Disclaimer: These events are told from the viewpoint of this descendant of one of the first American families. One side came over on the Mayflower; the other to colonize for the crown, participate (on both sides) in the Revolutionary War, had Lincoln as an ancestor on one side; slavers on the other, Quakers, quaffers, and a cabal of creatives from TV, movie-making to radio.

Chapter 10: Founding Fathers — Enlightenment Thinkers with Slaves and Syphilis

The American Revolution didn’t just create a nation—it kicked off one of history’s most ambitious rebranding campaigns. Men like Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison—names etched into currency and concrete—crafted a republic from scratch using Enlightenment ideals, French wine, hookers and, where necessary, a flexible definition of hypocrisy.

They talked about liberty, of course. Endlessly. Liberty was the word of the day, the week, the whole century. But the liberty they spoke of was a very exclusive club—strictly gentlemen only. Membership required land, whiteness, and an aversion to paying taxes unless you were the one collecting them.

Let’s begin with Thomas Jefferson, the man who penned “all men are created equal” with one hand while cradling a whip in the other. He owned over 600 enslaved people throughout his life, including Sally Hemings, a woman he legally owned and personally impregnated—several times.

Enlightened? Maybe. Consensual? Less so.

Jefferson was also deeply conflicted about slavery—but in the same way a man is “conflicted” about eating meat while grilling a steak. He wrote pages on the moral rot of bondage... but kept the plantation running because, well, Monticello wasn’t going to weed itself.

George Washington, the general who would not be king, had wooden teeth, which were not actually wood but rather harvested from the teeth of enslaved people. He freed his slaves in his will—after he died—a final gesture of conscience best described as too little, slightly too late.

And then there’s Ben Franklin, the jolly polymath who did everything from inventing bifocals to founding libraries to allegedly contracting syphilis in every available French salon. He started out owning slaves, then had a political epiphany late in life—roughly around the time it became fashionable in Philadelphia to pretend you were an abolitionist. When I was around 13, I met my grandparent’s neighbor (in Englewood Florida), Benjamin Franklin VIII. This later ancestor had the Franklin family Bible which listed in the back Pages the pounds and shillings the original Ben had earned as one of the world’s greatest “Whoremasters”, running his brothel in Philadelphia. It was around that time that I also read this astounding Founding Daddys’ autobiography which was seminal in helping me develop critical thinking skills and lofty opinions.

Alexander Hamilton, Broadway’s tragic antihero, did not own slaves personally—unless you count the human beings his in-laws owned, whom he occasionally rented. A technicality, perhaps, but not exactly the stuff of moral high ground. He opposed slavery, mostly, but also opposed doing anything practical about it.

James Madison, the so-called Father of the Constitution, was five foot four, owned over 100 slaves, and spent his life talking about the delicate balance between liberty and tyranny while sitting comfortably atop the heads of the enslaved.

These men gathered in Philadelphia, drafted documents with florid calligraphy and righteous tone, and created a government “by the people, for the people”—so long as “the people” excluded women, Black people, Native Americans, and anyone without property. They codified freedom with such straight-faced earnestness, you’d almost forget half of them died surrounded by unpaid laborers and unpaid debts.

Yet, despite all this, they built something lasting. That’s the American contradiction: the same men who drew the blueprint for democracy also nailed shut the door on half the population. And we’ve been living in that contradiction ever since—calling it freedom while debating who counts.

We honor the Founding Fathers not because they were perfect—but because they were flawed and audacious.

Enlightenment thinkers with plantation schedules. Syphilitic philosophers who wrote sonnets to freedom and then foreclosed on it.

They were brilliant, brave, and ambitious.

And yet, what they started was real. Fragile. Glorious. Hypocritical as hell (depending on who you are). But real.

So here’s to the Fathers of the Nation:

* Enlightened, but not fully awake.

* Principled, until the mortgage came due.

* And forever inscribed in history—warts, wigs, whips, and all.

