The Founding Fathers Online

by keith donohue

S ix weeks after the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia ended, George Washington

received a letter from his fellow delegate Gouverneur Morris dated October 30, 1787.
In it he discusses the prospect of the adoption of the Constitution among the various states, and
he credits Washington for its success, “Indeed I am convinced that if you had not attended the
Convention, and the same Paper had been handed out to the World, it would have met with a colder
Reception, with fewer and weaker Advocates, and with more and more strenuous opponents.”
Morris goes on to argue, in a letter preserved in the Papers of George Washington, that only
Washington is suitable to become President and take the reins of the new and unruly republic.
“And indeed among these thirteen Horses now about to be coupled together there are some of every
Race and Character. They will listen to your Voice, and submit to your Control; you therefore must
I say must mount this Seat.”

Left to right: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin.
 Washington was not swayed immediately, and indeed, his correspondence over the
next year shows just how assailed he was by uncertainty and his own desire to retire
from public life. At last he was persuaded by his fellow patriots, and in April 1789,
he left Mount Vernon for New York City to assume the office he was to hold for the
next eight years.
The story of George Washington’s reluctant acceptance to stand for election as first
President of the new nation is told with great élan in Ron Chernow’s new biography,
Washington: A Life, and while well known, this Hamlet-like wavering on Washington’s
part comes most fully alive through the actual words of the participants. Captured in
letters to and from Washington, his angst and vacillation over the presidency are often
tinged by a certain underlying pride in being asked so often and so forcefully.
Chernow was able to describe in detail Washington’s dilemma by turning to
Washington’s papers, which have been collected over the years and used by historians
to write biographies. Now, Washington’s papers, along with those of five other of his
contemporary Founding Fathers, will soon be freely accessible via the Internet as a
result of an ongoing project sponsored by the National Historical Publications and
Records Commission (NHPRC), with strong congressional support.
The voluminous letters, diaries, and papers kept by Washington offer a first-hand
account not only of his struggle over the question of the presidency but virtually
every aspect of his life from his youth to his forays in the French and Indian War, the
creation of Mount Vernon, his leadership of
the Continental Army, his presidency of the
Constitutional Convention, and his years as
first President.
Like many 18th-century property owners and
statesmen, Washington maintained meticulous
records of his business, professional, and
personal life, and these historical documents
are the primary source materials for our
understanding of those distant times and
events. Chernow acknowledges, in his book,
his own debt to those primary source materials:
Author Ron Chernow holds a copy of The Papers of George
Washington.

