
characterize eras and examine trends, as well as group words together to determine what topics dominated historical discussion of each era.
Topic modeling was completed using MALLET, perhaps the most well-known topic
analysis tool, and Microsoft Excel.107 After downloading MALLET, I created .txt files (Plain
Text) for each period’s titles and abstracts.108 The .txt files were then imported into MALLET directly via the Command Prompt, where I ran the topic analysis command on each individual
.txt file. As the only exported dissertations were from the three limitation searches (AB, TI,
DISKW), only those searches’ dissertations were topic analyzed.109 Two topic analyses were
completed for each .txt file to ensure accurate results. The first topic analysis is considered
unweighted—MALLET attributed the same weight percentage to all groups. The second topic
analysis is considered weighted or optimized, meaning MALLET weighted the results. In reality,
there is not much difference between the two analyses beyond a simple line of code, although the
“optimized” version is believed to produce slightly more accurate topics.110 As such, in the event
of significant differences between the two analyses, more analysis was placed on the weighted,
optimized results.
107 There are many different programs that enable topic modeling, including Lemur, Orange, Weka, NVivo, Gensim, etc. I chose MALLET as it was the most readily available and highly recommended. 108 The following serves as an introduction to topic modeling, including instructions on how to download MALLET: Shawn Graham, Scott Weingart, Ian Milligan, “Getting Started with Topic Modeling and MALLET,” The Programming Historian, September 02, 2012, Updated September 06, 2018, Accessed online at: https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/topic-modeling-and-mallet. In addition, the following is an brief essay on the usefulness of topic modeling for the humanities, see Mathew Jockers, “The LDA Buffet is Now Open; or, Latent Dirichlet Allocation for English Majors,” September 29, 2011, Accessed online at: http://www.matthewjockers.net/2011/09/29/the-lda-buffet-is-now-open-or-latent-dirichlet-allocation-for-english- majors/. 109 I removed all non-Ph.D. dissertations prior to topic analysis, as well as the few (roughly seven) non-American dissertations that made it into one of the ProQuest searches. Given that this chapter examines specific trends and dissertation titles/abstracts, providing the most accurate results by ensuring only the completely relevant dissertations (over 95% of the original dissertations) were topic modeled was desirable. 110 “Getting Started with Topic Modeling and MALLET,” The Programming Historian. 76
The model data was exported to Microsoft Excel, where I created tables and graphs to
summarize and examine each topic. In total, there were sixteen total topic analyses, with the data
from each appearing in this chapter.111 The first twelve topic analyses, which included the
unoptimized and optimized topic models for titles and abstracts of Periods 2 through 5, was set
to produce twenty topic results, meaning MALLET outputted twenty topics to analyze. In all instances, particularly the later periods optimized searches, fewer than the full twenty topics created from the topic models are shown in the body text. This is due to the strong majority of the top few topics, the relative insignificance of many lower-resulting topics (which often saw less than 2 to 3% of results), for analytical simplicity, and to ensure the data was easily accessible and understandable. The remaining four models were created after the first twelve and consisted of Periods 2 through 5 dissertation titles. These models were created in response to inconclusive and somewhat difficult to analyze topic models for the titles of dissertations in all periods.112 As such, the formula on MALLET was adjusted to output only five topics (instead of
twenty), which allowed for tighter and easier to analyze word grouping and topic percentages.
All models appear fully in Appendix B (except for Period 2’s title optimized topic analysis).
Since abstracts were only available for dissertations written post-1977, only the final two periods
(Period 4, 1975 to1992, Period 5, 1993 to Present) were topic analyzed using abstracts. All five
periods were title topic analyzed, with Period 1 (1873-1925) being analyzed independent of
software due to its small sample size (three dissertations).
111 Except for Period 2’s optimized title topic analysis for its dissertations. The data appeared corrupt and inaccurate- all topics created were miniscule in number, except the top topic, which appeared in over 100% of the dissertations, an impossible percentage. Since the data was implausible and the unweighted topic analysis seemed unhindered, I discarded the search. 112 With the exception of Period 5’s optimized title search, which had a clear top topic with over 60% of results. 77
A reminder prior to the period analysis: topic model techniques are probabilistic. Every topic analysis, even if run concurrently with the same .txt files and parameters, may produce slightly different results. This will not affect the analysis, as the general trends and topics explored should remain the same. Additionally, some topic model programs only allow for a term to appear in one topic. However, as Patrick van Kessel explains, “Depending on the specific algorithm that you use, a word may be assigned to multiple topics in varying proportions, or assigned to a single topic exclusively.”113 The models shown in this chapter are the former, with popular terms such as “Jefferson” often appearing in multiple topics. Finally, due to any
combination of user and database error, some dissertations entered the data pool that should not
have, even after I manually removed some error decisions. As such, terms such as “iww,”
“Jedidiah,” and “muammar” occasionally appear, despite these terms likely not referencing
anything related to the American Revolution. As the overall number of error dissertations was
minimal, such terms are exclusively limited to minor topics (most are in topics with near or less
than 2%), with the majority of dissertations fitting the criteria for inclusion discussed in my
“Methodology” section.
113 Patrick van Kessel, “An Intro to Topic Models for Text Analysis,” Medium, August 13, 2018, Accessed online at: https://medium.com/pew-research-center-decoded/an-intro-to-topic-models-for-text-analysis-de5aa3e72bdb. 78
Period 1: 1873-1925: The Early Days of American Academia
Figure 4.1: Founder Interest in the General Search, 1873-1925. The raw results for this era are easy to comprehend—aside from one outlier year in 1901, both the absolute number of founder dissertations and relative interest was vastly lower than every other period. Looking specifically at 1901, it seems a few dissertations mention multiple founders, counting as a result for many founders and skewing the results. For example, a dissertation discussing the writing of the U.S. Constitution is likely to have mentioned signers
George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin, and may have mentioned Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Hence, a single dissertation would count six separate times. Given the lack of similar spikes before and after 1901, it appears 1901 was an outlier.
There were only three dissertations from the three limitation searches during this period.
They are “Benjamin Franklin as an Economist” by William Achenbach Wetzel (1895), “The
Political Theories of Alexander Hamilton” by Roland Jessup Mulford (1903), and “Benjamin 79
Franklin and Germany” by Beatrice Marguerite Victory (1913).114 Wetzel and Mulford’s
dissertations (1895 and 1903) were both completed at the John Hopkins University (Maryland),
and Victory’s 1913 dissertation was completed at the University of Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania).
Examining dissertation titles, it becomes evident that only the prototypical, well-known
founders were of significance—the Top Seven Founders. Individuals such as Carter Braxton,
James Cleaveland, and even John Hancock were far from historical radars. The findings also fit
the accepted historiographical trends of the era—top white-male politicians dominated the
historical landscape, with political history being the primary method of history.115 All three
dissertation titles explored some aspect of politics, economic theory, foreign relations, and
general policy. Each explored the individual’s life in some way, analyzed a specific theme and
argument, drew from a similar set of sources (primary source materials of the individual founder,
probably housed in local archives), and was interested solely in biographical and political
techniques.
The relative insignificance of founder literature, even in relation to other American
history and history dissertations, is a potentially interesting finding. There are many potential
reasons for this lack of interest in American history and founders, including the lack of
development of the American education system, a larger interest in other historical topics, or a
114 William Achenbach Wetzel, “Benjamin Franklin as an Economist.” PhD diss., The John Hopkins University, 1895. Roland Jessup Mulford, “The Political Theories of Alexander Hamilton.” PhD diss., The John Hopkins University, 1903. Beatrice Marguerite Victory, “Benjamin Franklin and Germany.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1913. 115 For an introduction of the historiography of the field of history, see John Tosh, Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods, and New Directions in the Study of History (London: Routledge, 2015) or Jeremy Popkin, From Herodotus to H-Net: The Story of Historiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). For specifically western sources from 1800 onward, see Adam Budd, The Modern Historiography Reader: Western Sources (London: Routledge, 2008). 80
general lack of access to the source material.116 Unfortunately, examining these problems in
depth would prove cumbersome and outside of range for this thesis. Regardless, few founder
dissertations were written during this era, and interest, relatively speaking, was low.
Period 2: 1926-1953: The Steady Rise of American Academia
Figure 4.2: Founder Interest in the General Search, 1926-1953. In the late 1920s, a slow rise in relative percentage and total founder dissertations began
to take shape. In contrast to Period 1, which saw all but 1901 with fewer than six results, almost every year in Period 2 had above 10 results, with the end of the period (post-World War II, 1948-
116 Websites such as, “Data on the History Profession,” America Historical Association, Accessed online at: https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/career-resources/data-on-the-history-profession and “Department of History, Dissertations by year,” Yale University, Accessed online at: https://history.yale.edu/academics/graduate-program/dissertations-year/dissertations-year-2000-2009 further illustrates the undeveloped nature of American education in the early and mid-20th century. Most of the data and listed dissertations are from 1970-onwards, with minimal information available prior. For studies examining the history of American education, see John D. Pulliam, James J. Van Patten, History of Education in America (New York: Pearson, 2006), Warren H. Button, Eugene Provenzo, History of Education and Culture in America (New Jersey: Pearson College Division, 1989) or John Rury, Education and Social Change: Themes in the History of American Schooling (United Kingdom: Routledge, 2012). For studies examining the history of the field of history in American education, see William J. Reese, History, Education, and the Schools (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) or Milton Gaither, American Educational History Revisited: A Critique on Progress (New York Teachers College Press, 2003). 81
1953) building towards a spike in Revolutionary scholarship. No university dominated the era,
and no specific advisor appeared more than a few times.117 States represented were eastern states,
with only one dissertation being credited to the University of California in 1948.118
The early years of the period saw steady, continuous growth from the end of Period 1.
Period 1 ended with two straight years with five results, while Period 2 began with seven of the
first nine years below twenty dissertations but above nine dissertations. By 1934, the total
number of dissertations began to rise—every year between 1934 and 1942 saw greater search
hits than the largest year in the first nine of the period (1926 to 1933). However, the immediate
years following this initial growth (1942 to 1946) were the lowest of the period—numbers that,
in many ways, seem similar to the end of Period 1, indicating an external disruption in the
academy. Unsurprisingly, there was an external factor, World War II. Most likely, potential
American academics were either at war or contributing to the wartime economy, not researching
or writing academic works. For the few that were, political works and biographies of famous
founders were the most prevalent dissertations.
Unlike the last period, not only the Top Seven Founders were researched. Lesser-known
founders such as Daniel Carroll, William Blount, and James Wilson appeared in dissertation
titles for the first time.119 Coupled with earlier political studies on men such as Paul Revere,
117 The University of Virginia, The John Hopkins University, Harvard University, and Cornell University were all well-represented with at least three dissertations each, but none saw more than five total dissertations. Northwestern University, University of Iowa, New York University, Boston University, Yale University, and roughly ten other universities each had at least one student complete their dissertations. 118 Robert E. Reeser, “Rufus King and the Federalist Party.” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1948. 119 Mary Virginia Geiger, “Daniel Carroll, A Framer of the Constitution.” PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, 1943. William H. Masterson, “Business Man in Politics: The Public Career of William Blount.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1950. Charles P. Smith, “James Wilson, 1787-1798.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1951. 82
George Clinton, George Wythe, and John Dickinson, this period proved to be the beginning of
lesser-known early American political figure scholarship.120 The works themselves are political
in nature (many remain biographical surveys of the early American and American Revolution
periods) and the Top Seven Founders still dominate the overall period in terms of total
dissertations, but there is a trend of interest towards studying other individuals.121 The topic analysis results for the period confirm these broad findings.
Table 4.1: Period 2 Topic Analysis Results- Title Topic % thomas john tradition politician ideas france opinion benjamin 12.80% jefferson career agriculture joseph lincoln's lafayette 9.79% william policy relations blount federalist johnson practical influence state opinions 8.58% american madison revolution jefferson's constitution henry hamilton penman 7.98% american leader daniel orator campbell washington religious office 7.98% contributions james history heritage maker samuel thinking era biographical liberty 7.38% public paine statesman carroll principles pre-revolutionary jay state 5.57% philosophy franklin people america wythe revere 4.97% foreign governor propaganda abraham poincare post 4.37% virginia study king patrick york 4.37% english wilson rufus briton colonial french relation 4.37% george question defender 3.77% book-collector pioneer adams sam patrick paul 3.77% saxon obscure business classical merchant 3.16% politics framer alexander democratic 3.16%
Some initial characteristics of the era stand out. The top resulting topic had “thomas,”
“john,” and “benjamin”, the first names of perennial founders Thomas Jefferson, John Adams,
120 Walter Sumner Hayward, “Paul Revere and the American Revolution, 1765-1783.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1933. Major B. Jenks, “George Clinton and New York State Politics, 1775 to 1801.” PhD diss., Cornell University, 1936. William E. Hemphill, “George Wythe, the Colonial Briton: A Biographical Study of the Pre- Revolutionary Era in Virginia.” PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1937. John H. Powell, “John Dickinson, Penman of the American Revolution.” PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1938. Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay, and a few others also made their first appearance. 121 The Top Seven Founders, supported by the supremacy of Thomas Jefferson, occupied seventeen of the thirty- three title dissertations surveyed in this period. 83
and Benjamin Franklin. Paine, Hamilton, and Madison also appeared in the top seven topics.
Washington did not appear until the middle topics (he was the subject of two dissertation titles in
this period), suggesting a lack of relative interest as compared to later periods. All other titular
founders from this period appear somewhere within the top 20 topics, suggesting a small sample
size (only 33 titles were examined) rather than extreme interest in any non-Top Seven Founder.
Content-wise, the top six resulting topics are indicative of dissertation focus—words such
as “politician,” “career,” “france,” “constitution,” and “state” appear prominently, showcasing a
high usage of political terms. There was heavy interest in Jefferson and France as both appear in
the first two topics in some form (“Thomas” and “France” in the first topic, “Jefferson” and
“Lafayette” in the second). The third topic has the term “policy relations,” further indicating an
interest in international subject matter. Multiple dissertations dealt with France in some form,
and even more discussed Jefferson.122 Topics including “american,” “revolution,” and
“constitution” all appeared in at least 7.5% of results, with “america” appearing in multiple topics throughout. These results suggest many Period 2 dissertations were biographies of
individual founders’ impact on larger events or documents. However, without definitive and
smaller groups such conclusions are difficult to fully provide evidence for. Limiting the output to
five topics rather than twenty is illuminating.
122 As previously stated, Jefferson appeared in seventeen of the thirty-three dissertation titles in Period 2. France appears directly in two (French Revolution and Lafayette) titles, with at least four more potentially discussing French activities. Jefferson is also featured in a dissertation Harold T. Colbourn, “The Saxon Heritage: Thomas Jefferson Looks at English History.” PhD diss., The John Hopkins University, 1953, showcasing an interest in Jefferson and international affairs. 84
Table 4.2: Period 2 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted), Limited to Five Topics Topic % thomas jefferson patrick washington heritage wilson people relations man party 28.92% king carroll alexander adams practical question thinking lincoln's abraham penman george american jefferson thomas contributions history popular statesman 24.70% mohawk joseph governor war framer propaganda pioneer constitution william slavery influence dickinson john franklin english obscure leader rufus brant tradition classical book-collector 19.28% maker william henry principles democratic public pre-revolutionary liberty york clinton american saxon america business daniel hamilton sam orator constitution johnson 15.66% samuel politician virginia defender politics state opinions revolution foreign jefferson policy jefferson paine blount federalist henry career public biographical briton 11.45% paul state study merchant revolution madison
The results confirm the supremacy of top founders Thomas Jefferson and George
Washington. Due to the presence of terms such as “king,” “practical,” “thinking,” “question,” and “penman” in the top topic, it seems questions and policies related to the American
Revolution and its causes and aftermath dominated the era. International affairs, specifically the
United States’ relationship with England and Europe, were also of interest, as each topic has some form of international term in it.
Interestingly, minimal gender or racial terms (such as ”african american,” “women,”
“black,” etc.) were included in any topic results, with “slavery” and “mohawk” only appearing in the second topic, which although containing 24.70% of results, can hardly be considered a slavery-centric topic due to a lack of similar thematic terms.
Following the end World War II in 1945, founder-related scholarship rebounded from the lull of the war years. The years 1946 and 1947 saw total interest and dissertations in line with pre-war estimations, with a large spike occurring in 1948. However, 1949 seemed to present a 85 return to the pre-war norm with low numbers, until 1950-1953 saw large increases in interest and total dissertations submitted. Non-coincidently, this spike occurred roughly eight to ten years following the end of WWII, about the length of time it would take for returning soldiers and wartime workers to return home and finish their doctoral dissertations. Interest would continue to grow rapidly in Period 3, which saw relative interest in the “Founding Fathers” and American
Revolution at levels unmatched until the 1990s.
Period 3: 1954-1974: The Early Boom of American Academia
Figure 4.3: Founder Interest in the General Search, 1954-1974. The first of two American history academia spikes occurred between the years 1954 and
1974. These years are notable for many reasons, including being bookended by two major wars
(Korean and Vietnam), rising tensions between the USSR and the United States in the Cold War, and containing the years prior to America’s bicentennial. These circumstances, as well as countless other factors, contributed to a rapidly changing cultural and political landscape that escalated in founder absolute interest to rise to an all-time high, with numerous national studies being at the forefront of American academia in the immediate years prior to the nations’s200th 86
anniversary. Like Period 2, no degree-granting university significantly outpaced the rest,
although there is a noticeable increase in university diversity, both regionally and institutionally.
Eastern and midwestern universities still led the way in terms of most associated dissertations,
but dissertations were also completed at institutions in southern and western states such as
California, Kansas, Texas, and Florida, with California serving as a leading state with seven
dissertations.
The late 1950s and early 1960s saw stagnant interest and total dissertations results. Total
dissertations were frequently above 100, with interest in the founders regularly above the 30%
mark, but no consistent growth or decline can be observed. In 1964, a slight rise of total founder
dissertations occurred, which would be followed by slight rises in 1966 and 1969. By 1971,
seemingly in preparation for the bicentennial, a swath of additional dissertations began to be
published, with students producing more than 375 dissertations in each of the final four years of
the period (1971-1974). Notably, relative interest in the founders stayed roughly the same despite
a rise in absolute interest, suggesting that while American higher education was expanding,
interest in founder dissertation research plateaued.
