Who were the most important founders?

Put simply, not every famous early American was a founder, and most of the founders were relatively unimportant from the perspective of history (Who today, for example, remembers such names as David Brearley or William Few, despite their status as attendees to the Constitutional Convention?). Our interest, in other words, is in studying the opinion leaders, theorists, and leading lights of the early Republic; it is in their words and actions that we are most likely to discover the sentiments that shaped American attitudes toward religion and the state.

Briefly, we define "founders" as any American citizen that played some identifiable role in the governance of America from 1774 to 1820, or any citizen who helped frame the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, or Bill of Rights. By "identifiable role in governance" we mean serving in either state or national government as legislator, executive, or judge, or service as an Ambassador or other appointed office at the national level. Additionally, we divide the years 1774-1820 into two time periods, the founding period (1774-1789, the years during which the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights were being written), and the shaping period (1790-1820, when the country first began to work out the consequences of Constitutional law for public institutions).

To help determine which of the founders were most important, Jim (who did the research for this article) employed a ranking system that gave each founder points for participation in selected activities. Jim's list of founders was taken from David Barton's Original Intent, a popular anti-separationist book. For each activity at the state level, or for a position as an ambassador or emissary to a foreign nation, he gave one point. For each activity at the national level, or participation in the framing of our founding documents he gave two points. This system appropriately gives greater weight to founders who played mainly in the national arena, while still allowing important state figures to be counted. Jim consulted a variety of sources in making determinations as to how many points each founder earned.

Here is a detailed look at Jim's ranking system:

The founding period: 1774-1789.

• 1 point for being a delegate to the state constitutional convention
• 1 point for each year in the state legislature
• 1 point for each year served as a state governor
• 1 point for each year being chief justice of a state supreme court
• 1 point for each year as justice of a state supreme court
• 1 point for each year as ambassador or emissary to a foreign country
• 2 points for being an author of the Declaration of Independence
• 2 points for signing the Declaration of Independence
• 2 points for signing the Articles of Association
• 2 points for being an author of the Articles of Confederation
• 2 points for signing the Articles of Confederation
• 2 points for being an author of any and all articles in favor of the Constitution (just about anyone who was in favor of the Constitution gets these two points)
• 2 points for each year as a member of the Continental Congress
• 2 points for being president of Continental Congress
• 2 points for being a delegate to the Annapolis Convention
• 1 point for authoring documents that had large impact on a state government.
• 2 points for attending the federal Constitutional Convention
• 2 points for signing the Constitution
• 2 points for attending a state constitution ratifying convention
• 2 points for voting for the Constitution in a state convention
• 2 points for being a member of the First Congress
• 2 points for being part of the Congressional debates on the Bill of Rights (not all members of Congress were)
• 2 points for being part of the religion clause debates
• 2 points for voting for the Bill of Rights

The shaping period: 1790-1820.

• 1 point for each year being a chief justice of a state supreme court
• 1 point for each year as justice on state supreme court
• 1 point for each year as an ambassador or emissary to a foreign nation
• 2 points for being elected President of the US
• 2 points for each year as President of US
• 2 points for being a cabinet member or Vice President of US
• 2 points for each year as cabinet member or Vice President of the US
• 2 points for being a justice on the US Supreme Court
• 2 points for each year as a justice on the US Supreme Court
• 2 points for being Chief Justice on US Supreme Court
• 2 points for each year as a Chief Justice on the US Supreme Court
• 2 points for being elected to US Congress
• 2 points for each year as a member of the US Congress
• 2 points for writing a document or documents that had a large impact on the national government

A problem with this ranking system is that it gives each person the same number of points for participating in an activity, even though some founders had more influence on the outcome of these activities than others. Accordingly, Jim awarded additional points to founders on the basis of the importance of their contributions to selected activities. Importance was assessed for each of the following: (1) the Constitutional Convention, (2) state ratifying conventions for the Constitution, (3) Congressional debates on the Bill of Rights, and (4) Congressional debates on the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Importance was measured by looking at the extant records of these events, counting the number of times each person spoke, and assigning each participant a rank on the basis of speaking frequency. These ranks were then reversed and multiplied by two to yield the number of points awarded.

To give an example, 47 persons are recorded as speaking at the Constitutional Convention. The most frequent speaker was Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania. Accordingly, Morris was assigned the rank of "1," and the person that spoke least was assigned the rank of "47." These ranks were then reversed, so that Morris was now ranked "47," and the person that spoke least was ranked "1." These number were multiplied by two, giving Morris 94 points for his participation at the Constitutional Convention.

Obviously, this ranking system is not perfect (since there is no purely objective way to assess such an ambiguous concept as "importance"), but whatever the flaws in our method, those flaws are distributed equally among all the founders we rated. In fact, at least a few pro-separation founders were likely shortchanged on our scale. Thomas Jefferson, for example, surely ranks as one of the 5 most influential men in the early Republic (he's number 19 on the list), but he was serving as Ambassador to France during the both the Constitutional Convention and the Congressional debates over the Bill of Rights and so received no points for those events. Having said this, no historian would dispute that the people that rank highly on our scale were extraordinarily influential men. We feel comfortable in asserting that, if our scale is not perfect, it yields results that go some distance in shedding light on just whose opinions mattered most to the greatest number of people.

Here's our list:

The following sources were used to rank the importance of each founder:

• David Barton, Original Intent, Appendix C: Biographical Sketches, pp. 363-430.
   
• Owen C. Ireland, Religion, Ethnicity and Politics, Ratifying the Constitution in Pennsylvania.
   
  Patrick T. Conley and John P. Kaminski, The Constitution and The States, The Role of the Original Thirteen in the Framing and Adoption of the Federal Constitution.
   

  Jonathan Elliot, The Debates of the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Conventions, Together with the Journal Of the Federal Convention, vols 1-5.
   

  John P. Kaminski and Gaspare J. Saladino, The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, vols. 1-4.
   

  Relevant sections of The Annals of Congress dealing with the debate on amendments to the Constitution.
   

  Various other books and works covering the time period of 1774 to 1820 in general (far too numerous to mention, but Jim can answer relevant questions if you e-mail him).