Who were the Founding Fathers?

The Founding Fathers were the leaders who organized the American Revolution, signed the Declaration of Independence, fought the Revolutionary War, drafted the Articles of Confederation, framed and ratified the Constitution, and built the institutions of the early Republic between roughly 1765 and 1800. The phrase has no fixed list, but a core group is generally recognized as the most consequential. The seven Founders most often singled out are George Washington of Virginia, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention, and first President; Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President; John Adams of Massachusetts, lead advocate for independence in the Continental Congress, peace negotiator at Paris, and second President; Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, the elder statesman, diplomat to France, and signer of the Declaration, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution; James Madison of Virginia, principal architect of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and fourth President; Alexander Hamilton of New York, Washington's wartime aide, co-author of The Federalist Papers, and first Secretary of the Treasury; and John Jay of New York, Continental Congress president, treaty negotiator, co-author of The Federalist Papers, and first Chief Justice of the United States.

Other prominent Founders include the signers of the Declaration of Independence, especially John Hancock of Massachusetts, Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut who signed all four founding documents (the Continental Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution), Robert Morris of Pennsylvania who financed much of the war, John Witherspoon of New Jersey, and Charles Carroll of Maryland. Constitutional Convention luminaries beyond the seven include George Mason of Virginia who drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights and refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked one, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania who wrote the final language including the preamble, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, Edmund Randolph of Virginia, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina. Military leaders such as Henry Knox, Nathanael Greene, and the Marquis de Lafayette are sometimes counted.

The phrase Founding Fathers was popularized by Senator Warren G. Harding in his 1916 keynote at the Republican National Convention and used in his 1921 inaugural address as President. Earlier writers had used Fathers of the Constitution or Founders. The group is exclusively male and almost entirely white, slaveholders mixing with abolitionists, with diverse views on slavery, federal power, religion, and democracy. Their disagreements seeded the political parties of the 1790s and the policy debates that have continued ever since.