However, this plateau did not create stagnation. New ideas, themes, and historiographical
topics began to interest American academics, although the same characteristics that defined the
previous two periods—dominance of political or national histories of white males with small
spurts of social, “from below,” and cultural studies— continued to underscore the era.123
123 For example, Max M. Mintz, “Gouverneur Morris, 1752-1779: The Emergence of a Nationalist.” PhD diss., New York University, 1957 and Donald Odell Dewey, “The Sage of Montpelier: James Madison’s Constitutional and Political Thought, 1817-1838.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1960. 87
Table 4.3: Period 3 Topic Analysis Results- Title Topic % benjamin political samuel jay affairs morris rufus view encounter baron madison 11.00% composed attitudes lee charles policy foundations randolph clinton thomas franklin intellectual career james york life middle farmer state carter library 10.20% mythology social radicals contrasts revolutionist american study press radical viewed mind historians agriculture impeachment 7.53% john adams braxton books question tradition diversity sayings 7.27% gouverneur secretary media comparison seaborne founding factions notes wolcott 5.67% inventor ashbel stanhope witherspoon calhoun freedom french coming rush early chase thought adams moral congress washington's documentary movement tool portrait part 5.67% account foreign politics revolution struggle philadelphia steuben philosophy lectures 5.40% leadership moralist pinckney orientation british richard jefferson lafayette joseph executive revolutionary littlefield patriot biography partner 5.40% hall galloway poor alexander image ideas edition critical pickering january nineteenth-century adventure 4.87% court justice john gerry jefferson's constitutional pennsylvania religious philosophy activities timothy 4.87% introduction catalogue popular scientist green galloway elbridge washington war colonial church propaganda signer continuity printing trial madison's 4.87% policy franklin's historical whig dickinson sources king scottish-american nation arranged philosophe lawyer 4.60% andcommerce virginia making nationalist influence american george america public mars empire quincy declaration reflection henry partnership 4.60% montpelier 88
Table 4.4: Period 3 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted) Topic % jefferson lafayette career enlightenment scale full propaganda tool introduction 6.99% popular patriot attitudes cotesworth trial virginia montpelier nationalist historical franklin benjamin war dickinson rufus ideas mind mythology green smith moralist 6.85% american foreign moral clymer von middle farmer composed stanhope versailles 6.83% agriculture john constitutional confrontation independence inventor continuity sage puritan 6.69% george richard philosophy colonial public seaborne wealth allen role social pinckney 5.68% benjamin military thomas secretary signer wolcott portrait lawyer andcommerce manufacturing making 5.42% benjamin account politics independence image america ages pickering declaration notes interpretations 5.26% ofselected affairs david orientation british agency adams william comparison life revolutionary nation read carter coming whig 5.18% alexander revolution jefferson's viewed empire activities timothy scientist randolph 5.07% poor livingston study diplomacy encounter media philadelphia affairs hall gerry 4.93% business intellectual steuben documentary black independent factions madison 4.87% question calhoun diversity philosophe printing revolutionist foundations franklin's hamilton james joseph george religious radical constitution impeachment 4.77% commonwealth emergence political galloway struggle delaware federalism library tradition court history 4.58% contrasts
Both models saw names of multiple Top Seven Founders in the top two topics, with
Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin appearing most frequently. Political terms such as
“policy,” “political,” “nationalist,” and “career” appear often, with dissertations such as “John
Adams and the Diplomacy of the American Revolution” (1964) and “Gouverneur Morris and the
New Nation, 1775-1788” (1970) illustrating an interest in founder-government relations common
of earlier periods.124 This characteristic is even clearer in the Period 3 Title Results that were
limited to five topics.
124 James Howard Hutson, “John Adams and the Diplomacy of the American Revolution.” PhD diss., Yale University, 1964 and Mary Jo-Kline, “Gouverneur Morris and the New Nation, 1775-1788.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1970. 89
Table 4.5: Period 3 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted), Limited to Five Topics Topic % john american benjamin adams jefferson thomas franklin george political foreign 40.41% study career business america lafayette affairs jay thought james dickinson hamilton american washington benjamin image intellectual revolution jefferson's 19.98% thomas enlightenment empire steuben philosophy moral movement black independence signer january madison study adams biography thought john political encounter full struggle life 15.57% constitution clymer quincy middle edition wealth documentary church independent delaware thomas colonial scale press radical seaborne war music philosophy moral 13.66% lectures activities washington's propaganda federalism independence braxton oliver scientist reflection pennsylvania mars baron critical lafayette interpretations ofselected stanhope 10.39% adventure coming lawyer andcommerce manufacturing lee jay thought montpelier galloway joseph making
However, new terms also appeared for the first time. “Intellectual,” “moral,” “black,” and
“enlightenment” show up in the second topic of the above search, themes suggesting an
increased interest in intellectual and social history.125 Other non-political or biographic
dissertations were also noted, including “Thomas Jefferson and Music” (1972) and “The
American Popular Image of Benjamin Franklin, 1790-1868” (1969).126 The field of memory
began being addressed for the first time, as Franklin, Hamilton, and Lafayette all appeared in
dissertations.127 Undoubtedly, topics such as war and biographies were still present, even
appearing in over 40% of results (the top topic) with themes illustrated by terms “affairs,”
125 Many dissertation titles from this period indicate they are intellectual biographies. For example, “Benjamin Rush: An Intellectual Biography,” (1965) “Thomas Paine: A Study in Social and Intellectual History,” (1965) and “Patriot Moralist: An Intellectual Portrait of Samuel Adams” (1965). All dissertations that specifically referenced “intellectual” history were from 1965 and from different states and universities. This indicates an interest in intellectual history in the mid-1960s, as well as “intellectual” emerging in 1965 as an historical buzzword. 126 Helen Louis Petts Cripe, “Thomas Jefferson and Music.” PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 1972. Eugene Saul Bodzin, “The American Popular Image of Benjamin Franklin, 1790-1868.” PhD diss., The University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1969. 127 Max Edward Bramble, “Alexander Hamilton and Nineteenth-Century American Historians: A Study of Selected Interpretations of Hamilton.” PhD diss., Michigan State University, 1968 and Anne Carol Loveland. “Lafayette and America: The Image of Lafayette as a Reflection of the American Mind.” PhD diss., Cornell University, 1968. 90
“career,” “political,” and an abundance of top founders’ first or last names, but not in the
overwhelming majority seen in the previous two periods.
In addition to content diversity, social issues began to appear more often than before,
although still not in significant quantities. A few dissertations pondering social morality were
completed post-Civil Rights era, showcasing an ever-slight shift towards social histories and an
increased sensitivity towards issues such as segregation and religion in the American
Revolutionary period.128
The end of the period, which saw another spike in total dissertations, continued the trend
of lesser-known founders appearing, albeit in small numbers. Carter Braxton, John Witherspoon,
George Clymer, John Jay, and many of the non-Top Seven Founders appeared in at least one
dissertation, with most works discussing a section of the individual’s life rather than complete
biographies. Other than an increase in topic diversity and demand for founder dissertations, the
years 1968 through 1974 remained similar in structure and modes of thought as previous periods.129 This increased demand of founder scholarship would not last long, with 1975
beginning a massive downturn that would endure for ten-plus years.
128 Unsurprisingly, many of these dissertations focused on the church and John Witherspoon, who was a minister. For example, Jack Alan Scott, “A Critical Edition of John Witherspoon’s “Lectures on Moral Philosophy.”” PhD diss., The Claremont Graduate University, 1970, Roger Jerome Rechner, “The Moral Philosophy of John Witherspoon and the Scottish-American Enlightenment.” PhD diss., The University of Iowa. 1974, and Reginald Charles Stuart, “Encounter With Mars: Thomas Jefferson’s View of War.” PhD diss., University of Florida, 1974. 129 1968 to the years 1974 accounted for roughly half of the total dissertations’ topic modeled during this period, despite only representing eight of the twenty-one years in the period. Including the years from 1965 to 1967 raises said number well above 52%. 91
Period 4: 1975-1992: The Post-War and Bi-Centennial Decline
Figure 4.4: Founder Interest in the General Search, 1975-1992. While overall interest in the founders saw similar percentages as Period 3, total Period 4
dissertations fell dramatically. By 1982, numbers were the lowest since the late-1950s, and until
1987 dissertation totals remained effectively stagnant. Studies of the founder seemed to be settling into an extended cool-off.
However, near and following the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, dissertations spiked. This spike would eventually prove to be the beginning of a long-lasting shift in the academic field, which effectively brought the “Founding Fathers” back into the mainstream academic sphere. By 1992, interest in the founders was at 40% and dissertations sat just below
400, numbers like the end of Period 3—which up to this point was the time period when the
founders were most discussed. The founders were coming back in style.
Given the complexity of this era, which ranges from the lowest totals in a generation to a
gateway to the highest totals ever, one would expect founder dissertations to be just as diverse 92
and complex as the period as a whole. The topic analysis results indicate a shift, although certain characteristics remain.130
Table 4.6: Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted), Limited to Five Topics Topic % american george volumes thomas revolution life john political jefferson virginia 45.38% early republican religion social war changing constitutional washington history jefferson's american benjamin founding states argumentation century franklin york 20.17% perspective james history virginia revolutionary adams action faulkner talbot letters folly language ideology city edward men quaker fiske lee morris founders trembling reason art 13.31% reflected self-government studies wise pennsylvania iron triumph major life army washington order america charles grubb's friend contributions 10.78% gouverneur rejoice planter program freeman faith vaughan formation study smith robert madison virginia united state political courant authority understanding prisoner 10.36% architectural ireland slavery law general moderate senator impeachment i-iv higher eighteenth
The results show an intense interest in topics surrounding the American Revolution and
the U.S. Constitution. “American,” “revolution,” “republican,” war,” and “constitutional” are all
featured in the first two optimized topics, showcasing a general theme of interest in the founding
documents, government, and leaders. With that said, the topic model also unearthed quite a bit of
non-government related language. “Social” and “religion” appear in the top topic, indicating a
shift from pure political studies to societal and cultural interests. Daily life in the Revolution also
became of note—terms like “changing,” “social,” “life,” and “religion” illustrate a desire to
130 Among those similar characteristics not discussed further were the university and advisor totals— again, no university was the home institution of more than 8% of the dissertations, with Cornell University appearing most often. Most of the results were spread out relatively evenly, with continual expansion of American academia west. No advisors were seen in significant enough quantities to mention. 93 examine how the Revolution was dealt with at home. In the larger optimized search (below), even more non-governmental language suggests a diversifying historiography.
Table 4.7: Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted) Topic % republican volumes state life franklin religion madison america revolution thomas 14.04 washington development revolutionary george laurens hero's gouverneur edition % planter polity american thomas early social political york biography henry constitutionalism 13.38 volumes england theatre jefferson history john adams courant understanding men % grubb's study religion army george revolution postmodern notes making founders reason 7.28% rosewell gunboat hugh merchants senator soul's image effort intrigue natural george rhetoric morgan frontier diplomacy hamilton fiske architecture influence debt 7.27% fenton thought fathers georgia forge weehawken mercy jefferson party cherbourg john civil volumes tradition jefferson's life army argumentation creek wise crown 6.45% modern revolt morphology hooker man higher mercantilistic nelson reconciliation virginia federalist ideology war establishment william architectural program navy 6.34% society slavery moderate eighteenth place circuit volumes economics page catharine otis century history revolutionary political new-england philadelphia grayson studies 6.32% pennsylvania douglas blount witherspoon smith scriptures truth satirist classics vortex partnership class benjamin changing constitutional warren revolution kimball government irishmen 6.30% pennsylvania muammar analysis break conversion civic philosophes franklin joel financial jedidiah discourse american literature states america power talbot notes rejoice jeffersonian ruinous art 5.87% presidential militia mercer chandler southern valley controversy transatlantic historians career structure hamlin letters late man's faith selected ruling cabinet imagination 5.23% leaders cable page discrimination otis unit patriarchal jefferson thomas life nation property broadening culture print selected laborers anglo-american 5.22% nineteenth formation compromise views allen city capitalism party military intellectual marshall
“Postmodern,” “theatre,” “rhetoric,” and “architecture” all appear in topics 2-4 in the optimized search, suggesting interest in many diverse, cultural, and social topics began to overtake broad political studies in prevalence. Debt and government spending were also 94 prevalent. The term “debt” appears in topic 1 of the unweighted search and topic 4 of the weighted search, with “federal” materializing right next to the word in the un-optimized search.
Table 4.8: Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Title Topic % george john political history thomas early state continental development reassess 9.84 rejoice jeffersonian folly reflected capacity muammar print man debt federal % american america franklin constitutional washington early public civil theatre agrarian 8.86 william quaker grubb's architectural architecture wise media revolt impeachment % popular american army madison frontier thomas revolution constitutionalism perspective 8.72 military reform intellectual biography republican friend hamlin faulkner government % reason navy ciceronian jefferson founding hamilton study rhetoric social courant notes making creek works 5.92 conceptual conversion vaughan higher partisan compromise delegation mercer % recovery volumes james england federalist social origins iron general analysis blount anglo- 5.64 american forgotten race financial structure cherbourg washington conspiracy herman % unrest jefferson's establishment republic literature thought party revolution authority fiske 5.50 letters man's moderate image inflamed effort politics age fortunes papers concepts % religion century selected washington whiskey edward kimball planter rosewell 5.36 gunboat triumph lincoln presidential break merchants truth mercantilistic partnership % historians mississippi changing revolution republican pennsylvania henry tradition county nation lee 5.36 philadelphia commonwealth burkeian indians i-iv resistance formation wolcott % transatlantic unit psychohistorical
The models also showcases an openness to historical reconsideration. “Reaccess” appears in the first topic in the non-weighted search, and the presence of terms such as “influence”
“image,” postmodern,” “origins,” and “perspective” across all period searches point to themes of reevaluation, with many dissertations focusing on perspectives other than the Top Seven and considering the American Revolution in new contexts.
Specific dissertation titles further indicate the evolution of founder studies, showing an increased interest in non-political biographies and towards specific cultural moments in time. 95
“Thomas Jefferson: A Personal Financial Biography,” “The Invention of George Washington
(Revolution, Colonial, Intellectual),” and “James Madison and Social Choice Theory: The
Possibility of Republicanism” suggest varying subject matters not often discussed prior to this
period. Political biographies were still prevalent, especially for non-Top Seven Founders, but
were no longer the clear majority.131 Furthermore, dissertations with biographical elements such
as “Congress in Jefferson’s Foreign Policy, 1801-1809" and “The John Adams Presidency: War
Crisis Leadership in the Early Republic” illustrate that though the biography sub-field of
dissertations continued to exist, they were often specific, honed studies rather than pure,
overarching biographies.132
Conversely, Period 4 did see a continuation of the trend of Thomas Jefferson appearing in
more dissertations than all other founders, including George Washington. As can be seen below,
Washington only briefly appeared in more dissertations than Jefferson in the 1970s (leading to
the bicentennial), with most other moments in time, including almost all of Periods 4 and 5,
Jefferson slightly ahead.
131 For example, works such as Edwin Clifford Bridges, “George Walton: A Political Biography.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1981, but were much less prevalent that the prior three periods. 132 David Allen Carson, “Congress in Jefferson’s Foreign Policy, 1801-1809." PhD diss., Texas Christian University, 1983 and Jean Holder, “The John Adams Presidency: War Crisis Leadership in the Early Republic.” PhD diss., American University, 1983. 96
Figure 4.5: Thomas Jefferson Compared to George Washington- Yearly General Results. These findings illustrate the General search results, where Washington appeared in similar numbers as Jefferson. If one examines any of the other three searches, with small exception to the Abstract search, Jefferson appears significantly ahead. Nevertheless, while the relative tiers of founders remain the same as previous periods, the abstract topic findings show a deeper interest in analytical rather than pure biographical histories of all founders, not just the Top Seven. 97
Table 4.9: Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract Topic % study public state revolution army george period role madison great historical letters 7.64 madison's analysis based figure unique order enlightenment democratic % political congress chapter james social made popular successful washington's 6.64 established indian member values place issues war virginia creek late jefferson's % life jefferson's york economic military civil independence natural nation modern 6.56 support united party adams walton significant federalist sought number reform % american government national career society law england slavery blacks 6.13 correspondence navy chief led published programs eighteenth-century madisonian % lincoln regime eastern jefferson americans british work case opposition provided writings terms system 5.63 members education conflict philosophy finally attempt lee department lived event % early time virginia william men frontier president notes effort smith collection 5.38 chapters hooper man land intellectual active office hamilton's rise % dissertation people served religious english revolutionary nature information social 5.36 virtue massachusetts attention failed mercer's change kentucky critical practice cases % means republican years john adams policy examines forces hamilton records leader leading 5.33 earlier individual approach majority prominent remained morse creation received % history efforts north influence charles principles family eighteenth readers research 4.77 house understanding science traditional social demonstrated trade leaders benjamin % maryland important power context education federalists wichita militia events generation 4.72 process policies founding warren created importance studies nation's jeffersonian % valley lack states federal general common future republic rights leadership president presented 4.67 compromise account supported class central essays merchants evidence hooker % legislative development administration view part program relations purpose result experience 4.51 biography office plays actions focuses attitudes provide economy institute special real % 98
Table 4.10: Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract, Optimized (Weighted) Topic % political american study public jefferson congress government life national state 57.13 history republican revolution dissertation years social war washington army early % accounts hamilton's received town higher irregular allen members collections main 3.17% cornwallis studies year investigates dramatic phase immigration parallel lee sets human rise commercial presidential delegation significant critical volume 3.01% construction jeffersonians governments churches rising eastern descriptions contributions proposed divisions puritan committee iww quaker campaign study ten proper challenges command nineteenth convinced 2.89% complete influenced mode cast brackenridge's letter conversion mercer achievements wolcott units preserved exist hastings ambitious organizations successful west established 2.87% howard document prevail qaddafi latest amount range disciplines posterity argued treatises
The unweighted results has terms such as “values,” “popular,” and “analysis” in the first two topics, indicating subject matters beyond biographical analysis. Terms such as “social,”
“economic,” “slavery,” and “blacks” suggest diverse and social studies. In the weighted results, the first topic appeared in over 55% of search results—a majority. The topic is headlined by the
Top Seven Founders (Washington, Jefferson) and descriptors of historical processes- “political,”
“study,” “congress,” “government,” “life,” national,” state,” revolution,” “social,” “war,” and
“army.” This topic, while unfocused, shows the variety of history subject matter studied in
Period 4. While diversity in history subject matter was greater than ever, the founders’ role and impact on governmental structures, emphasized by inclusion of words such as “government” and
“congress,” continued to be of intense interest. Studies narrowed on different sources and subjects, but still discussed and analyzed the founders’ role in creating the national government, illustrating said structures’ perceived Revolutionary America historical supremacy. 99
By the end of Period 4, founder interest and total research was again spiking, with the diverse set of historical techniques creating many new methods to explore and analyze the founders’ achievements.
