Questions to Ask a Founding Father
These are for the school assignment that says to interview a Founding Father, and for the dinner table game where everyone gets one question for one person from the past. They work for whichever American founder you choose (Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton or a name the textbook gives a single line) and sit in six groups in the order things happened: the war, the Declaration, the Constitution, slavery and the people left out, the feuds among the founders, and the country as it is now. Choose your founder before you choose your questions, since one that suits Franklin can fall flat with Madison.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Revolution
When did you stop thinking of yourself as a loyal British subject?
Why ask it
Nearly all of them began as loyal subjects, so a good answer names a year and an event, not a feeling. It suits Franklin best, who spent years in London as a colonial agent and only came home in 1775, or John Dickinson, who was still arguing for reconciliation in July 1776.
Where were you on July 4, 1776, and what were you doing?
Why ask it
A quick test of whether your founder was even in the room. Washington was with the army in New York, Hamilton was a young artillery captain there, and Madison was a 25 year old delegate at Virginia's convention in Williamsburg. Know the calendar before you ask: Congress voted for independence on July 2, approved the wording on July 4, and most delegates signed the parchment on August 2.
If the British had won the war, what did you think they would do to you?
Why ask it
Declaring independence was treason under British law, and Congress held back the signers' names until January 1777, when it finally sent the states a printed copy that listed them. Put it to any signer of the Declaration, and add whether he wanted his name made public. With Washington, who was with the army and never signed, ask it about accepting command in 1775.
What did you have to lose in 1776, and what did the war end up costing you?
Why ask it
Property, a business, a seat in the colonial government and years at home are all fair answers, and they differ a great deal from one founder to the next. Washington spent about eight years away from Mount Vernon, and John Hancock was among the richest men in Massachusetts. Check the cost in a biography, because a much-shared essay on what became of the signers exaggerates several of their fates.
Was there a week when you believed the Revolution was finished?
Why ask it
For Washington the likely answer is December 1776, with the army shrinking and enlistments about to run out. A member of Congress might pick the same month, when the delegates left Philadelphia for Baltimore ahead of the British. Then ask what he wrote home that week, since private letters tend to be franker than public ones.
Who in your own family or town stayed loyal to the king, and what happened between you?
Why ask it
This one belongs to Franklin. His son William was the royal governor of New Jersey, stayed with the Crown, and the two never mended it. With any other founder it is a reminder that the Revolution was also a quarrel among neighbors, so ask about a friend or business partner he lost.
How did you convince ordinary people that independence was worth a war?
Why ask it
Aim it at the persuaders: Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense came out in January 1776, Samuel Adams or Patrick Henry. The answer shows what the argument sounded like before it was tidied into a declaration. A general or a diplomat will have less to say, so spend your turn on something else with them.
Why did a revolution against one king need the help of another?
Why ask it
France's money, army and fleet mattered at Yorktown, and Franklin spent years in Paris winning and then keeping that alliance. He is the founder to ask, with John Adams second, who served in Europe as well and did not always enjoy working beside him. The follow-up is what the new country owed France afterward.
What did the women in your household do for the cause, and did you take their advice?
Why ask it
John Adams is the one to ask. In March 1776 Abigail wrote asking him to remember the ladies in the new laws, and his reply treated it as a joke. For Washington, ask about Martha joining him at the army's winter camps.
How old were you in 1776, and did anyone say you were too young or too old for this?
Why ask it
In 1776 Franklin was seventy, Jefferson thirty three and Hamilton barely out of his teens. Working out your founder's age is a small piece of arithmetic that changes how you picture him. With a young one, ask who took him seriously first.
Declaration
What did Congress cut from the Declaration that you still wish had stayed in?
Why ask it
Jefferson wrote the draft, Adams and Franklin made changes, and Congress then removed about a quarter of it, including a passage blaming the king for the slave trade. Jefferson minded the cuts and sent friends his original version. Ask another signer the reverse: what he voted to take out, and why.
When you agreed that all men are created equal, who did you picture being included?
Why ask it
Put this to any signer and make him go down the list: men without property, women, free Black Americans, the people he may have held in slavery. The answer will be narrower than the sentence, and the distance between the two is a ready thesis for an essay. Have your next question ready, because most of them would have changed the subject.
