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Alexander Hamilton
1755 — 1804
Alexander Hamilton — first Secretary of the Treasury, principal author of fifty-one of the eighty-five Federalist Papers, founder of the Bank of the United States, architect of the national credit and…
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General George Washington
1732 — 1799
George Washington (1732–1799) — Virginia planter, surveyor, soldier, and the indispensable man of the American founding. Commander of the Continental Army through eight years of improbable war. Presid…
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John Taylor of Caroline
1753 — 1824
John Taylor of Caroline — Virginia planter, U.S. Senator, Colonel in the Continental Army, and the most rigorous and least celebrated political philosopher of the American Founding. He spent his caree…
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Thomas Jefferson
1743 — 1826
Thomas Jefferson — principal author of the Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States, founder of the University of Virginia, architect, inventor, naturalist, and one of the mos…
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Thomas Paine
1737 — 1809
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) — born in Thetford, Norfolk, England, the son of a Quaker corset-maker; arrived in Philadelphia in 1774 with a letter from Benjamin Franklin and nothing else. Two years later …
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Major General William Moultrie
1730 — 1805
Major General William Moultrie (1730–1805) — Continental Army officer, twice Governor of South Carolina, and the commander who on June 28, 1776, held an unfinished palmetto-log fort on Sullivan's Isla…
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Abraham Lincoln
1809 — 1865
The lawyer from Illinois who held a fractured republic together through argument, patience, and the precise deployment of language at the moments when language was most needed.
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James Madison
1751 — 1836
Architect of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — the man who understood that power would always be abused unless the structure of government itself was built to resist it.
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Benjamin Franklin
1706 — 1790
Benjamin Franklin was a Boston-born printer's apprentice who became the most famous American in the world before America existed — scientist, satirist, diplomat, and architect of the republic. He cont…
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Franklin D. Roosevelt
1882 — 1945
Franklin D. Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States, elected four times and serving from 1933 to 1945 through the twin catastrophes of the Great Depression and World War II. He built the…
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Grover Cleveland
1837–1908
Grover Cleveland served as the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, the only president in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms. A former sheriff, mayor, and governor of New Yor…
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John Adams
1735 — 1826
Second President, author of the Massachusetts Constitution, defender of the Boston Massacre soldiers, and the man who chose peace with France over reelection. He believed in structure, not virtue — and he was right to.
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John Locke
1632 — 1704
The philosopher whose Second Treatise of Government gave the American founders their vocabulary — natural rights, consent of the governed, the right of revolution. Jefferson read him carefully. The Declaration shows it.
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Patrick Henry
1736 — 1799
The most dangerous orator of the Revolution. He smelt a rat at Philadelphia, refused to attend the Constitutional Convention, and demanded a Bill of Rights before he would accept what they built. He got it.
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George Mason
1725 — 1792
Author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights — the document that seeded both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. He refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked one.
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John Jay
1745 — 1829
Co-author of the Federalist Papers, first Chief Justice of the United States, and the diplomat who negotiated the Treaty of Paris. He understood that law without enforcement is rhetoric.
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Montesquieu
1689 — 1755
The French philosopher whose Spirit of the Laws gave the American framers their most powerful tool: the separation of powers. Madison cited him in Federalist No. 47. The Constitution is built on him.
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Voltaire
1694 — 1778
The most dangerous wit in Europe — imprisoned in the Bastille, exiled from France, and the most famous man in the world. He wrote Candide in three days. He got an innocent man posthumously rehabilitated. He argues by reduction to absurdity. His most famous quotes are probably not his.
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Edmund Burke
1729 — 1797
The Irish-born statesman and political philosopher who championed American independence, predicted the Terror two years before it happened, and founded modern conservatism with a single pamphlet. Thomas Paine answered him. The argument never ended.
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Theodore Roosevelt
1858 — 1919
He broke the trusts, established the national parks, won a Nobel Peace Prize, charged up San Juan Hill, and got shot during a speech and finished the speech. He believes in the strenuous life. He will explain what that means if you ask.
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1712 — 1778
He wrote 'man is born free and everywhere in chains' while sending his children to a foundling home. His Social Contract provided the intellectual fuel for the French Revolution. He died eleven years before it began. He holds all of his contradictions at full force.
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Alexis de Tocqueville
1805 — 1859
The French aristocrat who arrived in New York in 1831 and returned with the most penetrating analysis of democratic society ever written. He named the tyranny of the majority, predicted the rise of America and Russia, and warned about soft despotism two centuries before we got there.
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