We the Fallen People, page 36
28. Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984).
29. Benjamin Lincoln to George Washington, 4 December 1786, Founders Online; David Humphreys to George Washington, 20 January 1787, Founders Online; William Vans Murray, “Political Sketches” (1787), quoted in Shain, Myth of American Individualism, 46; William Gordon to George Washington, 20 January 1787, Founders Online; John Jay to Thomas Jefferson, 9 February 1787, Founders Online; Diary of John Quincy Adams, entry for November 26, 1786, Founders Online; Mercy Otis Warren to John Adams, December 1786, Founders Online; John Adams to Elbridge Gerry, 25 April 1785, Founders Online; James Sullivan to John Adams, 16 December 1786, Founders Online; George Washington to John Jay, 18 May 1786, Founders Online; Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2002), 141.
30. George Washington to John Jay, 10 March 1787, Founders Online.
31. John Jay to George Washington, 27 June 1786, Founders Online.
32. George Washington to John Jay, 15 August 1786, Founders Online.
33. John Jay to George Washington, 27 June 1786, Founders Online.
34. George Washington to John Jay, 15 August 1786; Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #22, in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist, ed. J. R. Pole (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005), 117; Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #15, 81.
35. Henry Knox to George Washington, 23 October 1786; David Stuart to George Washington, 19 December 1786, Founders Online.
36. James Madison, “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” Founders Online.
37. Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 209, italics added.
38. Os Guinness, A Free People’s Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 19-20.
39. James Madison, Federalist #57, 309; George Washington to Benjamin Fishbourne, 23 December 1788, Founders Online; James Madison, Federalist #10, 52.
40. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 35.
41. Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 19 August 1785, Founders Online; Abigail Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 15 March 1787, Founders Online.
42. James Sullivan to John Adams, 23 October 1785, Founders Online.
43. Arthur Campbell to James Madison, 28 October 1785, Founders Online.
44. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #6, 27.
45. Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Bible (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 269; Henry Knox to George Washington, 23 October 1786, Founders Online, italics original.
46. David Humphreys to George Washington, 20 January 1787, Founders Online.
Chapter 2: “We Must Take Human Nature as We Find It”
1. John Jay to George Washington, 27 June 1786, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov; George Washington to John Jay, 15 August 1786, Founders Online.
2. Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 8.
3. Jack P. Greene, Imperatives, Behaviors, and Identities: Essays in Early American Cultural History (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992), 251.
4. John Adams to James Sullivan, 26 May 1776, Founders Online.
5. Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, trans. Anne Cohler et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 160; Keyssar, Right to Vote, 8; Greene, Imperatives, Behaviors, and Identities, 251.
6. Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 143.
7. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, ed. Merrill Peterson (New York: Penguin, 1975), 192-93, 186.
8. Joseph Ellis, American Dialogue: The Founders and Us (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018), 26, 227.
9. Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March 1776, Founders Online; John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 April 1776, Founders Online; Gary Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (New York: Viking, 2005), 289.
10. Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days (New York: HarperCollins, 1982), 9.
11. Margaret Bendroth, The Spiritual Practice of Remembering (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 49.
12. Ellis, American Dialogue, 224.
13. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 60; John Adams to Elbridge Gerry, 25 April 1785, Founders Online.
14. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #78, in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist, ed. J. R. Pole (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005), 418; Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Bible (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 271; Mark David Hall, “Roger Sherman: An Old Puritan in a New Nation,” in The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life, ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach et al. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 247; Merrill Peterson, Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 6.
15. Thomas S. Kidd, Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 227; George Washington to Joseph Jones and James Madison, 3 December 1784, Founders Online; John Jay to George Washington, 27 June 1786, Founders Online.
16. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #76, 405.
17. For a survey of psychological studies that arrive at essentially the same conclusion, see Christian B. Miller, The Character Gap: How Good Are We? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
18. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 186.
19. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, ed. Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin, 1976), 65.
20. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), 80; John Locke, Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Ian Shapiro (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 102, 154.
21. James Madison, Federalist #55, 304.
22. Ibid.
23. Barry Alan Shain, The Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 123; Bernard Bailyn, ed., The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1993), part 1, 68.
24. Michael Meyerson, Liberty’s Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World (New York: Basic Books, 2008), x, ix; Jack N. Rakove, “Introduction,” in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist: The Essential Essays, ed. Jack N. Rakove (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003), 3. Hamilton authored fifty-one of the essays, Madison authored twenty-nine, and Jay, who fell ill shortly after the project began, contributed five.
25. Daniel Walker Howe, “The Political Psychology of The Federalist,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., vol. 44 (1987): 491.
26. Gordon S. Wood, The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States (New York: Penguin, 2011), 140.
27. Hamilton, Federalist #6, 24; Hamilton, Federalist #15, 79; Madison, Federalist #49, 274; Madison, Federalist #42, 230.
28. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #73, 391.
29. Judges 17:6.
30. John Jay to George Washington, 27 June 1786, Founders Online; George Washington to John Jay, 15 August 1786, Founders Online.
31. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 17 October 1788, Founders Online; James Madison, Federalist #41, 219.
32. Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 1, 90; part 2, 761, 169.
33. John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Historical Essays and Studies, ed. J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (London: Macmillan, 1907), 504; James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 17 October 1788, Founders Online, emphasis added.
34. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #15, 79; Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 2, 514, 608, 593.
35. George Washington to Marquis de Lafayette, 7 February 1788, Founders Online.
36. John Adams to John Jay, 16 December 1787, Founders Online.
37. Diary of John Adams, Spring 1776, in Founders Online; John Adams, Thoughts on Government, Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies, April 1776, in John Adams, Revolutionary Writings, 1775–1783, ed. Gordon Wood (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2011), 51; John Adams to Abigail Adams, 19 March 1776, Founders Online.
38. John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 22 June 1819, Founders Online.
39. John Adams, “An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power,” Founders Online; Richard, Founders and the Bible, 266.
40. John Adams to William Stephens Smith, 26 December 1787, Founders Online.
41. James Madison, Federalist #51, 281; Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #9, 42.
42. Nathan Dane to Melancton Smith, 3 July 1788, in Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 2, 850.
43. James Madison, Federalist #51, 281.
44. Ibid.
45. Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 2, 808; Mark Ellingsen, Blessed Are the Cynical: How Original Sin Can Make America a Better Place (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2003), 55; James Madison, Federalist #10, 51.
46. “Americanus III,” in Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 1, 441.
47. “A Citizen of America” [Noah Webster], in ibid., part 1, 158; George Washington to Marquis de Lafayette, 7 February 1788, Founders Online, italics added.
48. Linda K. Kerber, “The Republican Ideology of the Revolutionary Generation,” American Quarterly 37 (1985): 475; Edward J. Larson and Michael P. Winship, The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison (New York: Modern Library, 2005), 51.
49. James Madison, Federalist #10, 52.
50. Yascha Mounk, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger & How to Save It (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 56.
51. Keyssar, Right to Vote, 4.
52. Larson and Winship, Constitutional Convention, 18.
53. James Madison, Federalist #38, 207; Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1:291.
54. Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 2, 766, 793.
55. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #35, 185; James Madison, Federalist #56, 305; Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 2, 512.
56. Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 2, 507, italics added; James Madison, Federalist #49, 276, italics added.
57. Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 2, 777, 782.
58. James Madison, Federalist #41, 219; Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #71, 383.
59. Larson and Winship, Constitutional Convention, 35; Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 2, 521.
60. James Madison, Federalist #63, 339, italics added.
61. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #71, 382-83, italics added.
62. Ibid., 382.
63. Ibid., 382, 383.
64. Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York: Hill & Wang, 2007), 278.