Why spend most of the Declaration listing the king's wrongs one by one?
Why ask it
Readers remember the opening and skip the long list of grievances, which is most of the text. Choose one grievance, such as the one about quartering troops or the one about trial by jury, and ask the founder for the real event behind it. Lawyers like Adams and Jefferson handle this best.
Who were you really writing the Declaration for: the king, the colonists or the rest of the world?
Why ask it
The first sentence speaks of 'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind', which points abroad. Franklin and Adams, the diplomats, can explain why a foreign government would not help rebels who had not yet declared themselves a country. It leads naturally to the question about France.
Did you hesitate before voting for independence, and what finally settled it?
Why ask it
The vote was not unanimous at first. On July 1 Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted no, Delaware was split and New York held back, and it took a day of pressure and an overnight ride by Caesar Rodney to change the count. John Dickinson, who stayed away from the final vote and then served in the militia, gives the most interesting answer.
What did you mean by the pursuit of happiness?
Why ask it
Writers before Jefferson usually listed life, liberty and property, so the change of the third word is worth asking about. Jefferson is the obvious choice, and George Mason is a good second, since his Virginia Declaration of Rights a few weeks earlier also spoke of pursuing happiness. Skip it for a founder who had no hand in the wording.
Constitution
What was so wrong with the Articles of Confederation that you started over?
Why ask it
The 1787 convention was called to revise the Articles, and the delegates wrote a new plan instead. Madison, Hamilton and Washington had all complained that Congress could not raise money or make the states cooperate. Ask for the one event that convinced him, and expect to hear about unpaid soldiers or the farmers' uprising in Massachusetts.
Why did you write the Constitution behind closed doors?
Why ask it
The delegates agreed to keep the debates secret, and Madison's notes on them were not published until after his death decades later. Madison can defend the rule and Washington, who chaired the meetings, enforced it. The follow-up writes itself: would he accept a government drafting its rules that way now?
Which compromise in the Constitution did you swallow hardest?
Why ask it
Every delegate lost something. Madison wanted both houses of Congress based on population and had to accept equal votes for each state in the Senate, a deal pressed by Roger Sherman and the Connecticut delegates. Ask what he got in exchange, because that is how you find out what he cared about most.
Why did you sign the Constitution, or why did you refuse?
Why ask it
Three delegates who stayed to the end would not sign: George Mason, Elbridge Gerry and Edmund Randolph. Franklin signed while admitting there were parts he did not approve of, on the ground that he might be wrong. Either side makes a strong interview, and a refuser is a fresher choice than another Washington.
Why did the Constitution go to the states with no bill of rights in it?
Why ask it
Mason asked for one near the end of the convention and was voted down, and Jefferson wrote from Paris that the omission was a mistake. Madison first thought a list of rights unnecessary, then drafted the amendments himself in 1789. He is the one to ask, and the question underneath is what changed his mind.
How far apart did you mean to keep religion and government?
Why ask it
They did not agree, and the answer depends on the state he came from. Virginia passed Jefferson's religious freedom law in 1786 with Madison steering it through, while Massachusetts, home of John and Samuel Adams, kept a church system paid for by taxes until 1833. Point out that the Constitution bans any religious test for federal office, and ask whether he wanted the same rule at home.
What did you have in mind when you wrote the right to keep and bear arms?
Why ask it
Madison drafted the amendment in 1789, and its sentence opens with a well regulated militia, written when many founders distrusted a permanent army. Courts and historians still disagree about how much weight that opening carries, so have him explain it in the terms of his own day and leave the modern argument to your class. It only works on someone who sat in the First Congress or fought over ratification.
What were you most afraid a president might turn into?
Why ask it
They had just fought a king, so the office worried them, and they still disagreed about how strong to make it. Hamilton argued at the convention for an executive who would serve for life on good behavior, which his enemies never let him forget. Washington can be asked how it felt to sit in the chair while the others designed a job everyone assumed would be his.
Why not let the voters choose the president directly?
Why ask it
James Wilson argued for a popular vote and lost, and the convention went through several schemes before settling on electors. Delegates gave different reasons, and historians still argue over which weighed most, so make your founder give his own. It works for anyone who was at the convention and for nobody who was not.