Period 5: 1993 to Present: Founders Chic
Figure 4.6: Founder Interest in the General Search, 1993 to Present. Period 5, encompassing the years 1993 to Present, represents the peak of founder popularity. In 1995, following small gains in both total dissertations and interest, a large spike occurred which would continue until 2000—the new millennium. Since 2000, numbers have remained consistently high. The founders are back—"founders chic” is underway.
With that said, it does appear founder academics is trending towards a downturn. The numbers show that since 2012, total dissertations discussing the founders have been declining.
The trend was evident in all four searches, including the General search—founder scholarship is larger than ever but appears in line for another recession.
Much has been written about this era of founder popularity, popularly coined “founders chic.” David McCullough and Evan Thomas, the former perhaps the most well-known 100
practitioner and the latter the originator of the term, cited “authenticity” and “nostalgia” for an
earlier period of genuine statesman, an “Even Greater Generation,” as a reason for the shift.133
Andrew Schocket expanded, citing “famous founders [being] among the most documented
human beings on earth, making writing detailed biographies of theme practical,” and “editorial
projects being funded as essentialist projects to bolster nationalism during the Cold War” as
reasons for the Top Seven’s emergence.134 The Top Seven Founders serve as convenient and
effective national symbols.
Even so, most historians do not mention the lack of the non-Top Seven Founders in
founder literature. David Waldstreicher and Jeff Pasley in their essay at the beginning of Beyond
the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, H.W.
Brands in his abundance of literature (primarily, his article “Founders Chic”), and others briefly
discuss the idea and posit theories for the lack of non-Top Seven Founders, but a current absence
of other secondary literature, complexity of cultural and scholarly influences, and failure of
consensus makes any particular theory difficult to fully accept.135 Given that “founders chic”
applies to all individuals considered, the general expansion of American Revolution scholarship
should lead to increased non-traditional founder research. While works on other founders is
certainly increasing (more on that in a bit), it is not necessarily increasing in equal or significant
greater numbers, percentages, or impact as the Top Seven Founders. Jesse Lemisch argued that
the lack of diversity could be explained by the simple notion that less has been done to preserve
133 Evan Thomas, “Founders Chic: Live From Philadelphia.” 134 Fighting Over The Founders, 52. 135 Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic. Brands, “Founders Chic.” 101
records of non-top founders or Revolutionary era population.136 Schocket reinforces this notion,
“although most of the books I looked at benefited from archival research, they all relied heavily
on the published editions [many of which were from the Cold War era and hence of the Top
Seven Founders].”137 Regardless, the “founders chic” era continues to be characterized by huge
book profits and founder biographies, with best-selling biographies almost solely being written
about the Top Seven Founders.138
But none of these factors fully answer the question, “why now?” John Fea correctly
points out, “[reinvigorated] interest in early American history [is happening] at a time when
politicians and pundits are telling us that history and other humanities subjects are not useful.”139
Despite passing the bi-centennial and being far from the tri-centennial, founder interest is at all-
time highs, although it does appear to be declining somewhat. Could it be a “reflection of the
anti-liberal reaction that began with Ronald Reagan,” or “roots seeking [new millennium
136 Jesse Lemisch. “The American Revolution Bicentennial and the Papers of Great White Men: A Preliminary Critique of Current Documentary Publication Programs and Some Alternative Proposals,” AHA Newsletter 9, November 1971: 7-21. 137 Fighting Over the Founders. 52. 138 The importance of the engaging and inviting writing style employed by “founder chic” practitioners such as Ron Chernow and David McCullough cannot be understated. As much as they are a “brand-name” themselves, their writing styles are their key product and help appeal to a wider audience. For recent top selling biographies of founders, see David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002). Ron Chernow. Washington: A Life. (London, Penguin Books. 2011), Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (London: Penguin Books, 2005). Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Vintage. 1998), or Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (New York: Random House, 2012). These studies have multiple commonalities: They are all biographies, they were all written by well-known historians, they all state the name of the founder in the title, they were all about the Top Seven Founders, and they were all New York Times Best Sellers. These commonalities are indicators of public founder preferences. 139 John Fea, “Wait a Minute! Is “Founders Chic” Okay Now?” The Way of Improvement Leads Home, April 21, 2016, Accessed online at: https://thewayofimprovement.com/2016/04/21/wait-a-minute-is-founders-chic-ok-now/. It is unclear exactly what Fea means by “politicians.” Perhaps he is referencing the recent trend of “fake news,” a term popularized by Donald Trump, or the recent decline of federal education funding. However, aside from those potential references, I would argue that politicians continue to reference the founders more than ever before. For example, see the “Defining “Founding Fathers”” chapter for a brief snippet of recent political speech references. 102
individuals]?”140 Or could it be a “fascination with greatness and heroes that will never die” and
an “perennial fascination with the American Founders…. To justify our political principles
today?”141 Is it a love of their ideals and values or simply an admiration for the founders that has
laid dormant?
Unfortunately, it is difficult to precisely define why interest is so high, and to examine
why with any reliable and well-supported conclusions would go far beyond the scope of this
thesis. It is likely that a large combination of these factors, with others perhaps not yet
determined or discussed, are responsible for the recent interest in the “Founding Fathers.”
Regardless of this and evidence of a steady decline in recent years, interest in the founders is
higher than any other period, raising the question: How does this increased interest manifest
itself in dissertations? Examining the topic analysis results for the period’s titles and abstracts
provides some clues.
140 H.W. Brands, “Founders Chic.” Consequently, Brands’ work serves as a brief yet solid, if lightly sourced, examination of founder popularity since the American Revolution. 141 Robert P. Kraynak. “The American Founders and Their Relevance Today,” Modern Age: A Conservative Review, vol. 57 no. 1, (Winter 2015). 103
Table 4.11: Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Title
Topic % american jefferson education theory nineteenth historical war revolutionary law 10.47 madison's madison science social civil antebellum separation fiction cultural church % paradox politics washington james adams age thought liberty public constitution atlantic 7.76% states rights party social controversy elite practice richard burke army revolution republic national virginia nation society west race henry african spanish 6.81% union u.s executive career moral founding images peace america's thomas literature origins nineteenth-century foreign rhetoric constitutional franklin 6.28% roosevelt personal writings nation analysis sargent plantation racial colonial role freemasonry love early war north religion city world civilization presidency educational alexander 5.59% ratification family representation travel societies institutionalizing attained powerful charles stories political history eighteenth-century state country legacy forgotten study reform 5.53% problem protestantism evolution knowledge dynamics conservative information college work popular reception united century nationalism washington's black eighteenth pursuit character art class 5.48% natural madison invention diplomacy western creation indian common ohio knowing america republican making state william letters administration democratic labor 5.27% martha property construction constitutionalism elizabeth volumes nature centre treaty learn scottish identity memory literary republicanism boston legal private anglo-american 4.63% narrative irish native judith autobiography experience friendship free meaning gendering quakerism strategy tradition religious paine great modern creation lincoln mercy economy army 4.52% capitalism times hopkins edmund continental jay landscapes consensus smallpox commerce life culture land formation family cold leadership late states rebellion synthesizing 4.47% formal dangerous works hostile makes attitudes smith young massachusetts george revolutionary republic imagination ideals birth theology guide brown place 4.23% culture protestant architectural witherspoon compleat samuel ralph shadow emergence joseph southern slavery philosophy virtue interpretation philadelphia democracy context 4.04% franklin's temperance violence post-revolutionary press poetics material statesmanship radical major black address development york women mind ideology era warren language transatlantic 4.02% antislavery narratives act bourgeois writing structure defiance murder desire liberalism king 104
Table 4.12: Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted) Topic % american early political republic america politics thomas jefferson history john 49.53 washington revolution states united george life james literature culture revolutionary % honor affairs pennsylvania richard arts defining island paradox satire contest health 4.84% land fertile quincy texts leader eighteenth empire economic virginia lincoln democrats art prisoners law delaware influence alexander hunter argument 4.77% performance analysis system class war north creating napoleon apostle seamen removal world dissent consensus executive invention sargent negro patriotic indians 4.39% elite theological hand british imagination paul hopkins monroe americans societies great cherokee context selected familiar career adventures young south century 3.87% paradise plan sexualities importing nisbet sexuality nostalgia centennial witness madisonian politics anglo-american expansion ways planter gouverneur knox important black 3.87% language elizabeth louisiana problem adams albany protest bodies networks insecurity mythology common science architecture fashioning security statesmanship economy design 3.23% guide plantation imaginative eighteenth-century continental north social shays moravians jay state-building confederacy strategy diplomacy progress roosevelt secretary general coming massachusetts 3.10% brown theory landscape south class race memory federalists clergy's thistle awkward romantics
During this period, Jefferson continued to appear most often, although Washington is not far behind. University findings echo previous periods, with students completing dissertations at no more than 6% of the total at any one university, although the top seven universities
(University of Virginia, Rutgers University, Yale University, Columbia University, The
University of Chicago, University of California (Berkeley), and Temple University accounted for roughly 20% of the total. 105
Top Appearing Universities in Period 5's Three Limitation Searches 30 25 20 15 24 10 13 12 12 5 10 10 10 9 9 9 8 8 8 8 8 8 0 Total
Figure 4.7: Top Appearing Universities in Period 5’s Three Data Limitation Searches. The geographic distribution of universities at which dissertations were completed illustrate a continued focus on the United States coasts. This is evidenced by Cornell, Harvard,
Yale, the University of Chicago, and the University of California’s continual success near the top of these rankings.
Differences from previous periods are more prevalent. Although the unweighted results are scattered and difficult to fully synthesis, a few conclusive aspects stand out. Varied terms such as “culture,” “science,” “law,” and “war” appear in the top resulting topic, with other terms like “liberty,” “public,” “thought,” “elite,” and “controversy” appearing in the second topic.
These results illustrate the vast array of different histories and modes of interpretation present in founder scholarship, which can be seen by examining the over 500 dissertations from this period. 106
Cultural,142 social,143 political,144 nationalism,145 biographical,146 semi-biographical,147
economic,148 government,149 diplomatic or foreign relations,150 literature,151 education,152
slavery,153 race and class,154 feminist,155 memory,156 national identity and narrative,157 “from
below,”158 religious/philosophy,159 business,160 music,161 local,162 and almost every other
conceivable type or combination of history makes some appearance, with the complexity,
142 Jason Raphael Zeledon, ”The United States and the Barbary Pirates: Adventures in Sexuality, State-Buildings, and Nationalism, 1784-1815.“ PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2016. 143 Todd Allen Pinney, ”Elegiac Relations: American Family Elegies, 1633- 1883.” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1994. 144James Eldon Lewis, Jr., “”We Shall Have Good Neighbors”: The American Union and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783-1829.” PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1994. 145 Brian Douglas Steele, “Thomas Jefferson and the Making of American Nationalism.” PhD diss., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003. 146 Jayne Ellen Triber, “A True Republican: The Life of Paul Revere.” PhD diss., Brown University, 1995. 147 Frederick Hollister Campbell, “Mrs. Warren’s Revolution: Mercy Otis Warren’s Perceptions of the American Revolution Before, During and After the Event.” PhD diss., University of Colorado at Boulder, 1993. 148 Mike O’Connor, “Democratic Capitalism in the United States.” PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2007. 149 Cheryl Ann Brown, “The Elite Model and the Office of Secretary of State: Selection and Success.” PhD diss., Georgia State University, 1997. 150 Martha Elena Rojas, “Diplomatic Letters: The Conduct and Culture of United States Foreign Affairs in the Early Republic.” PhD diss., Stanford University, 2003. 151 Benjamin Darrell Crawford, “Disjunctive Nationalisms: The Creation of the Literature of the United States.” PhD diss., University of Alabama, 2016. 152 Elizabeth Carroll Reilly, ”Common and Learned Readers: Shared and Separate Spheres in Mid-Eighteenth- Century New England.” PhD diss., Boston University, 1994. 153 Francois Drey Furstenberg, “Civic Texts, Slavery, and the formation of American Nationalism.“ PhD diss., The John Hopkins Universitym 2003. 154 Charles Patrick Neimeyer, “No Meat, No Solider: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the Continental Army.” PhD diss., Georgetown University, 1993. 155 Pauline E. Schloesse, “A Feminist Interpretation of the American Founding.” PhD diss., Indiana University, 1994. 156 Tavia Amolo Ochieng’ Nyong’o, “Uncommon Memory: The Performance of Amalgamation in Early Black Political Culture.” PhD diss., Yale University, 2003. 157 Aaron Michael Keck, “One Nation: Cosmopolitanism and the Making of American Identity from Madison to Lincoln.” Diss PhD diss., Rutgers The State University of New Jersey – New Brunswick, 2008. 158 Tristan Strike, “Errant Memory in African American Literature of the Long 19th Century.” PhD diss., City University of New York. 2015. 159 Nicholas Patrick Miller, “The Religious Roots of the First Amendment: Dissenting Protestantism and the Separation of Church and State.” PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2010. 160 Russell Lionel Martin III, “Mr. Jefferson’s Business: The Farming Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Edmund Bacon, 1806- 1826.” PhD diss., University of Virginia. 1994. 161 Roland Leander Williams, Jr., “Sweet Music: A Sounding of American Narratives.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1993. 162 Frank Edgar Dunkle, “Rousing Patriot Passion: Propaganda in the Boston Press, 1754-1756.” PhD diss., Texas A&M University, 1997. 107
vastness, and close percentage of the search topics making it virtually impossible to determine
exact trends in scholarship. In general, the content of dissertations seems to be more open to complete re-interpretation than prior periods, although without the full dissertation texts the extent of the phenomenon is difficult to define.
The optimized search results, with the top topic occupying over 49%, are telling. The top topic includes names of a few top founders (Thomas Jefferson, John [Adams] [Hancock], George
Washington, James [Madison]), as well as token terms “history” and “america/american” that appear prominently in all eleven models due to their association with the early American and the
American Revolution. However, the prominent inclusion of “literature,” “revolution,” “culture,” and “revolutionary” in the top result and “satire,” ‘paradox,” “arts,” “analysis,” and “art” in the next two results is of higher interest.
Examining these grouped words in a broad and connected context, many of the terms relate to culture, fine arts, or intellectual history, not diplomatic or more traditional histories.
“Political” is included in the first topic, with other political history terms such as “republic” also
appearing in the first topic. However, given the extensive occupancy of cultural terms and the
potential that political terms could appear in multidisciplinary titles, it seems Period 5 is the first
period to curb political history in favor of two others—cultural, social history.163 Since both
“political” and “cultural” appears in the first topic, deeper analysis is needed to determine if the
cultural histories truly has overtaken political history. The abstract models confirm the cultural
turn.
163 For example, Sarah M. Goldberger, ”Repatriating Yorktown: The Politics of Revolution Memory and Reunion.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Chicago, 2010 is a showcase of a cultural-centric history with political elements. 108
Table 4.13: Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract Topic % american political national washington thomas politics john george examines society 11.06 jefferson's virginia constitution popular liberty united white enlightenment project % authority states government social culture women work nation world adams important theory 8.88% literature literary party founding colonial argue sense works african dissertation study war revolutionary united slavery federal nature system analysis 8.04% common intellectual army democratic central process form president henry foreign chapter america jefferson state madison religious william relationship order 6.68% independence southern began questions events identity domestic city served published indian history early ideas civil black people south policy narrative federalists civic thought 6.37% view understanding major era impact personal provided founders century americans revolution power rights development british historians explores 6.04% leaders washington's nineteenth natural benjamin religion democracy discourse citizens present importance historical republic writings military u.s federalist congress private issues economy 5.39% success demonstrates ideals decades helped case empire strong number found role period time economic part past law influence led franklin reading nineteenth- 4.79% century material histories home held shaped richard issue influenced men constitutional education made including virtue human sought north nationalism 4.45% make established service support federalism debt warren philosophical views security years community land cultural french scholars slave england reform christian 4.45% continued eighteenth labor largely press paine's diplomatic urban good tradition republican freedom career ideology man terms movement key native death rise 4.11% thought attempt turn creating creation describes focusing actions principle public modern letters legal elite union cultural traditional focus forms lives control 4.06% madison's prominent soldiers recent spain textual presidency lived texts west great understood public idea gender expansion educational informed 3.90% colonies peace opinion close cherokee leading secure crucial research treaty 109
Table 4.14: Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract, Optimized (Weighted) Topic % american political dissertation national study history states war public early 60.31 washington jefferson government social chapter century united historical america % thomas revolutionary part writings time past federalists civic congress henry west scholars 16.96 created traditional change slave federalist played critical temperance finally % post-revolutionary threats initially napoleon conversations sophisticated ships title 1.47% posed responsibilities inclusion interested philosophy dead disestablishment protecting subversion respective theorist category attachment achievement middle-class african-americans tactics twenty commander 1.41% camps colonialism initial consisted happened difficulties heritage nationwide patriarchal revision punishment africa infrastructure
Words such as “culture,” “social,” “women,” “work,” “theory,” and “african” all appear in 8.88% of the results, marking the first time such words appeared in significant abstract percentages and pointing to an increase in cultural histories. “Slavery,” “intellectual,” “army,” and “foreign” all appear in a topic with 8% of the total results, further providing evidence for said claim. However, the top topic, which sports over 11% of results, is a bit more complicated.
It contains themes of “politician,” “national,” and “liberty” (political terms) in combination with social terms such as “social,” “white,” and “enlightenment.” The models continue to show varied and unfocused results, most likely caused by the pure diversity of interpretative methods used.
An interest in war is also apparent, as the first topic contains many words commonly associated with the term, “states,” “war,” “public,” “government,” and “political.” Whether an interest spiked post-9/11 or following the re-emergence of tension in the Middle East is unclear.