The Founding Fathers Online Prologue 13


James Madison
Any biographer of George Washington
must stand in awe of the scholarly
feat accomplished by the eminent
team of editors at The Papers of George
Washington project, which operates
out of the University of Virginia at
Charlottesville. By gathering 130,000
relevant documents from around the
globe, they have produced a modern
edition of Washington’s papers that
eclipses the far more modest edition
published by John C. Fitzpatrick back
in the 1930s and early 1940s. Whereas
Fitzpatrick, in his thirty-nine volumes,
limited himself to the letters written by
Washington, the new edition—sixty
volumes of letters and diaries and still
counting—includes letters written to
him as well as excerpts of contemporary
letters, diaries, and newspapers. Expert
commentary appears at every step
along the way. Strange as it may seem,
George Washington’s life has now been
so minutely documented that we know
far more about him than did his own
friends, family, and contemporaries.
George Washington is but one of the
Founding Fathers whose life has been so
minutely documented. An editorial team
at the University of Virginia is also working
14 Prologue
on a comprehensive edition of The Papers
of James Madison, although the first 10
volumes were edited at the University
of Chicago. The John Adams Papers are
currently being published by Harvard
University Press with editorial work at
the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Princeton University is the home to
most of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,
and in 1999, the Thomas Jefferson
Foundation at Monticello took on part
of the job and began The Papers of Thomas
Jefferson: Retirement Series. The Papers of
Benjamin Franklin was established in 1954
under the joint auspices of Yale University
and the American Philosophical Society.
Between 1961 and 1987, Columbia
University Press published the complete
27-volume edition of The Papers of Alexander
Hamilton.
All told, there are 236 volumes of
these documentary editions in print,
and each volume contains hundreds of
documents sent to and from the statesmen,
including letters, diary and journal entries,
publications (such as The Federalist Papers
in the Hamilton edition); editorial essays
introducing the selection of documents and
Barry Faulkner’s mural in the Rotunda for the National Archives features some of the Founding Fathers.
providing historical context; annotations
clarifying the significance and meaning of
particular items; and extensive indexes for
each volume and for entire series.
The papers themselves are drawn from
originals and copies of originals located in the
National Archives, the Library of Congress,
and in literally hundreds of archives, public
and private, across the United States and
around the world.
Once copies had been assembled and
arranged in chronological order, editorial
teams began the task of deciphering,
interpreting, and transcribing handwritten
documents. Every transcription is verified
against the original, in the words of one
editor, “line by line, word by word, letter by
letter.” This attention to accuracy ensures
that final transcriptions reflect the most
verifiable versions of the originals.
The next stage in the process is
annotation—identifying the significant
correspondents, the subjects and events
under discussion, and references to other
people, documents, and publications
within the project and elsewhere.
Annotation is frequently the most time-
consuming part of the process, and it plays
Winter 2010
an essential role in placing the documents
and their contents in context. Specialized
knowledge about the historical period is
necessary to illuminate these details, and
editors provide further context through
introductory materials.
Modern historical documentary editing—
based on the precepts and rigorous standards
of scientific history—began in the 1940s
with work by Julian Boyd of Princeton on
the Thomas Jefferson papers, financed by a
major gift from the New York Times. In 1950,
Boyd presented the first volume to President
Truman, who called for publication of all of
the papers of the Founding Fathers.
“I am convinced that the better we
understand the history of our democracy,
the better we shall appreciate our rights as
free men and the more determined we shall
be to keep our ideals alive,” he said. The
President also asked the National Historical
Publications Commission—which later
became the National Historical Publications
and Records Commission—to plan a
national program for publication of the
papers of other public figures important to
understanding American history.
During the 1950s, the Commission
The Founding Fathers Online
helped the Founders projects with research
into archives and collections, and by
1964, Congress had authorized funds for
the agency to award grants. Over the past
decades, the NHPRC has funded all six
of the projects (with the exception of the
Jefferson Retirement Series) in their ongoing
work, and the print publication resulting
from this massive effort is about two-thirds
complete.
Historians have praised the work of the
editors behind these documentary editions
and relied on the papers to create new and
exciting histories and biographies. David
McCullough told Congress in 2008, “The
value of the Papers of Founding Fathers
goes far beyond their scholarly importance,
immense as that is. These papers are
American scripture. They are our political
faith, the free and open exchange of ideas,
the often brilliant expressions of some of the
most fertile minds, the greatest statesmen,
patriots, and seers in our history.”
McCullough’s own work is testament to
the value of the edited papers. His Pulitzer
Prize–winning biography John Adams relied
heavily upon The Papers of John Adams
documentary edition, and that work, in
turn, became the basis for the Emmy
Award–winning television series on HBO.
Likewise, historian Joseph Ellis’s Founding
Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation,
which received the 2001 Pulitzer Prize
for History, and David Hackett Fischer’s
Washington’s Crossing, which received the
2005 Pulitzer Prize for History, used the
work of the documentary editions, as did
Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An
American Life.
In addition to his new biography on
Washington, Ron Chernow used the
Columbia University project to write
Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (2004).
Dozens of other histories, biographies, and
artistic interpretations have used the original
papers to create fresh versions of the old
story of America’s founding.
Politicians across the
spectrum recognize the
value of the Founders’
papers, and President
Ronald Reagan said
George Washington

