Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders

by Dennis C. Rasmussen

Overview

The surprising story of how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson came to despair for the future of the nation they had created

Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them—including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—came to deem America’s constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Fears of a Setting Sun is the first book to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders’ disillusionment.

As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders’ pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America’s political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America’s constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not. As much as Americans today may worry about their country’s future, Rasmussen reveals, the founders faced even graver problems and harbored even deeper misgivings.

A vividly written account of a chapter of American history that has received too little attention, Fears of a Setting Sun will change the way that you look at the American founding, the Constitution, and indeed the United States itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691241418
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	11/08/2022
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	389,607
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Dennis C. Rasmussen is professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. His books include The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought (Princeton). He lives in Cazenovia, New York.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Prologue. A Rising or a Setting Sun 1

Washington

1 The Demon of Party Spirit 17

2 Farewell to All That 31

3 Set Up a Broomstick 45

Hamilton

4 No Man's Ideas 61

5 Struggling to Add Energy 73

6 The Frail and Worthless Fabric 86

Adams

7 Such Selfishness and Littleness 103

8 His Rotundity 116

9 The Brightest or the Blackest Page 132

Jefferson

10 Weathering the Storm 149

11 The Knell of the Union 162

12 A Consolidation or Dissolution of the States 179

Interlude. The Other Founders

13 No Cheering Prospect 197

Madison

14 Far from Desponding 205

15 Grounds for Hope 218

EPilogue. A Very Great Secret 225

Notes 233

Index 267

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“In this painfully timely volume, Dennis Rasmussen demonstrates that many of America’s founders understood the potential fragility of their unprecedented creation. He rescues the founders, and the Enlightenment of which they were exemplars, from the caricature that they were unreasonably serene about the ability of reason to tame reality.”—George F. Will, author of The Conservative Sensibility

“In a series of compelling, deftly wrought portraits, Dennis Rasmussen shows how the Founding Fathers came to fear for the future of America’s bold experiment in republican self-government. Polarized parties, foreign interference, and seemingly intractable conflicts of interest and ideology threatened to destroy the union they struggled to create. Their anxieties put our own more modest divisions in reassuring perspective.”—Peter S. Onuf, author of Jefferson’s Empire

“In this brilliant book, Dennis Rasmussen brings to vivid life the profound fears of some of America's leading founders about the future of their nation. Their urgent concern was whether the destruction of the nascent republic was on the horizon; given the current political instability in America, it is also ours. Fears of a Setting Sun is well worth reading for its historical analysis and for the lessons we might draw for the future of our great experiment in republican government.”—Colleen A. Sheehan, author of The Mind of James Madison

“In a time when we have experienced a stress test on the Constitution, it is not surprising that many are doubting the success of our system of government. Dennis Rasmussen gives us a tour through the doubts of the framers themselves about the system they helped to create. Fears of a Setting Sun reveals the origins of the Constitution's weaknesses and may help readers discover a way to save our founding document—and the system of government it shaped.”—Corey Brettschneider, author of The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/04/2021

Political scientist Rasmussen (The Infidel and the Professor) delivers an illuminating account of how the founding fathers worried about the future of America. With the notable exception of James Madison, Rasmussen writes, the country’s early leaders, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton, were pessimistic that the American experiment in republican democracy would endure. Washington’s fears stemmed from concerns that political partisanship would inevitably tear the country “asunder.” Adams distrusted the people’s ability to put aside their self-interest in favor of the greater public good, according to Rasmussen, while Jefferson anticipated that regional divisions—exemplified in differing attitudes toward slavery—would doom the American enterprise. Hamilton, meanwhile, worried that the federal government lacked the energy or authority to successfully govern the states. One factor behind Madison’s relative optimism, Rasmussen notes, was his lower expectations for how the new country would operate. Rasmussen lends weight to his arguments with revealing—and often sobering—quotes from primary sources (Hamilton, for instance, called the Constitution “a frail and worthless fabric”), and enlivens the proceedings with flashes of wit (“with enemies like Jefferson, slavery hardly needed friends”). This standout history provides useful context for understanding the roots of contemporary political turmoils and may comfort those who fear that American democracy is in dire peril. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

A Wall Street Journal Best Politics Book of the Year

A World Magazine Best Book of the Year

From the Publisher

01/08/2021

It's comforting to believe that the Founding Fathers of the United States were convinced of the new union's prospects for success. But that isn't the case, as Rasmussen (political theorist, Syracuse Univ; The Infidel and the Professor) proves in this latest work. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson all had serious doubts about the long-term viability of the fragile republic. Washington feared factionalism. Hamilton believed that states were too strong and the federal government was too weak. Adams lamented the lack of civic virtue among its citizens. Jefferson, an optimist most of his life, succumbed to fear in his later years that slavery would drive the country apart. Only Madison remained optimistic, though he had lived through the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and witnessed the ascension of the first populist president, Andrew Jackson, governing in a manner antithetical to his own. In telling the stories of these Founding Fathers, Rasmussen has produced a well-researched study that is a salutary read. He writes accessibly, explaining what motivated and worried each of these leaders. Concern for future generations and the fate of the republic is a recurring theme, and will also resonated with many readers today. VERDICT Though Written primarily for history lovers, this thought-provoking book may strike a chord with others as well.—David Keymer, Cleveland

Library Journal

2020-11-24
Why the Founding Fathers believed the political system they created was “an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation.”

Making the striking argument that all but one of the major founders of the U.S. died disillusioned with their creation, Rasmussen nevertheless offers hope for our current predicaments. Focusing on George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, the author scrutinizes their surviving papers for a single element of their thought: their confidence in the future of the federal republic. His distinctive approach yields something overlooked by historians. All of them—and there were others—save Madison died pessimistic about their country’s future. The partisanship that broke out during Washington’s presidency deeply troubled him. Hamilton’s dark mood arose from what he saw as the government’s feebleness. Adams was forever despondent about his fellow citizens’ lack of virtue. Jefferson became deeply anxious about disunion; he went to his death “riddled with doubts” about the young nation’s survival. Only Madison—a man less troubled by partisanship, weak government, and the union’s breakup and more confident that institutions could offset a lack of public virtue—escaped the other founders’ dark forebodings. But should we see their misgivings as the realism of mature reflection or as an indication of an inability to adjust to changes in a distinctive nation whose future has never been foreseeable? While offering an authoritative and convincing argument in disarmingly artful prose, Rasmussen doesn’t answer that question. However, while emphasizing the founder’s “late-life despair,” he ends on a hopeful note. Despite systemic problems that have existed since the nation’s founding, our current woes “are less likely to ultimately doom the republic than we often fear”—as long as we follow these great men who, despite their fears, forged ahead until their deaths with “steadfast resolve” to strengthen the nation they’d established and led in its infancy.

A relevant history suggesting that the U.S. may be stronger than many of its citizens believe.

Kirkus Reviews