The inclusion of terms such as “government” and “united states” indicate that, no matter whether individual founders were major players in government or long-standing politicians, they remain intrinsically connected to the United States. The totality of the “Founding Fathers” will always be associated with the creation of the United States. 110
These results point to several important aspects of American Revolution historiography,
many of which have been discussed previously. In “Revolution in the Quarterly? A
Historiographical Analysis,” authors Michael McDonnell and David Waldstreicher argue that
since 1993, the early American and Revolutionary America fields have shifted from biographical
and nation-centric methods to imperial and global analysis, with heavy focus on outside events
and the lack of a single American Revolutionary experience. The article also mentions peaks and
valleys in historiographical cycles, with each turn featuring specific themes and arguments while
rejecting others, which can be examined here as each period changed significantly in interest,
values, and historical methods.164 My results largely confirm and agree with their assessment:
multiple subject matters do exist, with social or cultural histories becoming increasingly common
in the last few decades. However, Waldstreicher and McDonnell, along with Gwenda Morgan in
The Debate on the American Revolution, concurrently argue that since the 1970s, a focus on
ordinary, “from below” interpretations has overtaken traditional Top Seven Founder histories.165
Alfred T. Young and Gregory Nobles in Whose Revolution Was It? Historians Interpret the
Founding and Jeffery Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher in the
introduction of Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early
American Republic, while different in conclusions, similarly agree that political histories of the
Top Seven Founders are becoming rarer as historians of the American Revolution become more
interested in ordinary people’s daily lives and experiences.166 However, these claims, at least
164 Michael A. McDonnell, David Waldstreicher, “Revolution in the Quarterly?: A Historiographical Analysis,” Oct 2017. 165 McDonnell, Michael A. David Waldstreicher. “Revolution in the Quarterly?: A Historiographical Analysis,” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 74 no. 4 (October 2017). Gwenda Morgan, The Debate on the American Revolution (England: Manchester University Press, 2007). 166 Alfred Young, Gregory H. Nobles, Editors, Whose American Revolution Was It? Historians Interpret the Founding (New York: New York University Press, 2011). 111
according to my data, do not tell the whole story. Social histories and historical approaches are
certainly expanding, but the Top Seven Founders remain at the top of founder scholarship, where
they have been for the entirety of this study (the 20th and 21st centuries). While scholarship is
expanding to include different and varying ways of studying history, works on the Top Seven
Founders also continue to be prevalent. In other words, these new social and cultural histories
primarily discuss the Top Seven Founders, with the reported shift towards “ordinary” people not
being as pronounced as has been theorized.
Another aspect of these results to consider is discussed by Gary J. Kornblith in “Whose
Revolution Was It, Anyway?” In the book review, Kornblith examined the role of “history from
the bottom up” or “history from below” when large political biographies of the top “Founding
Fathers” continue to be best-sellers. Kornblith cites the presence of multiple biographies of the
Top Seven Founders in the New York Times Bestselling List to show that “history of the
revolutionary era is back in fashion among the American reading public.” Kornblith goes on to
state that while “social historians have had a major impact on college textbooks and college
curricula over the past twenty-five years, they seem not to have captured the hearts and minds of
nonacademic audiences.”167 While this study shows social and cultural history has become more
prevalent in the study of the American Revolution, it cannot confirm the lack of influence of
social histories on the public realm. It is an interesting question to discuss and research further,
but this study can only confirm that social and cultural histories have further permeated academic
scholarship on the founders, with those histories continuing to be about the Top Seven Founders
Jeffery L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, David Waldstreicher, Editors, Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic (North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 167 Gary J. Kornblith, “Whose Revolution Was It, Anyway?” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 59 no. 1 (January 2002): 326. 112
rather than complete “histories from the bottom up.” If “founders chic” is a scholarly and cultural
phenomenon, it stands to reason that similar research techniques and interests would exist in both spheres. In shorter terms, if social histories are the majority of Top Seven Founder dissertations, they are likely to have at least some influence on Top Seven Founder public biographies and portrayals, and vice versa.
In addition to the results and their connection to recent founder historiography, one aspect of the term “Founding Father” has illuminated itself—the term “Founding Father” is not as prevalent in American higher education as it is in American popular culture. It still appears in many dissertation titles and undoubtedly some abstracts, but neither “founder,” “founding,” or
”father” appeared in any high-percentage topic, despite the consistent appearance of perennial founders such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. The qualitative methodology of this study has made clear a well-known aspect of American founder literature; only the most discussed, white-male founders are typically called “Founding Fathers.” To the best of my knowledge, no “New Founders” (featured in the next chapter) were titularly referred to as a
“Founding Father.” There is a separation between the “Founding Fathers“ and the American founders- the “Founding Fathers“ are typically the small group of American politicians that helped craft the founding governmental documents, whereas the American founders can apply to any individual who played a significant role in the Revolutionary America era. In fact, as of
March, 2019, searching ”Founding Fathers” on Google comes up with 47,500,000 results.
”African American Founding Fathers” resulted in 8,970,000, ”Women Founding Fathers”
22,100,00, and ”Native American Founding Fathers” 9,480,000. Searching the broad phrases
“Male Founding Fathers,“ “Female Founding Fathers,“ and “White Founding Fathers“ results in 113
181,000,000, 129,000,000, and 228,000,000 results, respectively. The “Founding Fathers” are typically male, white, and the most well-known politicians of the day.
Period 5 features the largest and most-diverse period in American founder scholarship, with non-traditional histories (cultural, social, etc.) seemingly outnumbering political and biographical works. Neglected groups and issues pertaining to them are receiving increased attention, although the highest percentage of founder dissertations still center on the Top Seven
Founders and their relationship or views on recent historical methodologies such as gender, race, etc. The “Founding Fathers” are in-style, with the increase in the number of historical perspectives and interpretive techniques contributing to the rise of founder scholarship due to reassessment possibilities, emerging modes of thought, and new scholarly opportunities for original research. 114
CHAPTER V: THE “NEW FOUNDERS?”
The “Founding Fathers” are in vogue. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James
Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and the like have seen surges in American culture
illustrated by recent entertainment media such as the HBO show John Adams, the musical
Hamilton, and the History Channel show Sons of Liberty. The top founders appear consistently in
dissertations and other scholarly writings, with the previous chapters focusing on numerically
showing how often the Top Seven are discussed in history dissertations. However, historians
suggest that while the Top Seven are still being discussed by Revolutionary historians, new
groups of people are being discussed more or just as often, with these individuals being pushed
to the forefront due to the rise of different historical perspectives.
With the recent, intense focus on the “Founding Fathers” and cultural and social histories,
many lesser-known and previously historically unknown individuals are being positioned as
important to the American Revolutionary Era. Moving beyond solely studying politically active
white males, historians are investigating females, African Americans, Native Americans, and
European foreigners more than ever before. Because of their relative recent acceleration of
significance to historians of the American Revolution and the term “Founding Fathers” often
referring to historically studied individuals of the era, I have coined the term “New Founders” to
describe these people. Individuals such as Abigail Adams and Martha Washington have risen in
prevalence, while many others such as Joseph Brant, Phillis Wheatley, and Mercy Otis Warren
are rightly being recognized as significant to the era even though their accomplishments were
largely cultural rather than political, illustrating a historical interest in studying non-political
aspects of the American Revolution not common in scholarship until the 1970s. Although
individual and categorical studies of these “New Founders” still lag behind overall discussion of 115
the Top Seven Founders, these individuals and the historical studies and subject matters that comes with them (cultural histories such as gender studies, social histories such as societal structures, and “from below” histories) are seeing decade-long increases that, coupled with slight decreases to Top Seven Founder studies, suggest a field that may one day move beyond top names such as Washington and Jefferson and focus on currently unknown or lesser-known individuals (a scholarly phenomenon many posit as currently ongoing), but has yet to actually take place.
Methodology
The previous pages focused on considering whether “founders chic,” or the supposed
recent rise in founder discussion, is a scholarly phenomenon in addition to a popular one.
Scholars and the public alike are discussing the founders in greater absolute and relative numbers
than before, with American Revolutionary scholars being just as interested in studying the Top
Seven Founders (Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison, Adams, Paine) as the
American public. Similarly, they focused on arguing that the Top Seven Founders have remained
the most discussed individuals considered founders, with the recent rise of new historical
interpretations continuing to discuss the Top Seven more than all other founders.
These chapters only considered the top “Founding Fathers” (white males) and neglected
female, African American, and Native American individuals some consider “Founding Fathers,”
or more specifically, the broader term “founders.” In the last chapter I mentioned how Gwenda
Morgan, David Waldstreicher, Alfred Young, Jeff Pasley, Michael McDonnell, and a few others
concluded that these new founders are being discussed (since 1990) more often than ever,
potentially more than the Top Seven Founders. 116
Disagreeing with these recent historians, this chapter’s data and analysis focuses on two
primary aspects of American dissertations. First, a selection of prominent, white women and
people of color show up in dissertations at a lower rate than white males, continuing the trend
found in previous chapters. Second, while categorical topics (i.e., “Native Americans” and the
“American Revolution”) have been increasing proportionately over recent decades, they have yet
to overtake those dissertations specifically mentioning individual top founders such as Thomas
Jefferson and George Washington, although the distance between the two groups is shrinking
significantly.
To consider these phenomena, I searched ProQuest for twenty-two individuals that recent historians have posited as founders. These twenty-two individuals are from groups traditionally less represented in American Revolutionary history (women, Native American, African
American, foreign Europeans). These four groups were not represented significantly in mainstream 18th and 19th Century American politics but are of recent interest in 20th and 21st
Century academia due to the social, “from below” shift of the historical field. For simplicity, these groups will be referred to collectively as “New Founders,” except when referencing only one group. An effort was made to select the most well-known individuals from these groups.168
The subjects (22):
- Women: Abigail Adams, Martha Washington, Judith Sargent Murray, Mercy Otis
Warren, Heather Lee Corbin, Phillis Wheatley, Molly Pitcher, Elizabeth Powel.169
168 Because of this, the method of selection for these twenty-two individuals was somewhat arbitrary. Every effort was made to ensure these specific individuals were discussed significantly in relevant historiographical studies. While these individuals were chosen due to their discussion in American Revolution studies and with extensive background research, the inclusion of the “most well-known” individuals is a subjective assessment. 169 Abigail Adams and Judith Sargent Murray are mentioned in Ray Raphael, Alfred F. Young, Gary Nash, Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation (New York: Vintage, 2012). Martha Washington, Mercy Otis Warren, and Heather Lee Corbin are all mentioned and discussed in Joan R. 117
- African Americans/North American Black Individuals: Mary Perth, Prince Hall,
Richard Allen, Daniel Coker, Crispus Attucks, Benjamin Banneker.170
- Native Americans: Han Yerry, Tyonajanegen, John Skenandoa (Shenandoah), Joseph
Brant, Molly Brant, Dragging Canoe.171
- Foreigners/Europeans: Marquis de Lafayette, Baron Von Steuben.172
Several of the neglected individuals or founders overlap groups—for example, Phillis
Wheatley was an African American female (African American, Women), and Molly Brant was a
Native American female (Native American, Women). These further add complexity to the
search, as it allows deeper examination of racial and gender intersections. The methodology of
study was the same for this “New Founder” group as the methodology for the original fifty-nine.
Gundersen, To Be Useful to the World: Women in Revolutionary America, 1740-1790 (North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006) or Carol Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence (New York: Vintage Publishing, 2014), which are both major women’s history works. Elizabeth Powel was one of Washington’s closest friends and hence has direct ties to American politics. See Cassandra Good, “The Founding Fathers and the Women, Not Their Wives, Whom They Wrote To,” Smithsonian Magazine, 13 February 2013, for a brief outline of influential friendships between females and leading Founders such as Washington and Jefferson. 170 Mary Perth, Prince Hall, Richard Allen, and Daniel Coker appear in Revolutionary Founders. Benjamin Banneker had a well-known and studied correspondence with Thomas Jefferson. For a detailed study of Black Founders and Benjamin Banneker, see LaGarrett J. King’s “More Than Slaves: Black Founders, Benjamin Banneker, and Critical Intellectual Agency,” Social Studies Research and Practice, (Winter 2014). 171 Han Yerry appears in Revolutionary Founders. Tyonajanegen was his wife and fought in many battles herself. John Skenandoa was the leader of the Oneida tribe, one of the two tribes of the splintered Iroquois Confederacy that fought on the side of the colonists during the American Revolution (the other being the Tuscarora). Joseph Brant and Molly Brant were leaders of the Mohawk tribe, one of the four Iroquois Confederacy tribes that fought against the colonial forces during the American Revolution. Dragging Canoe was the leader of the Cherokee during the American Revolution and led a force against the United States. For a history of Native Americans and the American Revolution, see Colin Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 172 Lafayette and Von Steuben are perhaps the two most well-known foreign influencers on the American Revolution. From a brief scan of U.S History textbooks, Lafayette and Von Steuben have a similar amount of appearances as Sherman, Hancock, and S. Adams. 118
Findings
In comparison to the Top Seven and other top white male founders, the “new founders”
did not fare terribly well, even in relative terms. The African American with the most search
results in each search was, respectively, Richard Allen in the General (14th), Phillis Wheatley in the Abstract (10th), Prince Hall and Richard Allen in the Title (Tied 32nd), and Phillis Wheatley
in the Keyword (13th). The women with the most hits in each search was, respectively, Abigail
Adams in the General (19th), Mercy Otis Warren in the Abstract (8th), Mercy Otis Warren in the
Title (10th), and Mercy Otis Warren in the Keyword (8th). The Native Americans with the most hits in each search was, respectively, Joseph Brant in the General (47th), Molly Brant and Joseph
Brant and Dragging Canoe in the Abstract (Tied 33rd), Joseph Brant in the Title (Tied 32nd), and
Molly Brant in the Keyword (Tied 23rd). The foreigners with the most hits in each search were, respectively, Lafayette in the General (22nd), Baron Von Steuben and Lafayette in the Abstract
(Tied 32nd), Lafayette in the Title (Tied 15th), with neither appearing in Keyword (Tied 35th).
Adding the four first appearances of each group’s top founder and dividing by the total
number of searches (4), the chart comes out as follows:
Table 5.1: Group Average Appearance Position Across All Searches Group Average First Appearance Non-Top Seven White Male 8.75 African American 17.25 Women 11.25 Native American 33.75 Foreign 26 119
These are the average positions the first member of a group appears. Meaning, on average, the first female appeared in the eleventh position in any given search, whereas the first African
American appeared with the seventeenth most results in any given search.
Examining the results, the average first appearance for a Non Top Seven White Male
Founder was 8.75, meaning the individual with the 8.75th most results across all searches.
Women trailed behind with an average place of 11.25 (largely on the scholarly strength of Mercy
Otis Warren), African Americans averaged 17.25, Foreigners 26, and Native Americans 33.75.
Even removing the Top Seven Male Founders, the founders deemed most academically discussion-worthy were white men. Many African American, Native American, and female founders chosen are considered the top individuals from their respective group—Abigail Adams has often been called a “Founding Mother” and appears in much literature with her husband,
John Adams. Mercy Otis Warren and Phillis Wheatley are the subject of much historical interest.
Prince Hall is the namesake of the well-known and still active Prince Hall Freemasonry, as well as the subject of a bevy of historical articles. Molly and Joseph Brant were respected Native
American leaders. Still, these individuals have been studied less than many traditional white male founders.
Looking at group search totals, the Abstract search saw an average of 81 dissertations mentioning the Top Seven Founders in the search (on average, an individual in the Top Seven group appeared in 81 dissertations), with all other groups, even the Non-Top Seven White Males
(with notable and much discussed men such as John Witherspoon, Paul Revere, John Dickinson,
Samuel Adams, and John Hancock in the group) finishing far behind. 120
Average Group Search Results from the Abstract Search 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
White Male
African American
Native American
Foreign
Women
Non-Top 7 White Male
Top 7 White Male
Figure 5.1: Average Group Search Results from the Abstract Search. Breaking the same data into percentages, the Top Seven White Males accounted for 78% of the total averages, with White Males (both Top Seven and Non-Top Seven) accounting for
11% and Women accounting for 4%.
Average Group Percentage Total from the Abstract Search 11.15% 2.76% 0.48% 0.97% 4.13% 2.10% 78.41%
White Male African American Native American Foreign Women Non-Top 7 White Male Top 7 White Male
Figure 5.2: Average Group Percentage Search Results from the Abstract Search. Removing the “White Male” category, the Top Seven White Male Founders take an even higher percentage of the results at 88%. Women saw a slight increase in average percentage at 121
4.35%, with Non-Top Seven White Males and African Americans close behind. Native
Americans and Foreign Founders were made rare appearances.
Average Group Percentage Total from the Abstract Search with "White Male" Catagory Removed 1.09% 3.11% 0.54% 4.65% 2.36%
88.25%
African American Native America Foreign Women Non Top 7 White Male Top 7 White Male
Figure 5.3: Average Group Percentage Search Results from the Abstract Search with the “White Male” Category Removed. Similar trends were found in the General, Title, and Keyword searches.
Average Group Search Results from the General Search 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 African Native Women Foreign White Male Non-7 Top 7 Amer Amer White Male Founders
Figure 5.4: Average Group Search Results from the General Search. 122
Average Group Search Results from the Title Search
Foreign
Native American
African American
Women
Non-Top 7 White Male
Top-7 White Male
White Male
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Figure 5.5: Average Group Search Results from the Title Search.
Average Group Search Results from the Keyword Search
White Male
Foreign
Native American
African American
Women
Non Top 7 White Male
Top 7 White Male
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Figure 5.6: Average Group Search Results from the Keyword Search. Excluding the Foreign group, which is likely swayed by data size (only two individuals constitute the category, with both being relatively well-known), and removing a majority of the
Non-Top Seven White Males (many of whom had few results), Women appeared in similar quantities as Non-Top Seven White Males, with African Americans trailing just behind. Native
Americans were hardly present in any of the searches, and foreigners only fared well in two of the four searches. These results point to a relative lack of female and founders of color in 123
American dissertations. To test this assessment further, I examined the dissertations each of these
“new” founders appeared in from broad search.