Alexander Hamilton
in 1986, “I have great hope for the children
of America, that they too will read the works
of Madison, Washington, Jefferson, Adams,
and Hamilton. For in their letters to each
other and in their essays, in their arguments
and in their opinions, all so passionately
stated, the image of an age can be discerned.”
While their print editions reside in
To learn more about
• Founding Fathers who signed
the Declaration of Independence,
go to www.archives.gov/exhibits/
charters and click on “Join the
Signers of the Declaration.”
• Founding Fathers who signed the Constitution,
go to www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters and
click on “Meet America’s Founding Fathers.”
• The National Historical Publications and
Records Commission, its work, and its grants
program, go to www.archives.gov/grants.
16 Prologue
libraries across the nation, the project editors
realized in the late 1980s that one way to
increase access to their work was through
electronic publication and the Internet.
Several of the projects began investigating
ways to translate their materials from print
to electronic publication for the World
Wide Web.
In 2001 the University of Virginia
Press, with help from a major award from
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and
matched by funding from the President’s
Office of the University of Virginia, founded
Rotunda (http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/),
an electronic imprint of the press. Part of the
early work of Rotunda was to create digital
versions of the documentary editions of the
Founding Era.
The fruit of this vision, the American
Founding Era Collection, is currently
available by institutional license. Now,
through a cooperative agreement with the
National Archives, the University of Virginia
Press will develop a full-featured web site—
hosted by the National Archives—that will
allow free access to the papers of the six
Founders.
The Founders Online will begin with a
prototype public web site to be launched by
October 2011 that will include 154 volumes
drawn from the Washington, Adams,
Madison, and Jefferson print editions.
Approximately 70,000 documents and
almost 125,000 explanatory notes will be
available in this first stage. Within two years,
the web site will have added the published
volumes of Hamilton, and by 2013, it plans
to have all of the existing documents and
notes in the 242 print volumes online in a
single web site where individuals can read,
browse, and search through a new lens to the
Founding Era.
“This award to help the University of
Virginia Press create a new online presence
for the papers of our nation’s founders is
great news for the University and for scholars
everywhere, said University of Virginia
President Teresa Sullivan. “For 10 years, the
press has built on the pioneering vision of
UVA faculty to harness digital technology
in the service of scholarship and education
through the Rotunda imprint. As a public
university, we applaud the leadership of
the National Archives in bringing this
important archive to life. Making these
materials available to the public for free
reflects the core values of the University and
indeed of our nation’s founding generation,
whose words will now be readily available to
teachers, students, and citizens.”
Editors at the projects echo her remarks.
Jim Taylor, director of The Papers of
John Adams project at the Massachusetts
Historical Society, said, “Free access to the
Founders Online will serve a much broader
audience of citizens the way that Rotunda’s
subscription version serves the scholarly
community.”
Barbara Oberg, director of The Papers of
Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University, said,
“Founders Online is a significant step toward
making the nation’s cultural patrimony
freely available to the American citizenry.
‘Knowledge,’ Thomas Jefferson wrote, ’is
the common property of all mankind.’ If a
republic is to survive—let alone thrive—
free access to knowledge is basic, and what
better place to begin than with the words of
America’s founders? But to make Founders
Online possible at all, it has taken the
expertise, hard work, and dedication of the
editorial teams behind the effort.”
The new web site will be built on a
half-century of work by documentary
editors—the tireless scholars who collected,
transcribed, annotated, indexed, and
published the original papers.
The possibilities for new discoveries
are endless. Teachers will be able to call
up primary source material in the history
classroom in the blink of an eye. Students
and scholars will have the ability to home
in on key concepts and search across all six
collections, not only by simple word searches
but by terms assigned in the indexing process
and through editorial annotations.
Winter 2010
 For example, the Founders’ views on
slavery might be assembled in a single
set of search results in which many of the
original documents do not use the word
at all.
Or one might collect all the correspondence
between Adams and Jefferson along with
their contemporaries’ views on each man
and create a richer portrait on their fraught
relationship.
Or one might trace the Founders’ letters
and diaries and debates leading up to the
Constitutional Convention, their thoughts
during the meetings in Philadelphia, the
ratification of the Constitution by the states,
and how the Washington administration,
first Congress, and first Supreme Court
implemented the grand experiment.
The Founders Online continues that
experiment in democracy by making freely
available in one place the original words of
the original statesmen. Although it holds
only a small portion of the primary source
material, the National Archives is an ideal
home for this collection.
In the same Act of Congress creating
the National Archives in 1934, there was
language establishing a National Historical
Publications Commission designed to
publish the most important documents of
our history, whether or not those papers
were in the stewardship of the government.
The Commission augments the work of
the National Archives and creates a way for
partnerships to be created with other archives
John Adams
in the nation to help tell the American story.
In announcing the creation of the “As scholars and statesmen debate and Madison—rarely agreed together on
Founders Online, David S. Ferriero, the meaning of documents such as the public policy for the new nation, though they
Archivist of the United States, said that Constitution and Bill of Rights, they can were unanimous in support of the principles
having these papers online will better inform turn to the originals and the wit and wisdom and underlying idea of America. Now today’s
current-day debates over the meaning of our of the Founders’ own debates. And we can best minds will have the chance to contrast
founding documents. only express our gratitude for the effort of and compare the Founders’ words and ideas
“This new archive of the Founding Era dedicated editors and scholars to create this through a communications medium that none
will revolutionize our understanding by work, a national monument to the founding could foresee, though all would acknowledge
creating for the first time a free and fully of our nation.” it as a democratizing force. The words of the
searchable collection of the Founders’ The great minds who fiercely debated Founders belong online, where people across
own words in the context of their time,” the founding of our country—Franklin, the country and around the world can freely
he said. Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, read and wonder at their wisdom. P