65. Larson and Winship, Constitutional Convention, 110, 17-18, 99, 93.
66. Ibid., 93.
67. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 17 October 1788, Founders Online.
68. Ibid.; Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 2, 766; part 1, 803.
69. Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 2, 585; James Madison, Federalist #37, 194.
70. Benjamin Rush to David Ramsay, 19 April 1788, in Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 2, 418.
71. Ibid.
72. Samuel Holden Parsons to William Cushing, 11 January 1788, in Bailyn, Debate on the Constitution, part 1, 748.
73. James Madison, Federalist #10, 54.
74. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 17 October 1788, Founders Online.
75. James Madison, Federalist #10, 50.
76. James Madison, Federalist #51, 282.
77. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 17 October 1788, Founders Online; James Madison, Federalist #10, 51.
78. James Madison, Federalist #51, 283.
79. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908; repr., New York: Image Books, 2001), 8-9.
80. Richard, Founders and the Bible, 267.
81. Psalm 8:5.
82. Gregory A. Boyd and Paul R. Eddy, Across the Spectrum: Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 100.
83. Alan Jacobs, Original Sin: A Cultural History (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), xiii.
84. Psalm 14:3; 1 Kings 8:46; Ecclesiastes 7:20; Jeremiah 17:9; Isaiah 53:6.
85. Romans 3:23; James 3:2; Titus 3:3; 1 John 1:8, 10; Matthew 19:17.
86. Saint Augustine, City of God, trans. Gerald G. Walsh et al., abridged ed. (New York: Image Books, 1958), book 13, chapter 3, 272; Psalm 51:5.
87. Joel R. Beeke and Sinclair B. Ferguson, eds., Reformed Confessions Harmonized (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 46-48.
88. Ibid., 105.
89. Jacobs, Original Sin, 133; Richard, Founders and the Bible, 264-65.
90. Shain, Myth of American Individualism, 130, 200, 221, 224.
91. James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (London: MacMillan & Co., 1888), 1:407-8.
92. Richard, Founders and the Bible, 265.
93. Shain, Myth of American Individualism, 129.
Part Two: The Great Reversal
1. Andrew Jackson to Waightstill Avery, August 12, 1788, in The Papers of Andrew Jackson, ed. Sam B. Smith, Harriet Chappell Owsley, Harold D. Moser, et al., 10 vols. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980–2016), 1:12.
2. Sean Wilentz, Andrew Jackson (New York: Times Books, 2005), 18.
3. Andrew Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), 155.
4. Jackson, Papers of Andrew Jackson, 5:352, 370, 378; 6:358, 98; 5:372.
5. Ibid., 7:151, 6:488, 7:642, 6:479.
6. Ibid., 6:454, 488, 471, 472, 482, 87.
7. John Fea, Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Trump (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018), 168.
Chapter 3: “The People Thought Gen. Jackson Worthy”
1. Andrew Burstein, America’s Jubilee: How in 1826 a Generation Remembered Fifty Years of Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 228.
2. Andrew Jackson, in The Papers of Andrew Jackson, ed. Sam B. Smith, Harriet Chappell Owsley, Harold D. Moser, et al., 10 vols. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980–2016), 6:191.
3. Merrill Peterson, Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 3.
4. James D. Richardson, comp., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), 2:860-62, emphasis added; William J. Cooper, The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017), 223; Burstein, America’s Jubilee, 150.
5. Robert V. Remini, The Legacy of Andrew Jackson: Essays on Democracy, Indian Removal, and Slavery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 14.
6. James Madison, Federalist #10, in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist, ed. J. R. Pole (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005), 49; Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 2, 122-23; Daniel J. Boorstin, ed., An American Primer (New York: Penguin, 1966), 220.
7. The Jeffersonian faction often called themselves simply “Republicans” rather than “Democratic-Republicans,” but I use the longer term consistently to avoid confusing this early party with the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln that came into being during the 1850s.
8. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, ed. Merrill Peterson (New York: Penguin, 1975), 217.