Shifting to this new group of founders appearances in period dissertations (i.e. the methodology employed in the “Period Analysis” chapter), the first founder of color dissertation subject did not appear until 1946, when Native American leader Joseph Brant was the subject of a biographical dissertation.173 Given the lack of Native American literature in the following
decades, it is interesting to see a Brant dissertation biography prior to any African American or
woman. No other searched neglected founder was represented by dissertation title in in Period 1
(1873-1925) or Period 2 (1926-1953), showing women’s and African American studies did not
make headway into the scholarship of the American Revolution until at least the mid-1950s.
In Period 3 (1954-1974), none of the female individuals search appeared as a titular
founder in this period (same as the last two periods), despite the female group having the highest
average rank in the total searches. While it is possible the individuals appeared as keywords
(ProQuest did not export the keywords associated with each dissertation), no title suggests
significant discussion of any female founder. Native Americans failed to appear, although white
males Lafayette and Von Steuben both made appearances.174
In Period 4 (1975-1992), the first searched female titular dissertation appearance
occurred. However, while Mercy Otis Warren appeared in at least two dissertation titles, no other
173 Marc J. Smith, “Joseph Brant: Mohawk Statesman.” PhD diss., The University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1946. Even though Joseph Brant received an earlier dissertation than many other founders, it is telling that the biography would seemingly focus on his role in politics (“Mohawk Statesman”) rather than his life as a Native American. 174 Lafayette made two appearances: One discussing his memory (previously listed), and one entitled “Lafayette as a Tool of American Propaganda,” (1970), both dissertations that discussed Lafayette in a broader cultural or social sense than purely biographical. Von Steuben’s was also specific to the American Revolution rather than a biography, “Baron Von Steuben in the War of Independence” (1973). 124
women appeared as a titular subject.175 Given Warren’s status as the top female resulting founder and a top founder overall, it appears women were only beginning to enter the mainstream
academic radar. Native Americans and African Americans also saw some research, although not
often as titular subjects.176
Period 5 (1993-) saw a massive expansion in neglected founder dissertations, with
individuals such as Mercy Otis Warren and Phillis Wheatley appearing in similar numbers as
perennial founders such as John Hancock and Samuel Adams. However, as already discussed in
the previous chapters, the Top Seven Founders continue to be discussed more, even in at a time
when social and cultural histories may have become the majority.
However, although it is true that individuals from these neglected groups are discussed
less often, that is somewhat expected. After all, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have
been in the scholarly mainstream much longer than these individuals. To truly determine whether
these “new founders” and historical techniques are increasing in scholarly significance and
shifting founder scholarship beyond the Top Seven, I searched ProQuest for terms often
associated with “from below,” social, and cultural histories. The results are shown below.
175 Marianne B. Geiger, “Mercy Otis Warren and Catherine Sawbridge Maculay: Historians in the Transatlantic Republican Tradition.” PhD diss., New York University, 1986. Marguerite Anne Donnelly, “Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814): Satirist of the American Revolution.” PhD diss., New York University, 1988. 176 For example, Monte Ross Lewis, “Chickasaw Removal: Betrayal of the Beloved Warriors, 1794-1844.” PhD diss., University of North Texas, 1981. This dissertation clearly discusses Native Americans, but specific Natives do not appear in the title. 125
Total Appearances of ""Term" and "American Revolution"" Since 1970 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Figure 5.7: Total Appearances of Terms and “American Revolution” Since 1970. What do these results mean and how did I come up with them? For example, I searched
““African American” and “American Revolution”” and found 4,908 results and ““Native
American” and “American Revolution”” and found 4,200 results. The double quotations
indicated to ProQuest the necessity for both terms to appear sequentially and in full anywhere in
a dissertation. The dissertations were again limited to American history and history dissertations.
The term “American Revolution” appeared in 13,596 results or, if you remove the necessity of
quotations around the term, 32,066. Contrasting these results with perennial Top Seven Founders
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who saw 5,037 and 5,614 results when searched in
the same manner, even histories discussing these neglected groups and broad “from below”
studies are outpaced slightly by the Top Seven Founders.177
177 In a General search, I also typed ““African American” and “Founding Father”” into the search bar to examine whether these groups were being considered “Founding Fathers.” Throughout the entirety of American and non- American Revolution topics (I did not limit keywords), 728 results appear. For comparison, “”Thomas Jefferson” and “Founding Father”” appeared in 777 results. Just the term “Founding Father” appeared in 5,058 results. Similarly, I searched ““Native American” and “Founding Father.”” Throughout the entirety of American history and non-American Revolution topics (I did not limit keywords), 576 results appear. For comparison, “”George Washington” and “Founding Father”” appeared in 867 dissertations. It appears that these groups may be discussed 126
Looking specifically at the argument that these “from below,” ordinary people histories have increased since the 1990s, the results would indicate that it is correct. Almost all terms saw a dip in the 1980s following a rise in the 1990s and 2000s, with a small dip occurring in the
2010s. These results are consistent with the total number of American Revolution-related dissertations, which saw a similar dip in totals. However, focusing on the percentage of total
“American Revolution” dissertations from the period shows illustrates that while dissertations about “from below” groups may be at or near the majority, they are hardly shifting the field beyond the Top Seven Founders.
Total Percentage Appearances of ""Term" and "American Revolution"" to "American Revolution" Dissertations Since 1970 40.00% 35.00% 30.00% 25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.00% 5.00% 0.00%
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Figure 5.8: Total Percentage Appearances in “”Term” and “American Revolution”” to “American Revolution” Dissertations Since 1970.
as “founders,” but are not yet seriously being considered “Founding Fathers.” At the least, the term is not being associated with them. 127
Top Seven Founder Percentage of Total Dissertations Since 1970 56.00%
54.00%
52.00%
50.00%
48.00%
46.00%
44.00%
42.00% 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Figure 5.9: Top Seven Founder Percentage of Total Dissertations Since 1970. Comparing the two graphs illuminates the fallacy of assuming a major decline of the top founders. While topics are more diverse, the Top Seven Founders continue to dominate total dissertations. Even in the unfinished decade of 2010, the Top Seven Founders appear in over
52% of the resulting dissertations, whereas no specific social categorical topic appears in higher than 36% of dissertations. In fact, since 1970, the decade historians posit as the beginning of the end of the Top Seven, the proportion of total dissertations has increased slightly. The Top Seven are further engrained than ever.
However, while these broad results do indicate the danger of proclaiming a decline of the
“Founding Fathers” in the Revolutionary America scholarly field, they similarly hint at aspects of the field discussed by Morgan, Brands, Young, and Waldstreicher. Social categorical works have been increasing since the 1970s, whereas individual top founder dissertations have been slightly decreasing since the 1990s. Looking at Figures 5.7 and 5.8, almost every social categorical term has increased in proportion of total dissertations since 1970, with many also 128
increasing in overall number of dissertations. And since 1990, almost every social topic has
increased in large proportional and overall dissertation totals. Contrasting these percentages to
Figure 5.9, which shows a slight decrease in total percentage of the whole dissertations
discussing the Top Seven Founders since 1990, it is easy to see a trend that, if continued, leads to
social histories and non-political elite founder studies eventually overtaking the Top Seven
Founders. Such an occurrence is decades away if following current trends.
That possibility is not withstanding the strong probability that dissertations discussing big names such as Washington and Jefferson are also discussing gender or race in ways previous generations have not, hence studying the Top Seven Founders using new historical interpretations. When considering that many of these subjects have been understudied until recently and the vast goldmine of Top Seven preserved papers that can be used to study them
(for example, slave records from Mount Vernon are now being researched and used to examine slave living conditions, work load, daily life, and so much more), it is possible that these histories involve research regarding the Top Seven Founders because historians can do solid,
well-documented and supported work in social and cultural history while simultaneously discussing individuals that appeal to larger audiences. While the decline of the “Founding
Fathers” and rise or shift of “from below” non-elite histories has been overstated by historians, the beginning variables needed for such a radical shift to take place have begun to take shape.
Eventually, if these histories continue to dominate the study of the American Revolution, they are likely to eclipse that of the Top Seven Founders and begin focusing on other individuals, flipping the field on its head. But such an occurrence and shift has yet to take place.
All-in-all, the American Revolutionary field has been evolving to discuss social and
cultural histories more than ever before, with a steady rise occurring since 1970. With that said, 129
these lenses are apllied to the Top Seven Founders as well as to the “New Founders,” indicating
historians of the American Revolution remain interested in the traditional “Founding Fathers.”
Even though social and cultural topics are becoming more common, the Top Seven Founders
continue to be prevalent, with most social terms increasing steadily and in conjunction with the
Revolutionary America field rather than significantly shifting away from the Top Seven.
However, if modern data trends continue and individual founder dissertations continue to decrease while social categorical works continue to increase, it is possible that social histories
and the individual studies that go with them will one day overtake the American Revolutionary
scholarly field (and with it founder scholarship), truly leaving the “Founding Fathers” in the dust.
With that in mind, the interesting question arises, “how long do the Top Seven have at the top?”
For now, the Top Seven continue to firmly hold the crown of American Revolutionary studies.
Hurray! All hail the kings! But, as history tells us and this data supports, all reigns eventually end, and the foundation of a historiographic overthrow has begun to take shape. 130
CONCLUSION
This thesis began examining and defining the term “Founding Fathers,” including measuring academic prevalence of individuals considered founders. The Top Seven Founders
(Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Paine) consistently dominated founder dissertations scholarship, with the other seventy-four individuals surveyed appearing significantly less than the Top Seven. In tracking the ebbs and flows of founder dissertations, specifically the Top Seven, American Revolution higher education literature (dissertations) was seen to be divided into five distinct periods post-1873: The first period occurred between 1873 and 1925 and can be described as “The Early Days of American Academia.” Periods 2 and 3 occurred between the years 1926 and 1953 and 1954 and 1974, respectively. They were described as ‘The Steady Rise of American Academia” and “The Early Boom of American
Academia.” The fourth period, entitled “The Post-War and Bicentennial Decline,” encompassed the years 1975 to 1992. Period 5, the last and current period, began in 1993 and was described as the “founders chic” era, an era of immense founder popularity. These periods allow for a tracking of academic interest in the founders throughout the 20th century, something never done before.
Periods 1 and 2 were similar, with minor differences. Both were dominated by political works, particularly biographies of politicians. The politicians discussed were often the Top
Seven Founders, specifically Jefferson, although Period 2 saw biographies for lesser-known individuals such as Daniel Carroll and Patrick Henry. The “New Founders” did not appear in
Period 1, with only Joseph Brant and Lafayette appearing once each in Period 2. As opposed to
Period 1, which saw relatively low results throughout the period, Period 2 had steady rises throughout and a significant spike both in total dissertations and percentage of interest at the end 131
of the period, with the resulting relative interest percentage in the founders remaining stagnant
for the majority of the next two periods.
Period 3 saw massive increases in total dissertations written about the founders and a
small increase in relative percentage of interest. The studies were often national and political in nature, with spurts of “New Founder” scholarship. Social histories began to appear in prominent numbers. Interestingly, scholarship about African Americans and women did not appear significantly, even at the end of the period. Their lack of appearance was largely attributed to the upcoming bicentennial, when interest was seemingly being directed towards the well-known, researched, and primary source rich Top Seven Founders.
Period 4 saw a steep decline from Period 3, with total founder dissertations falling to the lowest point in over 25 years. Social histories further rose to prominence, with political and war biographies continuing to appear in significant quantities. “New Founder” dissertations began
appearing more often, although still not in overwhelming quantities. The end of the period saw
the initial increases of the founder's chic era, foreshadowing the beginning of the most interested
the American academy has ever been in the “Founding Fathers.”
Period 5, known as the “founders chic” era, saw massive increases in total dissertations
and interest. The exact reason for the spike in founder popularity is unclear, leading to a wide-
range of discussed factors, including the founders representing “authenticity,” nostalgia for an
“Even Greater Generation,” the rise of conservatism in the United States, sponsored founder
projects, and the engaging writing style of founder biographers. Beyond just serving as the
largest absolute period, Period 5 was also the most diverse, with the cultural shift of the history
academy evident in Period 5’s dissertations. The slight, but continuous, downturn towards the
end of the period was speculated to be the beginning of a recession in founder discussion. 132
In addition to these periods of scholarship and analysis of the Top Seven, examination of
twenty-two neglected founders, all of whom were Native American, African American, women, or foreigners, unearthed that dissertations discussing neglected individuals, groups, and social
topics were increasing in recent decades, but were not increasing close to overtaking dissertations discussing Top Seven Founders. To simplify, the Top Seven Founders remain firmly at the top of an increasingly diverse historiography, with no single historical interpretation or individual challenging their reign. This goes against the claim of historians Morgan, Pasley, and many others that the Top Seven Founders are being discussed less than the “New Founders” in the Revolutionary America academy. However, the data also suggests that social categorical histories are increasing steadily in the last few years as histories discussing the Top Seven
Founders are decreasing slowly, which may be the beginning of the shift away from the Top
Seven these historians argue has already began.
These findings and their significance open many future potential research avenues. First and foremost, my research process could be further expanded and refined. Due to the limited scope of a master’s thesis, this study only sought to present and analyze briefly the data results, with most results examined at the top-level. Additional commentary or an entirely different thesis, dissertation, or monograph could be crafted examining the reasons why my findings occurred, potential factors affecting each period, interpreting and placing American values as evidenced by whom we write about. The nature of the topic itself invites constant reinterpretation and could benefit from additional evidence. For example, while I only sampled
ProQuest, a broader study could examine how the founders have been portrayed in textbooks,
American mass media, children’s books, and numerous other sources. Finally, this study brings with it many new questions for historians to ponder that should be explored in future histories. 133
Potential questions include, but are not limited to: If a tier system of founders has existed for generations, with the Top Seven at the top and all others below, who or what created it? Why do
American scholars remember the “Founding Fathers” as they do? How does scholarly memory of the founders inform us of American culture and values? Do these results explain why the founders have had (and continue to have) such great influence on American culture? What do the results of this study tell us about the American higher education system? Are the trends in this study a “self-fulfilling” prophecy that is destined to continue? Why are non-white male founders still in the minority of founder dissertations? It is my hope that my interpretations and data serve as a starting point for many future examinations of the American cultural memory of the American Revolutionary period and its “Founding Fathers.”
Furthermore, this data and my conclusions hold wide-reaching implications for historians of the American Revolution. Discussion of the Top Seven Founders has peaked and potentially began to drop off. To fill the gap and in accordance with the cultural shift of the historical field,
“New Founders” have emerged, but these founders appear in significantly fewer dissertations than the Top Seven. Historians of Revolutionary America are at a crossroads: do we continue discussing, studying, and researching the Top Seven Founders, something that has been done for generations and is likely reaching an endpoint, or do we pivot to other, lesser-known and ordinary individuals and topics whose stories are incredibly important to tell if the goal is to understand the Revolutionary Era as best we can? The answer is unclear, and that is reflected in the data. The Top Seven Founders and their stories are absolutely vital in understanding the era, especially considering new historical techniques and interests can benefit greatly from their vast collection of works (for example, Mount Vernon’s slave records are goldmines for cultural and social historians hoping to understand slavery living conditions). However, “from below” stories 134
are just as important as they provide us with information about the era from non-elite
perspectives. Can a happy medium exist where the Top Seven continue to be discussed and analyzed as lesser-known individuals rise to prominence, with each study informing
Revolutionary America in different, but equally important, ways? While the Top Seven is unlikely ever to fall from Revolutionary scholars’ radars, it would aid in the understanding of the era if we continue to study all aspects of Revolutionary America, both related and unrelated to the Top Seven.
Stephen King famously wrote, “Sooner or later, everything old is new again.”178 Founder
popularity has seen numerous peaks, plateaus, plummets, and shifts throughout the years. They
have been called “Founding Fathers,” “Signers,” “Forebearers,” “Heroes,” “Villians,” and
everything in between. They have been historically interpreted politically, socially, culturally,
economically, racially, sexually, financially, biographically, and so much more. They have been
in style and out of style. Yet every time, despite the founders only getting older (Benjamin
Franklin is currently 317), we find a way to reinvent them and make them chic once more.
Perhaps the legacy of the founders is not what they did or how they thought, but their ability to
appeal to every generation of American.
Heroes are often thought to be exclusive to comic books and mass entertainment.
