Founding Fathers of The United States - Legacy

Legacy

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 ... the founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defence and preservation."

The last remaining founders, also called the "Last of the Romans", lived well into the nineteenth century; for example, Andrew Jackson served in the Revolutionary War, eventually became President, died in 1845, and is now sometimes considered a founding father.