The Founding Fathers: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America (1997)

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Thomas G. West is Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College, beginning in the Fall of 2011. West previously taught at the University of Dallas from 1974 to 2011. He is also a Director and Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute, which has supported and publicized his research. Born in 1945, Dr. West received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1967 and his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University in 1974. He served in Vietnam as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1969-70. He was Bradley Resident Scholar at the Heritage Foundation in 1988-89, and Salvatori Visiting Scholar at Claremont McKenna College from 1990-92. He has translated, with Grace Starry West, Plato's Charmides, Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, and Crito, as well as Aristophanes' Clouds. He has also published Vindicating the Founders, an analysis and defense of American political thought in the Founding era. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_G._West Many Founding Fathers, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin owned slaves (Franklin later became an abolitionist) .[30] Slaves and slavery are mentioned only indirectly in the 1787 Constitution. For example, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 prescribes that "three fifths of all other Persons" are to be counted for the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives and direct Taxes. Additionally, in Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3, slaves are referred to as "persons held in service or labor".[30][31] The Founding Fathers, however, did make important efforts to contain slavery. Many Northern states had adopted legislation to end or significantly reduce slavery after the American Revolution.[31] In 1782 Virginia passed a manumission law that allowed slave owners to free their slaves by will or deed.[32] As a result, thousands of slaves were manumitted in Virginia.[32] Thomas Jefferson in 1784 proposed to ban slavery in all the Western Territories, which failed to pass Congress by one vote.[31] Partially following Jefferson's plan Congress did ban slavery in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 for territory north of the Ohio River.[31] The international slave trade was banned in all states except South Carolina by 1800. Finally in 1807, President Jefferson signed into law a federally enforced ban on the international slave trade throughout all the United States and territories.[33] President Jefferson, in 1804, however, allowed the domestic expansion or diffusion of slavery into the Louisiana Territory.[34] According to the historian Joseph J. Ellis, the concept of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. emerged in the 1820s as the last survivors died out. Ellis says "the founders," or "the fathers," comprised an aggregate of semi-sacred figures whose particular accomplishments and singular achievements were decidedly less important than their sheer presence as a powerful but faceless symbol of past greatness. For the generation of national leaders coming of age in the 1820s and 1830s – men like Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun – "the founders" represented a heroic but anonymous abstraction whose long shadow fell across all followers and whose legendary accomplishments defied comparison. "We can win no laurels in a war for independence," Webster acknowledged in 1825. "Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us ... [as] the founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defence and preservation."[35] The last remaining founders, also called the "Last of the Romans", lived well into the nineteenth century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States