Exordium

I am in the process of writing a series of essays – three maybe, or four – about the early Americans, the Founding Fathers. The result of their exertions can be debated, their saintliness can be questioned, but I am convinced that there has never before existed a greater confluence of intelligent, motivated men. Captained by Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton, this extraordinary group is, more than any other, responsible for the structure of the world in which we live.

They laid the foundation for a future free from tyranny and oppression. They championed individual rights and refined the notions of justice born in the fire of the English Civil War and illuminated by the Restoration. They constructed an economic framework that has persisted through the trials of war and terror. They built a nation. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes the United States emerged from the fragments of a bullied, coerced, and mulcted colony. The story of its birth might well be the greatest ever told.