Figments of imagination. Impossible entities. Physical and mental specimens. Heroic humans
exist, but they are not true heroes. True heroes are greater than us. They are different than us, yet
somehow familiar. We can appeal to them because they embody something more than we are,
more than they are. They embody ideals we wish to have and speak knowledge we wish we
178 Stephen King, The Colorado Kid (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005). 135 knew. They are moral compasses and moral beings. Unfortunately, comic book heroes are not real. Unfortunately, neither are ours. 136
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APPENDIX A: PERIOD DATA
General (GEN) Search
Appendix A.1 Name Total Percentage Thomas Jefferson 7029 12.92% George Washington (2 in 6576 12.08% 1890) Benjamin Franklin (1 in 4440 8.16% 1890) James Madison 3154 5.80% Alexander Hamilton 2861 5.26% John Adams 2298 4.22% John Jay 1931 3.55% Ben [jamin] Rush 1586 2.91% Thomas Paine 1544 2.84% Patrick Henry 1528 2.81% James Wilson 1301 2.39% John Hancock 1043 1.92% Samuel Adams 1009 1.85% Richard Allen+ 791 1.45% John Dickinson 785 1.44% Henry Knox 748 1.37% Rufus King 744 1.37% George Clinton 713 1.31% Abigail Adams* 697 1.28% George Mason 694 1.28% Paul Revere 692 1.27% Marquis de Lafayette# 650 1.19% Elbridge Gerry 609 1.12% Richard Henry Lee 606 1.11% John Witherspoon 495 0.91% Martha Washington* 463 0.85% Ethan Allen 451 0.83% Gouverneur Morris 445 0.82% Oliver Wolcott 435 0.80% Roger Sherman 418 0.77% William Livingston 369 0.68% Samuel Chase 349 0.64% John Langdon 336 0.62% Prince Hall+ 331 0.61% John Blair 327 0.60% 162
George Wythe 325 0.60% Phillis Wheatley *+ 296 0.54% John Penn 292 0.54% Charles Pinckney 288 0.53% Lewis Morris 277 0.51% Mercy Otis Warren* 268 0.49% Crispus Attucks+ 265 0.49% Edward Rutledge 254 0.47% Nathanael Greene 245 0.45% William Blount 245 0.45% Hugh Williamson 220 0.40% Joseph Brant! 217 0.40% Ben [jamin] Banneker+ 204 0.37% Stephen Hopkins 193 0.35% George Read 189 0.35% Baron Von Steuben# 172 0.32% George Clymer 171 0.31% Caesar Rodney 161 0.30% George Walton 153 0.28% William Samuel Johnson 143 0.26% Daniel Carroll 131 0.24% John Stark 128 0.24% Judith Sargent Murray* 115 0.21% Samuel Thompson 103 0.19% William Whipple 103 0.19% Abraham Baldwin 98 0.18% Carter Braxton 84 0.15% Daniel Coker+ 84 0.15% Molly Pitcher* 81 0.15% Abraham Clark 73 0.13% Dragging Canoe! 65 0.12% John Waller 60 0.11% Timothy Bigelow 48 0.09% Molly Brant*! 39 0.07% Elijah Clarke 38 0.07% Herman Husband 36 0.07% Ebenezer Mackintosh 22 0.04% James Cleveland 22 0.04% Robert Coram 19 0.03% Elizabeth Powel* 11 0.02% Margaret Corbin* 11 0.02% Jedediah Peck 11 0.02% Mary Perth*+ 4 0.01% Han Yerry! 2 0.00% Tyonajanegen*! 2 0.00% 163
John Skenandoa 0 0.00% (Shenandoah)! Total 54416 100.00%
Appendix A.2 Name Removed Keywords Thomas Jefferson Civil War, Empire, Progressive Era, WW2, Lincoln, New Deal, Environmental History, France George Washington (2 in 1890) Civil War, Cold War, China, WW2, WW1, Japan, 20th C, New Deal, Lincoln, V War, Progressive Era, Korea, Reconstruction, empire, France, Mexico, Environmental History Benjamin Franklin (1 in 1890) Civil War, Cold War, Reconstruction, WW2, British, China, Japan, England, Progressive Era, France James Madison Civil War, Lincoln, Cold War, Empire, China, Reconstruction, France Alexander Hamilton Civil War, Lincoln, India, Reconstruction, China, Empire, Cold War, Technology, WW2, British Empire, France John Adams Civil War, Cold War, Empire, British Empire, British, Progressive Era, WW2, China, Environmental History, France, New Deal, Science John Jay Civil War, Lincoln, Cold War, Reconstruction, British Empire, France, China, French Rev, Empire Ben [jamin] Rush Civil War, Temperance, Cold War, Empire, French Rev, Agriculture, Technology Thomas Paine Civil War, England, Cold War, India, British, JQ Adams, Science, Lincoln, British Empire , French Rev, France, Progressive Era, British, Empire Patrick Henry Civil War, Cold War, Lincoln, Reconstruction, WW2, Empire, Union, Great Britain, Education, Irish James Wilson Civil War Empire, Progressive Era, Lincoln, Progressivism, Union, Brit Empire, Cold War, Mexico, Science, Crime John Hancock Civil War, British, British Empire, WW2, Irish, Lincoln, New Deal, China, Cold War, Medicine, Business History 164
Samuel Adams Civil War, French Rev, Lincoln, British Empire, JQ Adams Richard Allen+ Cold War, England, Reagan Admin, Ronald Reagan, Reconstruction, China, Korea, India, Liberia, Vietnam War, WW2, Jimmy Carter, New Deal, Nuclear Weapons, Britain, England John Dickinson Civil War, British Empire, WW1, Empire, France, African American Henry Knox Civil War, Race, French Rev, WW2, JQ Adams, African America Rufus King Civil War, Race, Slavery, Secession, Empire, French Rev, George Clinton Civil War, British, British Empire, Music, Canada, Abigail Adams* Civil War, French Rev, Lincoln, Theater, George Mason Civil War, African America, Lincoln, China, Cold War Paul Revere Cold War, Civil War, WW2, V. War, African American, Art, Archaeology, Empire Marquis de Lafayette# Civil War, WW1, JQ Adams Elbridge Gerry Civil War, Union, Lincoln, Cold War, France, French Rev, JQ Adams, Empire Richard Henry Lee Civil War, British, British Empire, Lincoln, Union John Witherspoon Civil War, Union, African American, Cold War Martha Washington* Civil War, WW2, Prog Era, WW1, Art, Children's Lit, China, Cold War Ethan Allen Civil War, Prog Era, Union, WW2, Empire, British Empire, Cold War, Confederate, Gouverneur Morris Civil War, Teddy Roosevelt, France, German, Education Oliver Wolcott Civil War, JQ Adams, Cold War, French Rev, Union, British, Higher Edu Roger Sherman Civil War, Lincoln, China, French Rev, Union, Secession, College Athletics, William Livingston Church of England, British, British Empire, Henry Laurens Samuel Chase Civil War, Cold War, French Rev, British Empire, China, Interest Groups, Modern, Music, John Langdon Civil War, Alchemy, Britain, England, Folklore, France, French Rev, Police, Harvard Prince Hall+ 165
John Blair Civil War, Cold War, Reconstruction, Archaeology, Authorship, British, British Empire, Empire, India George Wythe Civil War, Mexico, JQ Adams, British Phillis Wheatley *+ John Penn British, British Empire, Empire, Britain, French Rev, French, Great Britain, Rum, Painting Charles Pinckney Charlestown, Civil War, French Rev, Women, Union, JQ Adams, Lincoln, British Empire Lewis Morris British, British Empire, Science, African American, Anticommunism Mercy Otis Warren* JQ Adams Crispus Attucks+ WW1. WW2. Korean war, Progressive Era, Radio, 1960s, Art, Basketball, Cold War, Edward Rutledge Civil War, African American, Great Britain, British Empire, French Rev, Union, Lincoln, Nathanael Greene Civil War, British, WW2, African Origin William Blount Civil War, France Hugh Williamson British Empire, Climate, Empire, Lincoln, Union Joseph Brant! Ben [jamin] Banneker+ Education, Science, Cold War Stephen Hopkins Civil War George Read Civil War, Reconstruction, Art, Union, WW1, Baron Von Steuben# Civil War, France, WW1, WW2 George Clymer Civil War, French Rev Caesar Rodney Multiple Treaties (1842, 1824, 1862) George Walton Civil War, Mobile, V. War William Samuel Johnson American Art, Civil War, Acculturation, Church of England, British Empire, French Rev, Daniel Carroll Civil War, Union John Stark German, African American, Civil War, Music, New Deal Judith Sargent Murray* Samuel Thompson Civil War, Gold Rush, Lincoln, Account, Addiction William Whipple Germany, Ojibwe, Civil War, Cold War, Lumber Industry Abraham Baldwin Carter Braxton French Rev Daniel Coker+ Molly Pitcher* Vietnam War, Civil War, Cold War, Abraham Clark 166
Dragging Canoe! John Waller Timothy Bigelow Molly Brant*! British Elijah Clarke Herman Husband Ebenezer Mackintosh James Cleveland Music, Race, 1968, Worship Robert Coram Air Force, Air Power, Cold War, Desert Storm, Education, Schools, V. War Elizabeth Powel* Margaret Corbin* Jedediah Peck Mary Perth*+ Han Yerry! Tyonajanegen*! John Skenandoa (Shenandoah)!
Abstract (AB) Search Appendix A.3 Founder Name AB Search Total % to Total AB % of Total AB Adj Thomas Jefferson 167 22.85% 30.98% George Washington 145 19.84% 26.90% James Madison 80 10.94% 14.84% Ben [jamin] Franklin 53 7.25% 9.83% Alexander Hamilton 48 6.57% 8.91% John Adams 47 6.43% 8.72% Thomas Paine 28 3.83% 5.19% Mercy Otis Warren* 14 1.92% 2.60% Ben [jamin] Rush 14 1.92% 2.60% Phillis Wheatley *+ 11 1.50% 2.04% Abigail Adams* 10 1.37% 1.86% John Witherspoon 10 1.37% 1.86% Gouverneur Morris 7 0.96% 1.30% John Jay 7 0.96% 1.30% Judith Sargent 6 0.82% 1.11% Murray* John Dickinson 6 0.82% 1.11% Sam [uel] Adams 6 0.82% 1.11% Richard Allen+ 5 0.68% 0.93% Martha Washington* 5 0.68% 0.93% Henry Knox 5 0.68% 0.93% George Wythe 4 0.55% 0.74% 167
John Hancock 4 0.55% 0.74% Patrick Henry 4 0.55% 0.74% Richard Henry Lee 4 0.55% 0.74% Ethan Allen 3 0.41% 0.56% James Wilson 3 0.41% 0.56% Paul Revere 3 0.41% 0.56% Rufus King 3 0.41% 0.56% William Livingston 3 0.41% 0.56% Prince Hall+ 2 0.27% 0.37% William Blount 2 0.27% 0.37% Molly Brant*! 1 0.14% 0.19% Dragging Canoe! 1 0.14% 0.19% Joseph Brant! 1 0.14% 0.19% Crispus Attucks+ 1 0.14% 0.19% Daniel Coker+ 1 0.14% 0.19% Abraham Baldwin 1 0.14% 0.19% Baron Von Steuben# 1 0.14% 0.19% Caesar Rodney 1 0.14% 0.19% Carter Braxton 1 0.14% 0.19% Charles Pinckney 1 0.14% 0.19% Edward Rutledge 1 0.14% 0.19% George Clinton 1 0.14% 0.19% George Mason 1 0.14% 0.19% George Walton 1 0.14% 0.19% Herman [Harmon, 1 0.14% 0.19% Holman] Husband John Penn 1 0.14% 0.19% John Stark 1 0.14% 0.19% Marquis de 1 0.14% 0.19% Lafayette# Oliver Wolcott 1 0.14% 0.19% Sam [uel] Chase 1 0.14% 0.19% Stephen Hopkins 1 0.14% 0.19% William Samuel 1 0.14% 0.19% Johnson Tyonajanegen*! 0 0.00% 0.00% Han Yerry! 0 0.00% 0.00% John Skenandoa 0 0.00% 0.00% (Shenandoah)! Mary Perth*+ 0 0.00% 0.00% Ben [jamin] 0 0.00% 0.00% Banneker+ Elizabeth Powel* 0 0.00% 0.00% Heather Lee 0 0.00% 0.00% (Margaret) Corbin* 168
Molly Pitcher* 0 0.00% 0.00% Abraham Clark 0 0.00% 0.00% Daniel Carroll 0 0.00% 0.00% Ebenezer Mackintosh 0 0.00% 0.00% Elbridge Gerry 0 0.00% 0.00% Elijah Clarke 0 0.00% 0.00% George Clymer 0 0.00% 0.00% George Read 0 0.00% 0.00% Hugh Williamson 0 0.00% 0.00% James Cleveland 0 0.00% 0.00% Jedediah Peck 0 0.00% 0.00% John Blair 0 0.00% 0.00% John Langdon 0 0.00% 0.00% John Waller 0 0.00% 0.00% Lewis Morris 0 0.00% 0.00% Nathanael Greene 0 0.00% 0.00% Robert Coram 0 0.00% 0.00% Roger Sherman 0 0.00% 0.00% Sam [uel] Thompson 0 0.00% 0.00% Tim [othy] Bigelow 0 0.00% 0.00% William Whipple 0 0.00% 0.00%
Appendix A.4 Name Removed Keywords Thomas Jefferson ]Adult Learning, Africa, John Quincy Adams, Edmund bacon, George Washington George Washington Cable, China, Abe Lincoln, JQ Adams, John Archer, aretai, Jimmy Carter, George Washington Carver, Erskine Caldwell, George Bristow, Bookselling, Kate Chopin, James Madison A.C. Williams, Jimmy Carter, James Madison (Bishop) Ben [jamin] Franklin BJ High School, BJ Parkway Alexander Hamilton Charles Hamilton Houston, Henry Cisneros, James Thomson Callender, art academies, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Religion John Adams JQ Adams , Adams Papers Thomas Paine Mercy Otis Warren* Ben [jamin] Rush Phillis Wheatley *+ Phillis Wheatley Association Abigail Adams* John Witherspoon 169
Gouverneur Morris John Jay Jays Treaty Judith Sargent Murray* John Dickinson Sam [uel] Adams JQ Adams, Samuel Hopkins Adams Richard Allen+ Martha Washington* Henry Knox George Wythe John Hancock Patrick Henry Richard Henry Lee Ethan Allen Ethan Allen Hitchcock James Wilson James Q Wilson, James H Wilson Paul Revere Paul Revere pottery, Paul Revere Christopher Rufus King William Livingston Prince Hall+ William Blount Molly Brant*! Dragging Canoe! Joseph Brant! Crispus Attucks+ Daniel Coker+ Abraham Baldwin Baron Von Steuben# Caesar Rodney Carter Braxton Charles Pinckney Edward Rutledge George Clinton George Mason George Mason University, Law Library George Walton Herman [Harmon, Holman] Husband John Penn John Stark Marquis de Lafayette# Lafayette County Oliver Wolcott Oliver Wolcott Papers Sam [uel] Chase Stephen Hopkins William Samuel Johnson Tyonajanegen*! Han Yerry! John Skenandoa (Shenandoah)! Shenandoah Valley, Murder in the Shenandoah, National Park 170
Mary Perth*+ Ben [jamin] Banneker+ Benjamin Banneker Elementary School Elizabeth Powel* Heather Lee (Margaret) Corbin* Molly Pitcher* Abraham Clark Daniel Carroll Ebenezer Mackintosh Elbridge Gerry Elijah Clarke George Clymer George Read Hugh Williamson Dr. Hugh Williamson James Cleveland James Cleveland Hopkins, John Cleaveland Jedediah Peck John Blair John Langdon John Waller George Waller Lewis Morris Nathanael Greene Robert Coram Roger Sherman Sam [uel] Thompson Tim [othy] Bigelow William Whipple 171
Title (TI) Search Appendix A.5 % of Founder Name TI Search Total % of Total TI Total TI Adj Thomas Jefferson 54 19.35% 20.53% George Washington 28 10.04% 10.65% Ben [jamin] Franklin 26 9.32% 9.89% John Adams 19 6.81% 7.22% James Madison 18 6.45% 6.84% Thomas Paine 16 5.73% 6.08% Alexander Hamilton 14 5.02% 5.32% John Witherspoon 9 3.23% 3.42% John Jay 7 2.51% 2.66% Mercy Otis Warren* 6 2.15% 2.28% Gouverneur Morris 5 1.79% 1.90% John Dickinson 5 1.79% 1.90% Sam [uel] Adams 5 1.79% 1.90% Rufus King 4 1.43% 1.52% Abigail Adams* 3 1.08% 1.14% Charles Pinckney 3 1.08% 1.14% Henry Knox 3 1.08% 1.14% James Wilson 3 1.08% 1.14% Judith Sargent Murray* 3 1.08% 1.14% Marquis de Lafayette# 3 1.08% 1.14% Patrick Henry 3 1.08% 1.14% Paul Revere 3 1.08% 1.14% Richard Henry Lee 3 1.08% 1.14% William Blount 3 1.08% 1.14% William Livingston 3 1.08% 1.14% Ben [jamin] Rush 2 0.72% 0.76% Ethan Allen 2 0.72% 0.76% George Clinton 2 0.72% 0.76% George Wythe 2 0.72% 0.76% Oliver Wolcott 2 0.72% 0.76% William Johnson 2 0.72% 0.76% Abraham Clark 1 0.36% 0.38% Baron Von Steuben# 1 0.36% 0.38% Caesar Rodney 1 0.36% 0.38% Carter Braxton 1 0.36% 0.38% Daniel Carroll 1 0.36% 0.38% Edward Rutledge 1 0.36% 0.38% 172
George Clymer 1 0.36% 0.38% George Read 1 0.36% 0.38% George Walton 1 0.36% 0.38% Herman [Harmon, Holman] Husband 1 0.36% 0.38% John Hancock 1 0.36% 0.38% John Stark 1 0.36% 0.38% Joseph Brant! 1 0.36% 0.38% Martha Washington* 1 0.36% 0.38% Prince Hall+ 1 0.36% 0.38% Richard Allen+ 1 0.36% 0.38% Sam [uel] Chase 1 0.36% 0.38% Elbridge Gerry 1 0.36% 0.38% Abraham Baldwin 0 0.00% 0.00% Ben [jamin] Banneker+ 0 0.00% 0.00% Crispus Attucks+ 0 0.00% 0.00% Daniel Coker+ 0 0.00% 0.00% Dragging Canoe! 0 0.00% 0.00% Ebenezer Mackintosh 0 0.00% 0.00% Elijah Clarke 0 0.00% 0.00% Elizabeth Powel* 0 0.00% 0.00% George Mason 0 0.00% 0.00% Han Yerry! 0 0.00% 0.00% Heather Lee Corbin* 0 0.00% 0.00% Hugh Williamson 0 0.00% 0.00% James Cleveland 0 0.00% 0.00% Jedediah Peck 0 0.00% 0.00% John Blair 0 0.00% 0.00% John Langdon 0 0.00% 0.00% John Penn 0 0.00% 0.00% John Skenandoa (Shenandoah)! 0 0.00% 0.00% John Waller 0 0.00% 0.00% Lewis Morris 0 0.00% 0.00% Mary Perth*+ 0 0.00% 0.00% Molly Brant*! 0 0.00% 0.00% Molly Pitcher* 0 0.00% 0.00% Nathanael Greene 0 0.00% 0.00% Phillis Wheatley *+ 0 0.00% 0.00% Robert Coram 0 0.00% 0.00% Roger Sherman 0 0.00% 0.00% Sam [uel] Thompson 0 0.00% 0.00% Stephen Hopkins 0 0.00% 0.00% Tim [othy] Bigelow 0 0.00% 0.00% Tyonajanegen*! 0 0.00% 0.00% 173
William Whipple 0 0.00% 0.00%
Appendix A.6
Name Removed Keywords Thomas Jefferson George Washington Julian, George Washington Williams, George Washington Washington Cable Ben [jamin] Franklin Benjamin Franklin Bache, Benjamin Franklin Butler JQ Adams, John Adams Dix, Sam Adams, John Adams (Musician), John John Adams Adams (General), John Adams Kingsbury James Madison James Madison Mathes Thomas Paine Alexander Hamilton Alexander Hamilton Stephens John Witherspoon John Jay John Jay Jackson JR Mercy Otis Warren* Gouverneur Morris John Dickinson Sam [uel] Adams Samuel Hopkins Adams Rufus King General Rufus King, Milwaukee Abigail Adams* Charles Pinckney Charles Pinckney National Historic Site Henry Knox James Wilson (Economist), James Wilson (Sec of Agr), James Harrison James Wilson Wilson Judith Sargent Murray* Marquis de Lafayette# Patrick Henry Patrick Henry Callahan Paul Revere Paul Revere Christopher Richard Henry Lee William Blount Impeachment William Livingston Ben [jamin] Rush Ethan Allen Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Ethan Allen Brown George Clinton Royal Governor George Clinton George Wythe Oliver Wolcott 174
William Johnson Sir William Johnson, William Bullein Johnson Abraham Clark Baron Von Steuben# Caesar Rodney Caesar Rodney High School/School District. Carter Braxton Daniel Carroll Edward Rutledge George Clymer George Read George Walton Herman [Harmon, Holman] Husband John Hancock John Stark Joseph Brant! Martha Washington* Prince Hall+ Richard Allen+ Sam [uel] Chase Impeachment Trial Elbridge Gerry Abraham Baldwin Ben [jamin] Banneker+ Benjamin Banneker High School Crispus Attucks+ Daniel Coker+ Dragging Canoe! Ebenezer Mackintosh Elijah Clarke Elizabeth Powel* George Mason Han Yerry! Heather Lee Corbin* Hugh Williamson James Cleveland John Cleaveland Jedediah Peck John Blair John Langdon John Penn John Skenandoa (Shenandoah)! Shenandoah Valley 175
John Waller George Waller Lewis Morris Lewis Morris 1671-1746 Mary Perth*+ Molly Brant*! Molly Pitcher* Beth Brant Nathanael Greene Phillis Wheatley *+ Robert Coram Roger Sherman Sam [uel] Thompson Stephen Hopkins Tim [othy] Bigelow Tyonajanegen*! William Whipple
Keyword (DISKW) Search Appendix A.7 % of DISKW Search Total Founder Name % of Total DISKW Total DISKW Adj Thomas Jefferson 58 23.67% 27.49% George Washington 28 11.43% 13.27% James Madison 28 11.43% 13.27% John Adams 20 8.16% 9.48% Alexander Hamilton 19 7.76% 9.00% Ben [jamin] Franklin 18 7.35% 8.53% Thomas Paine 15 6.12% 7.11% Mercy Otis Warren* 6 2.45% 2.84% Abigail Adams* 5 2.04% 2.37% Ben [jamin] Rush 4 1.63% 1.90% John Witherspoon 4 1.63% 1.90% Judith Sargent Murray* 4 1.63% 1.90% Phillis Wheatley *+ 4 1.63% 1.90% Gouverneur Morris 3 1.22% 1.42% Henry Knox 3 1.22% 1.42% John Dickinson 3 1.22% 1.42% Rufus King 3 1.22% 1.42% Prince Hall+ 2 0.82% 0.95% 176
Richard Henry Lee 2 0.82% 0.95% Sam [uel] Adams 2 0.82% 0.95% Stephen Hopkins 2 0.82% 0.95% Caesar Rodney 1 0.41% 0.47% Charles Pinckney 1 0.41% 0.47% Daniel Carroll 1 0.41% 0.47% Daniel Coker+ 1 0.41% 0.47% George Clinton 1 0.41% 0.47% James Wilson 1 0.41% 0.47% John Jay 1 0.41% 0.47% John Stark 1 0.41% 0.47% Molly Brant*! 1 0.41% 0.47% Nathanael Greene 1 0.41% 0.47% Patrick Henry 1 0.41% 0.47% Paul Revere 1 0.41% 0.47% Abraham Baldwin 0 0.00% 0.00% Abraham Clark 0 0.00% 0.00% Baron Von Steuben# 0 0.00% 0.00% Ben [jamin] Banneker+ 0 0.00% 0.00% Carter Braxton 0 0.00% 0.00% Crispus Attucks+ 0 0.00% 0.00% Dragging Canoe! 0 0.00% 0.00% Ebenezer Mackintosh 0 0.00% 0.00% Elbridge Gerry 0 0.00% 0.00% Edward Rutledge 0 0.00% 0.00% Elijah Clarke 0 0.00% 0.00% Elizabeth Powel* 0 0.00% 0.00% Ethan Allen 0 0.00% 0.00% George Clymer 0 0.00% 0.00% George Mason 0 0.00% 0.00% George Read 0 0.00% 0.00% George Walton 0 0.00% 0.00% George Wythe 0 0.00% 0.00% Han Yerry! 0 0.00% 0.00% Heather (Margaret) Lee Corbin* 0 0.00% 0.00% Herman [Harmon, Holman] Husband 0 0.00% 0.00% Hugh Williamson 0 0.00% 0.00% James Cleveland 0 0.00% 0.00% Jedediah Peck 0 0.00% 0.00% John Blair 0 0.00% 0.00% John Hancock 0 0.00% 0.00% John Langdon 0 0.00% 0.00% John Penn 0 0.00% 0.00% 177
John Skenandoa (Shenandoah)! 0 0.00% 0.00% John Waller 0 0.00% 0.00% Joseph Brant! 0 0.00% 0.00% Lewis Morris 0 0.00% 0.00% Marquis de Lafayette# 0 0.00% 0.00% Martha Washington* 0 0.00% 0.00% Mary Perth*+ 0 0.00% 0.00% Molly Pitcher* 0 0.00% 0.00% Oliver Wolcott 0 0.00% 0.00% Richard Allen+ 0 0.00% 0.00% Robert Coram 0 0.00% 0.00% Roger Sherman 0 0.00% 0.00% Sam [uel] Chase 0 0.00% 0.00% Sam [uel] Thompson 0 0.00% 0.00% Tim [othy] Bigelow 0 0.00% 0.00% Tyonajanegen*! 0 0.00% 0.00% William Blount 0 0.00% 0.00% William Johnson 0 0.00% 0.00% William Livingston 0 0.00% 0.00% William Whipple 0 0.00% 0.00%