How did you talk the country into ratifying a plan so many people distrusted?
Why ask it
Hamilton, Madison and John Jay wrote the newspaper essays now called The Federalist to win over New York, and the votes there and in Virginia were close. Turn the question around for Patrick Henry, who led the fight against ratification in Virginia: what did he think the country was being talked into?
How hard did you intend it to be to change the Constitution?
Why ask it
Jefferson suggested in a letter that each generation should be free to rewrite its laws, and Madison wrote back that constant rewriting would cost the document its standing. Ask either man and you get one side of that exchange. Bring the number with you: it has been amended twenty seven times, ten of them in the first few years.
Slavery and rights
Did you hold people in slavery, and what did you do about it while you were alive?
Why ask it
Look up the answer before you ask, because it differs sharply by founder. John Adams never held anyone in slavery, Washington freed the people he owned through his will, Jefferson freed only a few, and Franklin held people earlier in life and ended as president of an abolition society. The words 'while you were alive' matter, since several of them left the problem to their heirs.
Why does the Constitution never use the word slavery?
Why ask it
The 1787 text speaks of persons held to service and of other persons, and the word itself did not enter the document until the amendment that abolished it. Madison's notes record him saying it would be wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea of property in men. Ask whether leaving the word out was shame, strategy or both.
How did you justify counting an enslaved person as three fifths of a person?
Why ask it
Clear up the common misreading first. The fraction decided how many seats in Congress a state received, and it was the slaveholding states that wanted every enslaved person counted in full while giving them no vote. Gouverneur Morris attacked the bargain on the convention floor, so ask him why he signed anyway, or ask a Northern delegate such as Sherman why he went along.
Why did you agree to protect the slave trade for another twenty years?
Why ask it
Delegates from South Carolina and Georgia made it a condition of joining, and the convention barred Congress from ending the trade before 1808. George Mason, a slaveholder himself, denounced the trade in the debate. Ask a delegate who voted yes what he believed would happen if he had said no.
Did you honestly believe slavery would fade away without anyone having to end it?
Why ask it
Several founders said so, Jefferson and Madison among them, and it let them put the question off. Cotton made slavery more profitable in the decades that followed instead. The follow-up is what he did, as opposed to what he hoped, and it is a hard one to answer well.
Which of you spoke against slavery at the time, and why did the rest not join them?
Why ask it
It takes away the excuse that nobody then knew better. Franklin signed a petition asking Congress to act against slavery in 1790, and Jay and Hamilton belonged to a New York society that worked for manumission, though Jay held people in slavery while he led it. A founder from the Deep South will give a very different answer from a Pennsylvanian.
What do you think the people enslaved in your house made of your talk about liberty?
Why ask it
Before you ask, find the name of one real person held by that founder, because several are documented. Madison wrote to his father in 1783 that he could not punish a man named Billey for wanting the liberty the war had been fought for. A named person makes the answer much harder to keep abstract.
Who was allowed to vote when you had finished, and who was not?
Why ask it
The Constitution left voting rules to each state, and most kept the vote to men who owned property or paid taxes. Look up the rule in your founder's own state, since they were not the same; New Jersey, for one, let some women with property vote until 1807. Ask whether he thought a man with no property could be trusted with a ballot.
What did you believe the new country owed the Native nations already living on the land?
Why ask it
One of the grievances in the Declaration describes Native people in openly hostile terms, a line most classes pass over. Washington's government signed treaties with Native nations while settlers kept pushing onto their land, and Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana opened far more of it. Either can be asked whether he expected those treaties to be kept.
Rivals
Which of the other founders did you trust least?
Why ask it
They were not a band of friends, and nearly every one of them left a sharp opinion of another in a letter or diary. Find one such remark before you ask so you can hold him to it. Adams is the most rewarding choice here, since he had hard words for Franklin, Hamilton and at times Jefferson.
Was the fight over a national bank about money, or about what kind of country this would be?
Why ask it
Hamilton wanted a bank, a funded debt and a country that manufactured and traded, while Jefferson and Madison said the Constitution gave Congress no such power. Ask it of any of the three and you get a full account of the first great split in American politics. If you picked Washington, he was the one who had to choose between them and sign the bill.
