Disillusioned Revolutionaries: Many Founders Died in Despair About the American Experiment
The article examines how many American Founding Fathers grew disillusioned with the nation they helped create, often expressing despair in their later years. It cites letters and statements from figures such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington that reveal concerns about political developments and the direction of the republic. Historians Gordon Wood and Dennis C. Rasmussen are referenced to argue that this dissatisfaction was widespread among the founders, not an isolated phenomenon.
- ▪Thomas Jefferson warned that Andrew Jackson would be an unfit president, describing him as rash and dangerous in a 1824 conversation with Daniel Webster.
- ▪John Adams wrote to Benjamin Rush in 1806 lamenting the follies, vices, and contempt for wisdom he perceived in the United States.
- ▪Historians Gordon Wood and Dennis C. Rasmussen note that most founders who lived into the early 19th century felt anxiety, bewilderment, and deep disillusionment about the outcomes of the Revolution.
- ▪The article lists numerous founders—including Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Patrick Henry, John Jay, John Marshall, George Mason, James Monroe, Gouverneur Morris, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Rush—as sharing this discontent.
- ▪George Washington’s farewell address warned against the corrupting influence of political parties and regional factions, reflecting early concerns about partisan division.
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| Original publisher | Reason.com |
| Canonical URL | https://reason.com/2026/06/13/disillusioned-revolutionaries/ |
| Publication time | Sat, 13 Jun 2026 10:00:32 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-06-13T10:17:33.733Z |
| Last seen | 2026-06-13T10:17:33.733Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | -1kqBkzrrhMu |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
History Disillusioned Revolutionaries: Many Founders Died in Despair About the American Experiment America's Founders helped create a world they were not yet ready to live in. Matt Welch | From the July 2026 issue Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Add Reason to Google Media Contact & Reprint Requests <img src="https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/c1200x675-w1200-q80/uploads/2026/05/MAtt.jpg" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto" width="1200" height="675" title="George Washington and Alexander Hamilton with tears on their faces" alt="George Washington and Alexander Hamilton with tears on their faces | Illustration: Joanna Andreasson; Source images: iStock, Wikimedia" /> (Illustration: Joanna Andreasson; Source images: iStock,…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Reason.com.
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