Appendix A.8
Name Removed Keywords Thomas Jefferson George Washington George Washington Cable, George Washington Williams, James Madison John Adams Alexander Hamilton Ben [jamin] Franklin Thomas Paine Mercy Otis Warren* Abigail Adams* Ben [jamin] Rush John Witherspoon 178
Judith Sargent Murray* Phillis Wheatley *+ Gouverneur Morris Henry Knox John Dickinson Rufus King Prince Hall+ Richard Henry Lee Sam [uel] Adams Stephen Hopkins Caesar Rodney Charles Pinckney Slaves at Charles Pinckney National Historic Site Daniel Carroll Daniel Coker+ George Clinton James Wilson James Harrison Wilson John Jay John Stark Molly Brant*! Nathanael Greene Patrick Henry Paul Revere Abraham Baldwin Abraham Clark Baron Von Steuben# Ben [jamin] Banneker+ Carter Braxton Crispus Attucks+ Dragging Canoe! Ebenezer Mackintosh 179
Elbridge Gerry Elbridge T Gerry Edward Rutledge Elijah Clarke Elizabeth Powel* Ethan Allen Ethan Allen Hitchcock George Clymer George Mason George Read George Walton George Wythe Han Yerry! Heather (Margaret) Lee Corbin* Herman [Harmon, Holman] Husband Hugh Williamson James Cleveland Jedediah Peck John Blair John Hancock John Langdon John Penn John Skenandoa (Shenandoah)! John Waller Joseph Brant! Lewis Morris Marquis de Lafayette# Martha Washington* Mary Perth*+ Molly Pitcher* Oliver Wolcott Richard Allen+ Robert Coram Roger Sherman Sam [uel] Chase 180
Sam [uel] Thompson Tim [othy] Bigelow Tyonajanegen*! William Blount William Johnson William Livingston William Whipple 181
APPENDIX B: TOPIC MODELS Topic Models Appendix B.1 Period 2 Topic Analysis Results- Title
Topic % thomas john tradition politician ideas france opinion benjamin 12.80% jefferson career agriculture joseph lincoln's lafayette 9.79% william policy relations blount federalist johnson practical influence state opinions american madison 8.58% revolution jefferson's constitution henry hamilton penman 7.98% american leader daniel orator campbell washington religious office 7.98% contributions james history heritage maker samuel thinking era biographical liberty 7.38% public paine statesman carroll principles pre-revolutionary jay state 5.57% philosophy franklin people america wythe revere 4.97% foreign governor propaganda abraham poincare post 4.37% virginia study king patrick york 4.37% english wilson rufus briton colonial french relation 4.37% george question defender 3.77% book-collector pioneer adams sam patrick paul 3.77% saxon obscure business classical merchant 3.16% politics framer alexander democratic 3.16% mohawk war dickinson 1.96% party washington statecraft 1.96% man brant clinton 1.96% popular slavery 1.36% benjamin 0.75%
Appendix B.2 Period 2 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted), Limited to Five Topics Topic % thomas jefferson patrick washington heritage wilson people relations man party 28.92% king carroll alexander adams practical question thinking lincoln's abraham penman george american jefferson thomas contributions history popular statesman 24.70% mohawk joseph governor war framer propaganda pioneer constitution william slavery influence dickinson john franklin english obscure leader rufus brant tradition classical book-collector 19.28% maker william henry principles democratic public pre-revolutionary liberty york clinton 182 american saxon america business daniel hamilton sam orator constitution johnson 15.66% samuel politician virginia defender politics state opinions revolution foreign jefferson policy jefferson paine blount federalist henry career public biographical briton 11.45% paul state study merchant revolution madison
Appendix B.3 Period 3 Topic Analysis Results- Title
Topic % benjamin political samuel jay affairs morris rufus view encounter baron madison 11.00 composed attitudes lee charles policy foundations randolph clinton % thomas franklin intellectual career james york life middle farmer state carter library 10.20 mythology social radicals contrasts revolutionist % american study press radical viewed mind historians agriculture impeachment 7.53% john adams braxton books question tradition diversity sayings 7.27% gouverneur secretary media comparison seaborne founding factions notes wolcott inventor ashbel stanhope witherspoon calhoun freedom french coming rush early chase 5.67% thought adams moral congress washington's documentary movement tool portrait part account 5.67% foreign politics revolution struggle philadelphia steuben philosophy lectures leadership moralist pinckney orientation british richard 5.40% jefferson lafayette joseph executive revolutionary littlefield patriot biography partner hall galloway poor 5.40% alexander image ideas edition critical pickering january nineteenth-century adventure court justice john gerry 4.87% jefferson's constitutional pennsylvania religious philosophy activities timothy introduction catalogue popular scientist green galloway elbridge 4.87% washington war colonial church propaganda signer continuity printing trial madison's policy franklin's historical whig 4.87% dickinson sources king scottish-american nation arranged philosophe lawyer andcommerce virginia making nationalist influence american 4.60% george america public mars empire quincy declaration reflection henry partnership montpelier 4.60% hamilton constitution ages witherspoon persuasion versailles history david military 3.80% confrontation scale music wealth allen crisis smith continental philosophical agency 2.73% independence enlightenment black list missouri paine manufacturing george 2.73% william clymer von capitalistic independent recommended emergence livingston 2.47% business diplomacy witherspoon's role oliver interpretations revolution 2.47% richard full read ofselected cotesworth puritan 1.93% delaware federalism biography commonwealth sage moderate southern 1.93% 183
Appendix B.4 Period 3 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted)
Topic % jefferson lafayette career enlightenment scale full propaganda tool introduction 6.99 popular patriot attitudes cotesworth trial virginia montpelier nationalist historical % 6.85 franklin benjamin war dickinson rufus ideas mind mythology green smith moralist % american foreign moral clymer von middle farmer composed stanhope versailles 6.83 agriculture % 6.69 john constitutional confrontation independence inventor continuity sage puritan % george richard philosophy colonial public seaborne wealth allen role social pinckney 5.68 benjamin military % thomas secretary signer wolcott portrait lawyer andcommerce manufacturing making 5.42 benjamin account % politics independence image america ages pickering declaration notes interpretations 5.26 ofselected affairs david orientation british agency % 5.18 adams william comparison life revolutionary nation read carter coming whig % alexander revolution jefferson's viewed empire activities timothy scientist randolph 5.07 poor livingston % 4.93 study diplomacy encounter media philadelphia affairs hall gerry % business intellectual steuben documentary black independent factions madison 4.87 question calhoun diversity philosophe printing revolutionist foundations franklin's % hamilton james joseph george religious radical constitution impeachment 4.77 commonwealth emergence % political galloway struggle delaware federalism library tradition court history 4.58 contrasts % jay gouverneur press edition founding braxton recommended arranged list historians 4.41 nineteenth-century lee philosophical % samuel witherspoon mars washington's capitalistic reflection missouri persuasion 4.38 intellectual charles influence clinton % morris pennsylvania york view baron littlefield leadership books french paine 4.31 partnership justice madison's % 4.23 thought critical crisis january catalogue adventure part sayings moderate southern % policy scottish-american lectures witherspoon's church state ashbel rush continental 3.40 chase elbridge % 3.17 biography congress king executive quincy freedom radicals partner % 2.98 washington sources music movement oliver early henry % 184
Appendix B.5 Period 3 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted), Limited to Five Topics Topic % john american benjamin adams jefferson thomas franklin george political foreign 40.41% study career business america lafayette affairs jay thought james dickinson hamilton american washington benjamin image intellectual revolution jefferson's 19.98% thomas enlightenment empire steuben philosophy moral movement black independence signer january madison study adams biography thought john political encounter full struggle life 15.57% constitution clymer quincy middle edition wealth documentary church independent delaware thomas colonial scale press radical seaborne war music philosophy moral 13.66% lectures activities washington's propaganda federalism independence braxton oliver scientist reflection pennsylvania mars baron critical lafayette interpretations ofselected stanhope 10.39% adventure coming lawyer andcommerce manufacturing lee jay thought montpelier galloway joseph making
Appendix B.6 Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Title
Topic % george john political history thomas early state continental development reassess 9.84 rejoice jeffersonian folly reflected capacity muammar print man debt federal % american america franklin constitutional washington early public civil theatre agrarian william quaker grubb's architectural architecture wise media revolt impeachment 8.86 popular % american army madison frontier thomas revolution constitutionalism perspective military reform intellectual biography republican friend hamlin faulkner government 8.72 reason navy ciceronian % jefferson founding hamilton study rhetoric social courant notes making creek works conceptual conversion vaughan higher partisan compromise delegation mercer 5.92 recovery % volumes james england federalist social origins iron general analysis blount anglo- american forgotten race financial structure cherbourg washington conspiracy herman 5.64 unrest % jefferson's establishment republic literature thought party revolution authority fiske 5.50 letters man's moderate image inflamed effort politics age fortunes papers concepts % 185 religion century selected washington whiskey edward kimball planter rosewell gunboat triumph lincoln presidential break merchants truth mercantilistic partnership 5.36 historians mississippi % changing revolution republican pennsylvania henry tradition county nation lee philadelphia commonwealth burkeian indians i-iv resistance formation wolcott 5.36 transatlantic unit psychohistorical % virginia morgan new-england prisoner notes edition crown soul's interest chandler destroyed england agriculture maryland sledgehammer attack policies equality policy 4.94 hyderabad % revolutionary eighteenth adams views mercy carolina career property action program administration nineteenth middle circuit leaders freedom kentucky administrative 4.38 magistrates % war order page postmodern polity brackenridge keeping ages problem southern children's york roundup roosevelt outbreak formulating spanish empire madisonian 4.24 patriot % life class british men hero's language faith reagan witherspoon century jedidiah 3.96 alexander weehawken sawbridge ethan invention administrative whirlwind % warren city founders trembling irishmen art hugh modern el-qaddafi morphology 3.68 stronghold intrigue harris young christian north husband macon contexts vassal % scriptures cable thomas america's understanding talbot richard slavery studies douglas senator case mind carolina's discrimination allen production religion merchant 3.54 yorktown % argumentation republicanism conflict charles tour laurens morris broadening ruinous chivalry freeman response selected case dissent vortex conundrum experience 3.54 agrarianism personality % otis york power proving laborers influence constitution's smith robert creative forge 3.54 small land capitalism constitution quest greek view workers wichita % imagination diplomacy contributions late self-government major southall gentry's 3.40 ruling framers militia cabinet natural compared joel work indian impact wythe liberty % benjamin states south grayson culture law civic paradigm economic reconciliation 3.40 project eighteenth-century paradox change coles warriors % ideology education congress hooker chronicler principle union oliver georgia nelson 3.40 oracle federalism alternative operation rejection armed leadership excise transit world % united gouverneur ireland society windings place connecticut morse's discourse 2.84 catharine exchange patriarchal colonial marshall passage choice liberty aftermath fish %
Appendix B.7 Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted)
Topic % republican volumes state life franklin religion madison america revolution thomas washington development revolutionary george laurens hero's gouverneur edition 14.04 planter polity % 186 american thomas early social political york biography henry constitutionalism volumes england theatre jefferson history john adams courant understanding men 13.38 grubb's % study religion army george revolution postmodern notes making founders reason rosewell gunboat hugh merchants senator soul's image effort intrigue natural 7.28% george rhetoric morgan frontier diplomacy hamilton fiske architecture influence debt fenton thought fathers georgia forge weehawken mercy jefferson party cherbourg 7.27% john civil volumes tradition jefferson's life army argumentation creek wise crown modern revolt morphology hooker man higher mercantilistic nelson reconciliation 6.45% virginia federalist ideology war establishment william architectural program navy society slavery moderate eighteenth place circuit volumes economics page catharine otis 6.34% century history revolutionary political new-england philadelphia grayson studies pennsylvania douglas blount witherspoon smith scriptures truth satirist classics vortex partnership class 6.32% benjamin changing constitutional warren revolution kimball government irishmen pennsylvania muammar analysis break conversion civic philosophes franklin joel financial jedidiah discourse 6.30% american literature states america power talbot notes rejoice jeffersonian ruinous art presidential militia mercer chandler southern valley controversy transatlantic historians 5.87% career structure hamlin letters late man's faith selected ruling cabinet imagination leaders cable page discrimination otis unit patriarchal jefferson thomas 5.23% life nation property broadening culture print selected laborers anglo-american nineteenth formation compromise views allen city capitalism party military intellectual marshall 5.22% action tour morris law ciceronian carolina's thought mercy radicalism children's intellectual attack choice county congress early chickasaw adams 2.61% republicanism founding ireland folly administration century imagination sentinels washington administrative edward shadow betrayal gray 2.36% conflict lee trembling capacity gentry's union oliver harris oracle experience city indian vassal view republic 2.34% chivalry major freeman southall reagan impeachment middle forgotten fortunes young colonial edward yorktown wichita 2.07% quaker contributions conceptual case eighteenth constitutional race invention outbreak freedom greek fish 1.79% authority prisoner response i-iv partisan economic history america's life continental gallatin 1.66% brackenridge general destroyed vermont personality rejection amendment james removal nicholas 1.53% faulkner richard delegation dissent recovery eighteenth-century crisis palmer's indictments 1.38% politics jefferson's john 0.55% 187
Appendix B.8 Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted), Limited to Five Topics Topic % american george volumes thomas revolution life john political jefferson virginia 45.38% early republican religion social war changing constitutional washington history jefferson's american benjamin founding states argumentation century franklin york 20.17% perspective james history virginia revolutionary adams action faulkner talbot letters folly language ideology city edward men quaker fiske lee morris founders trembling reason art 13.31% reflected self-government studies wise pennsylvania iron triumph major life army washington order america charles grubb's friend contributions 10.78% gouverneur rejoice planter program freeman faith vaughan formation study smith robert madison virginia united state political courant authority understanding prisoner 10.36% architectural ireland slavery law general moderate senator impeachment i-iv higher eighteenth
Appendix B.9 Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract
Topic % study public state revolution army george period role madison great historical letters 7.64 madison's analysis based figure unique order enlightenment democratic % political congress chapter james social made popular successful washington's 6.64 established indian member values place issues war virginia creek late jefferson's % life jefferson's york economic military civil independence natural nation modern 6.56 support united party adams walton significant federalist sought number reform % american government national career society law england slavery blacks correspondence navy chief led published programs eighteenth-century madisonian 6.13 lincoln regime eastern % jefferson americans british work case opposition provided writings terms system 5.63 members education conflict philosophy finally attempt lee department lived event % early time virginia william men frontier president notes effort smith collection 5.38 chapters hooper man land intellectual active office hamilton's rise % dissertation people served religious english revolutionary nature information social virtue massachusetts attention failed mercer's change kentucky critical practice cases 5.36 means % republican years john adams policy examines forces hamilton records leader leading 5.33 earlier individual approach majority prominent remained morse creation received % history efforts north influence charles principles family eighteenth readers research house understanding science traditional social demonstrated trade leaders benjamin 4.77 maryland % 188 important power context education federalists wichita militia events generation process policies founding warren created importance studies nation's jeffersonian 4.72 valley lack % states federal general common future republic rights leadership president presented compromise account supported class central essays merchants evidence hooker 4.67 legislative % development administration view part program relations purpose result experience 4.51 biography office plays actions focuses attitudes provide economy institute special real % washington thomas war ideas historians south involved documents administrative removal citizens page background large slave reveals georgia played commitment 4.49 similar % century constitution found nineteenth foreign long iww affairs liberty southern 4.45 rhetoric image vocation draws forge explore groups kimball constituted certificates % continental authority interests european republicans failure colonial women boston attempts control revolutionary rhetorical black views ideals knowledge turn source 4.20 suggests % major believed philadelphia began contemporary culture hancock's carolina young chickasaw developed christian internal hyderabad congressional scientific fragmented 4.08 conversion ciceronian newspapers % theory court secretary united governor theatre religion sources western contemporaries debt primarily part virginia's original primary books vision analyzes 4.05 level % works private language form activities alexander indian papers character legacy 3.97 army's basis spanish ideology self-government term win america's quaker discussed % america thought personal era elected service writing church method edwards college 3.73 position aspects roosevelt ways courant texts turned money paper % franklin constitutional writers city death contributions set beliefs founders resistance 3.71 papers influential human impeachment fish continued irish scottish husband executive %