Chapter 10a: REVOLUTION! Tea, Tantrums, and the Guillotine

(or, “How America Declared Independence and France Picked Up the Bill”)

Let’s dispense with the powdered wigs and patriotic incense right up front: this was not a revolution. This was a colonial meltdown—a fiscal hissy fit with muskets. King George nudged the tea tax, and Boston promptly hallucinated itself as Sparta. One tariff hike and suddenly every dockworker was quoting Locke like they’d been born in a philosophy seminar instead of a rum-soaked warehouse.

“No taxation without representation!” they screamed—while owning human beings, denying women a pulse, and keeping “representation” chained in the shed behind the house with the livestock. Liberty, it turns out, was very selective. A boutique freedom. Invite-only.

George III, meanwhile, was genuinely confused. And frankly, that’s fair. He’d acquired the colonies the traditional European way: conquest, paperwork, and the casual spilling of blood. To him, America wasn’t oppressed—it was ungrateful. A loud, acne-ridden adolescent who ate at the table, slept under the roof, and then tried to stab Dad because allowance negotiations went poorly.

So imagine his delight when that adolescent torched the family silver, dumped perfectly good tea into the harbor like a drunken frat stunt, and ran off with France—specifically a teenage aristocrat named Lafayette, who had the enthusiasm of a golden retriever and the battlefield experience of a dinner guest.

Ah yes. France. Enter the sugar daddy.

History’s most expensive bad decision.

France didn’t back the American rebellion out of love for liberty. That’s the bedtime story. France backed it because England was bleeding, and Versailles smelled opportunity the way a shark smells blood—except this shark wore silk stockings and had zero concept of budgeting. Ships, guns, gold, soldiers, credit—France handed it all over, chanting “liberty” while meaning “anything that humiliates Britain.”

And America took it. Smiled. Wrote pamphlets. Declared destiny.

France, meanwhile, forgot to feed its own people.

Versailles glittered like a jewelry store during a famine. Powdered wigs towered over empty bread baskets. The treasury collapsed. The peasants noticed. And while Americans toasted freedom with borrowed French wine, France stared at the bill and whispered, Mon Dieu… we have funded our own execution.

Which brings us to the French Revolution—history’s most aggressive refund request.

Because nothing radicalizes a population faster than watching someone else get a revolution delivered express while you starve in line for bread. So France decided: fine. We’ll have liberty too. And we’ll have it now. With steel.

Enter the guillotine—designed by a doctor who promised it was painless, humane, and efficient. This was technically true, which is a cold comfort when your head is being introduced to physics. The blade fell. And fell. And fell again. Kings, queens, aristocrats, moderates, nuns, radicals—anyone who blinked at the wrong moment got the haircut of destiny.

Louis XVI—the generous idiot who helped bankroll American independence—couldn’t escape without tripping over his own incompetence. Caught in disguise. Beheaded. Marie Antoinette followed. Then everyone else. Robespierre climbed atop the pile of corpses, screamed about virtue, and proceeded to continue to murder the French into moral purity. Eventually, they murdered him too. Equality achieved.

Across the Atlantic, the Americans were busy congratulating themselves and drafting a Constitution—a brilliant document if you were white, male, land-rich, and breathing calmly. “All men are created equal,” they wrote, while quietly adding footnotes in chains. Freedom had arrived, but it came with exclusions, exemptions, and a lifetime warranty for hypocrisy.

King George lost the colonies and then his grip on reality. Talked to trees. Appointed them to office. Given later developments, this may have been prophetic.

And France?

France got liberté, égalité, decades of terror, a general (Napoleon) who crowned himself emperor, and a national personality disorder that still flares up every few years.

All because it helped a newborn republic that believed freedom meant no taxes, full autonomy, and someone else eating the cost.

So when you celebrate the “Spirit of ’76,” raise your glass high—but not too high. Toast the bankrupt kings. The headless nobles. The peasants who paid with their bodies. And the nation that mistook America’s tantrum for a universal moral awakening.

Liberty is a lovely word.

But it’s never free.

Someone always pays.

And this time, France paid—

with interest, penalties, and a blade.

Chapter 10b: Checks, Balances, and the Sudden Rise of People Who Can’t Rea...

From Cary Harrison's "MAGA History of the United States" [Part 2]:

Powered by Wave AI