•February 13, 2019•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

I have been asked by the Kewanee (IL) Library, near my residence in central Illinois, to lead discussions on “Revisiting the Founding Era.” What lessons might there be for us today, and what might we do today to honor those who made our nation possible?
Library director Barbara Love was awarded one of a very few grants from a New York City foundation to explore the topic. Over the coming six weeks, I will sit in the moderator’s chair at sessions in the library, and in classes at the local community college, high school and state prison.
I am a political scientist, yet have always enjoyed history, though I am not expert in the Revolutionary Era. To prepare, I just finished “American Creation,” by Joseph Ellis, author of the best-selling “Founding Brothers.”
The Founders, led by Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison and of course others, were not demigods. They were indeed true radicals, intelligent, imperfect.
Their audacity was breathtaking—a tiny band of disparate colonies of barely 3 million people taking on the world’s mightiest military.
Nor was there consensus in the America colonies. Ellis estimates that only one-third of the colonists supported the Revolutionary cause; one-third, opposed, and one-third sat on the fence.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.