Appendix B.10 Period 4 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract, Optimized (Weighted)
Topic % political american study public jefferson congress government life national state 57.13 history republican revolution dissertation years social war washington army early % accounts hamilton's received town higher irregular allen members collections main cornwallis studies year investigates dramatic phase immigration parallel lee sets 3.17% human rise commercial presidential delegation significant critical volume construction jeffersonians governments churches rising eastern descriptions contributions proposed divisions puritan committee 3.01% iww quaker campaign study ten proper challenges command nineteenth convinced complete influenced mode cast brackenridge's letter conversion mercer achievements wolcott 2.89% 189 units preserved exist hastings ambitious organizations successful west established howard document prevail qaddafi latest amount range disciplines posterity argued treatises 2.87% french shift productions republicanism understanding production give distinction enable freeman hooker credited abandonded individuals slave non-commercial november original irrelevant due 2.66% legal alternative harris expectations prison europe made christian wide advised reformer category crowning supporting mirror fiction extensive provided spiritual man's 2.60% constituted confederation statesmanship addition protect changing derived georgia made selection chivalry lee doctrinal colonials criteria portrait symbolic acquired involvement settlements 2.60% narrative knowledge morse educational greater representatives conservative author argument physical irish emerges prewar mercy disputes response plays audience volumes resolved 2.52% concern distinct lincoln's altered points contrary starting emerged union series generations domestic action press factional preceding taste cooperation university interpretation 2.41% dominated complete irish chickasaw secure fragmented proceeded lockean farewell protest hooker implied engender implications expression enlightened achievements mental shocked articulated 2.22% broad sort madisonian studied major lieutenants text extended simple belief writer community revolt fully financial recent concludes merchant background factions 2.19% compromise subjects permission institutional accurately civil-religious elite compromises relating southerners creditors university economists psychological product wilkinson movements monographs enormous specific 2.08% court literature god origins popular descriptive essentialism jonathan liking race portrait accept expanding soldier illinois fully council merchants understood responsibility 1.84% incompetence roles husband slowly post simply occasions intertwined problem regard timothy tobacco prior struggle support wisdom system change instituted revivify 1.79% conflicts networks cotton truscott arose fall fish fragmented polity gunboats severely guiding notably brought turned framework restored illinois transition promoted 1.77% firm classical inheritance holders methods drive sons home situation issue admiral correspondence wichita theorists won advantage media atlantic seeks world 1.75% grubb parties today passages seeds conception defeat audience language challenge charges expressed investigated officials niche circle weekly post-independence evangelical array 1.57% gentry's fragmented novels governmental satire sawbridge inherited returned vote judge retirement thought principally form french put moral fact numbers jefferson 1.52% robert voluminous carolinians object rational churches racial friends india largely factionalized protected wichita responsibility decade interpretations fiscal mingling long-standing advocate 1.42% 190
Appendix B.11 Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Title
Topic % american jefferson education theory nineteenth historical war revolutionary law madison's madison science social civil antebellum separation fiction cultural church 10.47 paradox % politics washington james adams age thought liberty public constitution atlantic states rights party social controversy elite practice richard burke army 7.76% revolution republic national virginia nation society west race henry african spanish union u.s executive career moral founding images peace america's 6.81% thomas literature origins nineteenth-century foreign rhetoric constitutional franklin roosevelt personal writings nation analysis sargent plantation racial colonial role freemasonry love 6.28% early war north religion city world civilization presidency educational alexander ratification family representation travel societies institutionalizing attained powerful charles stories 5.59% political history eighteenth-century state country legacy forgotten study reform problem protestantism evolution knowledge dynamics conservative information college work popular reception 5.53% united century nationalism washington's black eighteenth pursuit character art class natural madison invention diplomacy western creation indian common ohio knowing 5.48% america republican making state william letters administration democratic labor martha property construction constitutionalism elizabeth volumes nature centre treaty learn scottish 5.27% identity memory literary republicanism boston legal private anglo-american narrative irish native judith autobiography experience friendship free meaning gendering quakerism strategy 4.63% tradition religious paine great modern creation lincoln mercy economy army capitalism times hopkins edmund continental jay landscapes consensus smallpox commerce 4.52% life culture land formation family cold leadership late states rebellion synthesizing formal dangerous works hostile makes attitudes smith young massachusetts 4.47% george revolutionary republic imagination ideals birth theology guide brown place culture protestant architectural witherspoon compleat samuel ralph shadow emergence joseph 4.23% southern slavery philosophy virtue interpretation philadelphia democracy context franklin's temperance violence post-revolutionary press poetics material statesmanship radical major black address 4.04% development york women mind ideology era warren language transatlantic antislavery narratives act bourgeois writing structure defiance murder desire liberalism king 4.02% john presidential benjamin power influence popular change economic prisoners medicine mass dissent post rufus quest analysis man common maritime addison's 3.97% 191 relations federalist independence federal authority military federalists gender indians texts british business fire thomson building ways reforming virtue's shopping high 3.91% democracy south security parties pennsylvania democrats gouverneur idea past paul murray callender arts classical island jonathan double removal domestic image 3.75% enlightenment civic hamilton experiment progress frontier good impact christian vision sense defining rhetorical edward witherspoon's majority adventures decorum establishment quare 3.49% states jefferson's policy founding reading federalism freedom french argument system vernon delaware charity liberal morris model catholicism europe transition pen 3.43% carolina empire paine's intellectual selected orleans satire blood educational health quincy franklin question misfortune errant thing anticipatory honest re-living province 2.34%
Appendix B.12 Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted)
Topic % american early political republic america politics thomas jefferson history john 49.53 washington revolution states united george life james literature culture revolutionary % honor affairs pennsylvania richard arts defining island paradox satire contest health land fertile quincy texts leader eighteenth empire economic virginia 4.84% lincoln democrats art prisoners law delaware influence alexander hunter argument performance analysis system class war north creating napoleon apostle seamen 4.77% removal world dissent consensus executive invention sargent negro patriotic indians elite theological hand british imagination paul hopkins monroe americans societies 4.39% great cherokee context selected familiar career adventures young south century paradise plan sexualities importing nisbet sexuality nostalgia centennial witness madisonian 3.87% politics anglo-american expansion ways planter gouverneur knox important black language elizabeth louisiana problem adams albany protest bodies networks insecurity mythology 3.87% common science architecture fashioning security statesmanship economy design guide plantation imaginative eighteenth-century continental north social shays moravians jay state-building confederacy 3.23% strategy diplomacy progress roosevelt secretary general coming massachusetts brown theory landscape south class race memory federalists clergy's thistle awkward romantics 3.10% ideology intellectual character peace centre evolution witherspoon's warren reason century utopia quare remembrance ohio errant transcendentalists impossible desirable tornado antidotes 2.94% freemasonry separation french works establish identity founding thomas democratic pressed defending communication kemp's naturalizing transformed concessions scandalmonger powerful space founders 2.71% 192 theory samuel north mercy reynolds gospel modernization sectional enlargement self-rule memoire trauma agriculture samual epistolary heart gilbert contagion synthesizing divorce 2.59% learn architectural popular times washington's ralph conflict analysis engineering ecumenism ramifications sedition homes self-preservation imaginary vale trenchant protestant revisionist schooling 2.55% franklin's cabinet irish african educational agent edmund vermont mourning arc involvement delivering mansfieldism risk thomson tornado powerful capital rousseau secret 2.30% rhode shadow addison's ethics secular contestational pirates duty van dutch-american european building adam vale classical sensibility sullivan reform reunion close 2.20% sphere patriots flesh monarchy universal emancipation estimate court building knowing sisters mount role recognizing pfahl presbyterianism total martha presidencies customhouses 1.54% relics jones ulysses act indies mutual production jesuit indispensable congress minority u.s anglicization spatial broken spirited jonathan polk historian northwest 1.41% movers mapping attained confining paths goods u.s custard enjoyment experts quakerism future opinion hemings labor's power educational diffuse arthur formation 1.22% problem dwelling protecting house documentary title disease cultivation characters quakerism desire love distinction benezet commerce surest chiefs conquest taught faith 1.03% experiment natural academy eyewitnesses militias revivalism temporal forced dividing killer mohawks precedent college voices cold exceptionalism transatlantic admonitions competence fictions 0.98% land aesthetics nations concessions africa lectures tempo gun theories motion legislature resistance brant college pinckney dangerous warren taylor-john gazettes strategic 0.93%
Appendix B.13 Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Title, Optimized (Weighted), Limited to Five Topics Topic % american politics political republic america thomas history early washington 62.33% jefferson revolution john states life culture united george literature james revolutionary madison's eighteenth frontier nationalism removal judith autobiography 11.54% dickinson guide creation home character empire colonial southern prisoners ways landscapes culture's structure writings presidency rhetoric analysis natural performance early ohio 10.01% institutionalizing protestant objects paradox christian prohibition constitution atlantic vision health federalism mind language legacy race paine debates learn gilbert medicine meaning fashioning 8.50% cosmopolitanism dissenters murder high experiment reading federalism foundation west country 193
early u.s evolution freedom theology presidential alexander ideals knowing 7.62% documentary inquiry island consensus cabinet amalgamation strategy formal hamilton gouverneur sargent
Appendix B.14 Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract
Topic % american political national washington thomas politics john george examines society jefferson's virginia constitution popular liberty united white enlightenment project 11.06 authority % states government social culture women work nation world adams important theory literature literary party founding colonial argue sense works african 8.88% dissertation study war revolutionary united slavery federal nature system analysis common intellectual army democratic central process form president henry foreign 8.04% chapter america jefferson state madison religious william relationship order independence southern began questions events identity domestic city served published indian 6.68% history early ideas civil black people south policy narrative federalists civic thought view understanding major era impact personal provided founders 6.37% century americans revolution power rights development british historians explores leaders washington's nineteenth natural benjamin religion democracy discourse citizens present importance 6.04% historical republic writings military u.s federalist congress private issues economy success demonstrates ideals decades helped case empire strong number found 5.39% role period time economic part past law influence led franklin reading nineteenth- century material histories home held shaped richard issue influenced 4.79% men constitutional education made including virtue human sought north nationalism make established service support federalism debt warren philosophical views security 4.45% years community land cultural french scholars slave england reform christian continued eighteenth labor largely press paine's diplomatic urban good tradition 4.45% republican freedom career ideology man terms movement key native death rise thought attempt turn creating creation describes focusing actions principle 4.11% public modern letters legal elite union cultural traditional focus forms lives control madison's prominent soldiers recent spain textual presidency lived 4.06% texts west great understood public idea gender expansion educational informed colonies peace opinion close cherokee leading secure crucial research treaty 3.90% writers debates people explore ultimately eighteenth ability remained failure beliefs research progress presented frontier officials objects europe concerns demonstrate legacy 3.31% york attention identity majority thought personal race knowledge doctrine theoretical print european samuel support attitudes business god rhetoric society theology 3.28% 194 life played republicanism opposition blacks building continental capital fought rush consensus worked journals relationships autobiography moment resources opportunities aristocracy today 3.25% america's republican change growth revolution powers shows level expressed influential words parties reality navy president response mansfield legitimacy variety revolutions 3.13% argues examination jeffersonian reveals significance language increasingly employed crisis reflected brown's writer rhetoric separate positions characteristics gentry reagan defend forces 3.07% james writing examining sovereignty separation trade britain half documents final fundamental tradition broader program attempted embraced burke dominated surrounding violence 2.90% based war indians charles series read evidence virginia's twentieth included narratives art desire notion faith dickinson evolution paine abstract constitution 2.85%
Appendix B.15 Period 5 Topic Analysis Results- Abstract, Optimized (Weighted)
Topic % american political dissertation national study history states war public early washington jefferson government social chapter century united historical america 60.31 thomas % revolutionary part writings time past federalists civic congress henry west scholars 16.96 created traditional change slave federalist played critical temperance finally % post-revolutionary threats initially napoleon conversations sophisticated ships title posed responsibilities inclusion interested philosophy dead disestablishment protecting subversion respective theorist category 1.47% attachment achievement middle-class african-americans tactics twenty commander camps colonialism initial consisted happened difficulties heritage nationwide patriarchal revision punishment africa infrastructure 1.41% financial idealism elite surveyors calling museum stronger addition creative additionally voices insistence twin phillis embargo higher commonwealth penitentiary depict encouraging 1.39% identify reader compare invasion minister democratization qualified nps scale agents instance explicitly reinforcing insisted responsible adams wilkinson meade's tend impulse 1.33% philip exclusion jacksonian characterized congressmen serving rush overwhelming peers substance extensively colored realistic knowledge governor entangled acknowledged san uncertainty boundary 1.32% masculinity quickly forgotten transform coming content oliver typically reach hierarchy articulate ex-jesuit jean-jacques customhouses iconic kirk captives jeffersons judgment felix 1.31% bitter africa negotiate aggressive proposed policymakers surrounding earned van asserted mid-eighteenth exemplified patsy white-dominated satire labeled surge frugality ranging accommodation 1.29% 195 orthodox breakdown wage carolinians longer repression excluded tools type official secondary officer broadened facets heterogeneous sole nationalistic hostility disposition objectivity 1.28% build distance implement proposal coercive embodiment good boston capitalists fort intelligence bacon patriot find deliberate impacted continuous civilian vaughan energy 1.28% modest stop innovative attitude operations circulation ruling crown phenomenon paris well-known hope added transcend nationalists contrast globe incarceration diaspora anti-communism 1.23% cautious lodge representations tendencies born modes ill lacking spanning sargent poetry gibbon's vale's sons developmental evangelicals variables accomplish newer montgomery 1.22% prompted booker classics reinforce agreement reckoning takes notes employ disagreements concludes democratic-republican undergoing discovery manpower treasure brilliant refute unifying britons 1.21% cultivated subordinate understand carver resolution attached paper images johnson's advocacy revivals continued confronting utilizing satires clearer compleat involving asylum plays 1.21% symbol partially hope field substantial authenticity fortunes division ambitions transportation arena proprietary carolina's region's sensitive enabled politeness tended productive numbers 1.21% protestantism borders closer unprecedented contingency feelings farm neglected accounts operation currents framer keys energy performed postcolonial loyalists modernist prone successes 1.19% individualism reform treat impressed loss anxiety editors trial delivering exercised reduce controlling gilbert natives indiana prices factionalism tendency racially partly 1.15% temporal nostalgic haiti leonard freed referred suggest code self-consciousness volatile woodrow lease's departs suspicion mores alive speculators rejecting truths rejection 1.13% relevant enlightenment director prose assumptions water applying anarchy gain patriot largely relics cure commentary hamiltonian inherently monetary genius necessarily abolition 1.12%