You warned the country against parties. How did you end up leading one?
Why ask it
Madison is the best target, because he wrote a famous essay on the dangers of faction and then built an opposition party with Jefferson within a few years. Washington, who made the warning in his farewell address, can be asked whether he ever thought it would be heeded. Do not use it on Franklin, who died before the parties formed.
What was the election of 1800 like from your side of it?
Why ask it
Adams lost and left the capital before his successor was sworn in, while Jefferson tied with his own running mate, Aaron Burr, and waited through thirty six ballots in the House. Hamilton, no friend to either man, urged his allies to prefer Jefferson. Whichever of them you ask, the real subject is how power changed hands without a fight.
Which friendship did politics cost you, and did you ever get it back?
Why ask it
Adams and Jefferson stopped speaking after 1800, were coaxed back into writing by a mutual friend in 1812, and kept up the letters until they died on the same day in 1826. Their correspondence is easy to find and quote. Madison and Hamilton make a sadder pair, co-authors who became opponents and stayed that way.
Why did you agree to fight a duel, and was any insult worth that?
Why ask it
Meant for Hamilton or Aaron Burr, whose duel in 1804 ended Hamilton's life and Burr's career. Hamilton's eldest son had died in a duel in 1801, which makes his decision to go harder to explain. With any other founder, change it to what he thought when he heard the news.
Which founder gets too much credit, and which gets too little?
Why ask it
Here is a way to find a less obvious person to interview. Roger Sherman signed the Declaration, the Articles and the Constitution, Gouverneur Morris wrote much of the Constitution's final wording, and neither is on any money. Expect the founder you ask to put himself in the second group.
Today
If you could walk around the United States today, what would make you proudest and what would worry you most?
Why ask it
Most people reach for this one first, and it earns a vague answer unless he has to name one of each. Measure the reply against the fear he put in writing: Washington's was parties and foreign entanglements, Adams's a wealthy few running things, Jefferson's public debt. Then find out whether the thing he is proud of is something he built or something later generations added.
What about the size of the country now would you find hardest to believe?
Why ask it
Give him the numbers first. The first census in 1790 counted just under four million people, nearly all of them near one coast, and several founders doubted a republic could work over a larger area. Madison argued the opposite, that a big republic would be steadier, so ask him whether he feels proved right.
Which amendment would you have voted against, and which do you wish you had thought of?
Why ask it
Bring a short list: the ones that ended slavery and promised equal protection, the vote for women, the direct election of senators and the two term limit that turned Washington's habit into law. His reaction to each tells you more than a general opinion of the present would. It suits a framer such as Madison far better than a signer who never worked on the Constitution.
Should judges today decide cases by what you intended, or by what their own time needs?
Why ask it
People quote the founders' intentions constantly, and the founders did not agree with each other about what those were. Madison kept his notes of the debates unpublished while he lived, so ask him why, if the intentions were meant to guide us. Nobody has settled this argument, so use it to open a class discussion and not to close one.
What would you make of a press where anyone with a phone can publish?
Why ask it
Their newspapers were openly partisan and often vicious, so he may be less shocked than you expect. Franklin, a printer by trade, is the natural choice, and Adams is the awkward one, because he signed a law under which editors were jailed for criticizing the government. Ask what he would do about a false story, then and now.
Your face is on our money and your name is on schools. What do you think of being turned into a monument?
Why ask it
A lighter one for younger classes and for the dinner table. Washington is on the dollar, Jefferson on the nickel, Hamilton on the ten and Franklin on the hundred, yet in 1792 Congress chose not to put a president's head on coins because it looked too much like a king's money. Ask what changed, and whose face he would have put there instead.
What does a country have to keep doing if it wants to stay a republic?
Why ask it
Franklin is credited with telling a bystander that the convention had produced a republic, if the people could keep it. The story comes from another delegate's notes, so treat it as reported and not recorded. Any founder can answer, and the useful part is the list of habits he names: voting, reading, serving on juries, giving up office.
What would you tell someone my age to do about a law they think is unjust?
