Forrest McDonald welcomes the return to print of our most unjustly neglected founding father, Fisher

Works of Fisher Ames, edited by W. B. Allen Liberty Classics, 2 vols., 1,034 pp., $30 hardcover, $15 paper If someone should rank the Founding Fathers on a least-appreciated scale—one that weighed positive contributions to constitutional liberty along with negative recognition by posterity-first place would surely go to Fisher Ames, even as last place would go to Thomas Jefferson. Ames, an obscure Federalist from Dedham, Massachusetts, born in 1758, entered public life at the age of thirty as a delegate to his state’s ratifying convention. On that occasion his eloquence and political skills may well have made the difference between his state’s ratifying and not ratifying, and without that the Founding could not have happened. Shortly afterward he was elected to the First Congress, where, in the face of Madison’s apostasy, he carried the cause of Washington’s and Hamilton’s nation-making measures.

Until 1796 he remained a tower of conservative strength in the increasingly radical House of Representatives, foiling with his brilliant oratory and his unquestioned wisdom and virtue the efforts of demagogues and ideologues to democratize and even Jacobinize the Constitution. Repeatedly, befuddled opponents said to him, “I don’t understand it. We have the majority and you carry every major issue.” Then his health broke and he was forced to retire from the political arena, though he continued to write occasional political essays and to advise Federalist leaders. He lived, mostly in debility and pain, for another dozen years, during which Jeffersonians took control of the national government; and then he expired, convinced that the Constitution and the Republic would soon follow him to the grave.

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Forrest McDonald

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Works of Fisher Ames, edited by W. B. Allen Liberty Classics, 2 vols., 1,034 pp., $30 hardcover, $15 paper If someone should rank the Founding Fathers on a least-appreciated scale—one that weighed positive contributions to constitutional liberty along with negative recognition by posterity-first place would surely go to Fisher Ames, even as last place would go to Thomas Jefferson. Ames, an obscure Federalist from Dedham, Massachusetts, born in 1758, entered public life at the age of thirty as a delegate to his state’s ratifying convention. On that occasion his eloquence and political skills may well have made the difference between his state’s ratifying and not ratifying, and without that the Founding could not have happened. Shortly afterward he was elected to the First Congress, where, in the face of Madison’s apostasy, he carried the cause of Washington’s and Hamilton’s nation-making measures.

Until 1796 he remained a tower of conservative strength in the increasingly radical House of Representatives, foiling with his brilliant oratory and his unquestioned wisdom and virtue the efforts of demagogues and ideologues to democratize and even Jacobinize the Constitution. Repeatedly, befuddled opponents said to him, “I don’t understand it. We have the majority and you carry every major issue.” Then his health broke and he was forced to retire from the political arena, though he continued to write occasional political essays and to advise Federalist leaders. He lived, mostly in debility and pain, for another dozen years, during which Jeffersonians took control of the national government; and then he expired, convinced that the Constitution and the Republic would soon follow him to the grave.