HISTORY/REMINDER
The Feuding Fathers
Americans lament the partisan venom of today's politics, but for sheer verbal savagery, the country's founders were in a league of their own. Ron Chernow on the Revolutionary origins of divisive discourse.
By
Ron Chernow
Updated June 26, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET
In the American imagination, the founding era shimmers as the golden age of political discourse, a time when philosopher-kings strode the public stage, dispensing wisdom with gentle civility. We prefer to believe that these courtly figures, with their powdered hair and buckled shoes, showed impeccable manners in their political dealings. The appeal of this image seems obvious at a time when many Americans lament the partisan venom and character assassination that have permeated the political process.
Mick Coulas; Nathaniel Welch/Redux Pictures for The Wall Street Journal (Golf Journal)
Unfortunately, this anodyne image of the early republic can be quite misleading. However hard it may be to picture the founders resorting to rough-and-tumble tactics, there was nothing genteel about politics at the nation's outset.For sheer verbal savagery, the founding era may have surpassed anything seen today.
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