Why ask it
Keep the advice in his century's tools so it does not come out as a modern slogan: petitions, boycotts, pamphlets and committees writing from town to town. Samuel Adams worked with most of these in Boston and would have plenty to say. It turns the interview back toward the person asking, which gives an essay its conclusion.
Knowing how the next 250 years went, would you sign again?
Why ask it
Tell him the outline before he answers: a civil war, the end of slavery, a country spread across a continent, the vote extended far past anything he pictured. A yes with no reservations is the weakest reply, so ask what he would insist on changing first. Signers and framers can both take it, about whichever document carries their name.
Interviewing a founder for class or at the dinner table
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Choosing your founder
Find out which room he was in
The men who signed the Declaration in 1776 and the men who wrote the Constitution in 1787 were mostly different people. Washington did not sign the Declaration, Jefferson and John Adams were abroad as diplomats during the Constitutional Convention, and Franklin is one of the few whose name is on both. Check this first, or half your questions will be about a meeting your founder never attended.
Look past the six famous names
A teacher who assigns this to a whole class may read a great many interviews with Washington and Jefferson. Roger Sherman, George Mason, Gouverneur Morris, James Wilson, John Jay and John Dickinson each took a clear side in a big argument, which makes them easier to interview than a man everyone already has an opinion about.
Ask what the assignment counts as a founder
Some teachers mean a signer of one of the two documents, and others accept anyone who shaped the founding, including Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren or Thomas Paine. Ask yours before you start, along with how many questions are expected and whether you are meant to write the answers as well.
Take eight or ten, from at least four groups
Nobody needs the whole list. Two or three from the group where your founder did his main work, one or two from each of the others, and at least one from Slavery and rights whoever you picked. An interview that never leaves the war or never leaves the present reads as half finished.
Writing the answers he would give
Start from his own letters
The National Archives runs a free website called Founders Online that holds the papers of Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and Jay, searchable by word and date. Search a topic from your question, read two or three letters, and build the answer from what he wrote to a friend. For a founder who is not in it, a library biography with an index does the same job.
Put a year on every answer
These men changed their minds. Madison in 1787 and Madison in 1798 argue for different things, and Franklin's views on slavery in 1750 are not his views in 1790. Decide what year your interview takes place, say so at the top, and keep every answer on the right side of that date.
Write the evasion as well
On slavery, money and their rivals, most founders would have answered a different question from the one asked. Write that evasion in his voice, then write your follow-up and his second, shorter reply. Two exchanges on one hard question earn more credit than five polite ones.
Tell him what he cannot know
For the Today questions your founder has missed everything after his death. Give him two sentences of background before each one, then let him react from his own principles. Hamilton hearing about the national debt and Jefferson hearing about cities of several million people will not need much prompting.
Playing it as a game or a class activity
One founder, one question
Around a table, each person names a founder and the single question they would spend on him, and everyone else guesses the answer. The round that follows is better: each person argues that their question was the best use of the turn.
The hot seat
One student prepares a founder and answers in character while the class asks from the list. Give the person in the seat the right to say 'I decline to answer that, sir' twice, and let the class decide afterward which refusals gave the most away.
Seat two rivals together
Hamilton and Jefferson, Adams and Franklin, or Madison and Patrick Henry at one table will answer the same question in opposite ways. Use the Rivals group and anything about the bank, the presidency or the bill of rights. A third student as Washington, trying to keep the peace, is historically fair casting.
Mistakes that weaken the interview
Treating the founders as one person
Sentences that begin 'the Founders believed' are nearly always wrong, because they disagreed about banks, parties, France, the presidency and slavery. Name the man, and where you can, name the one who argued the opposite.
Quotes he never said
A large share of the founder quotations passed around online are invented or belong to someone else. Before a line goes into your answer, trace it to a dated letter or speech. Monticello and Mount Vernon both keep public lists of sayings wrongly pinned on Jefferson and Washington, and those are quick places to check.
All praise or all prosecution
An interview that only admires gets nothing new out of him, and one that only accuses gets a man who stops talking. Ask about the best thing he did and the worst in the same sitting, in that order, and let the reader hold both.
Spending every question on the present
What he would think of today is a guess, however well argued, while what he did in 1776 or 1787 can be looked up. Keep the modern questions to two or three and put them last, after the answers that rest on evidence.