The Founding Fathers Online Prologue 17

 Historian Cites Value
O f P residential P apers
O n January 20, 1777, some two weeks
after the Battle of Princeton, George
Washington sent a note to the 22-year-
old Alexander Hamilton, inviting him to
become his aide-de-camp.
Thus began a relationship that would
last a lifetime, with Hamilton serving as
Washington’s trusted adviser through the
Revolutionary War, at the Constitutional
Convention, as a leader in the Federalist
Party, and as secretary of the treasury for six
years during Washington’s presidency.
During the months when The Federalist
began to appear under the pen name
Publius, Washington wrote his friend
Hamilton, telling him that “when the
transient circumstances and fugitive
performances which attended this crisis shall
have disappeared, that work will merit the
notice of Posterity; because in it are candidly
discussed the principles of freedom & the
topics of government, which will be always
interesting to mankind so long as they shall
be connected in Civil Society.” He was, as so
often, percipient and wise in his assessment.
Hamilton was to draft the famous
Farewell Address by Washington, and in their
last correspondence, Washington sent a letter
to Hamilton full of admiration for his plan to
establish an American military academy.
It is small wonder then that after writing his
critically acclaimed biography of Alexander
Hamilton, historian Ron Chernow would
turn his attention from protégé to master.
Washington: A Life appeared in October
2010 to critical acclaim, and as with his
Hamilton biography, Chernow credits the
work of the editors on The Papers of George
Washington. “I would have never been
emboldened without the edition of the
papers,” Chernow said. “It would have taken
me a century to write without them. And in
a sense, I am standing on the shoulders of a
team of editors.”
The modern edition, The Papers of
George Washington, an NHPRC grant-
funded project, was established in 1968 at
the University of Virginia, under the joint
18 Prologue
auspices of the University and the Mount
Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union.
Letters written to Washington as well as
letters and documents written by him are
being published in the complete edition that
will consist of approximately 90 volumes,
and the edition is now more than two-thirds
complete.
It builds on the 39-volume edition
by John C. Fitzpatrick published in the
1930s and early 1940s. “There are two
major differences,” Chernow says. “The
earlier edition only contains the letters from
Washington, but not to him. Reading it is
sort of like eavesdropping on one end of a
telephone conversation. The new edition not
only follows both sides of the correspondence,
but each document is lavishly annotated so
that one gets extracts from contemporaries.
I try to use eyewitness accounts, and those
were often discovered through the footnotes.”
The result is another tour-de-force of
synthesis and imagination. The New York
Times calls it, “Tenaciously researched. . . .
This new portrait offers a fresh sense of what
a groundbreaking role Washington played,
not only in physically embodying his new
nation’s leadership but also in interpreting
how its newly articulated constitutional
principles would be applied . . . deeply
rewarding.”
Building on recent thematic biographies
by David McCullough, David Hackett
Fischer, and Joseph Ellis, Chernow set out
to write a cradle-to-grave biography that
captured the essence not only of Washington,
the political leader but Washington, the man.
Washington, he felt, is often compared to
the other founders and is rarely scrutinized
against contemporary leaders.
“He’s not given sufficient credit for his
intelligence,” Chernow said. “Whereas
Washington was not an original thinker
unlike Hamilton, who was an original as a
political theorist and government leader,
Washington had the ability to latch on to the
ideas of others and activate them.”
Only through a close reading of the
primary source materials can readers see how
on the surface Washington appeared self-
effacing in public, but in reality, he is highly
self-aware of his place in history and took
extraordinary pains to protect his reputation,
including his great effort to preserve his
papers during and after the Revolutionary
War. He personally supervised the transport
of his papers back to Mount Vernon.
“Washington’s mental world is richer than
today’s,” Chernow said “The Founders were
arguing brilliantly over the same issues we
argue over today, but with brilliance, honesty,
and integrity. You have to go through the
papers to see how fiery and forceful they
were, because they were always conscious of
their public persona.”
“It’s a simply fabulous idea,” Chernow
responded to the news of a cooperative
agreement between the National Archives
and the University of Virginia Press to bring
the Founders Online. “Unfortunately, the
Founders have become remote and abstract,
when in fact they are rich, full-blooded, and
fiery characters. This new site will not only
help students learn more deeply and develop a
visceral love and respect for this era, but it will
stimulate interest in history for teachers, too,
and will reconnect them to primary sources.”
Such innovative approaches lead to a
“democratization of historical research,”
he says. “Archives used to be restricted
to those historians able to come visit and
examine the documents first-hand, but
now an inquisitive five-year-old with a
computer will be able to look at what the
Founders thought.”
Author
Keith Donohue joined the National
Archives in 2004 as communications
director for the National Historical
Publications and Records Commission.
He was a speechwriter and director of publications at the
National Endowment for the Arts and is the author of
the novels The Stolen Child, Angels of Destruction, and the
forthcoming Centuries of June. He has a Ph.D. in English
from The Catholic University of America.
Winter 2010