Behind the Founders
In his keynote address at the 1916 Republican National Convention, and then again in his 1921 inaugural address, President Warren Harding called the men who created our constitutional Republic the Founding Fathers. Indeed, no one was ever born without a human father (except Adam and Jesus), and without men such as James Madison, our nation would not have been born as a federal republic.
But what sources did these great men draw upon when they established that federal republic? That is the question Joe Wolverton II, J.D. seeks to answer in his heavily documented book The Founders Recipe: How to Make a Madison. The goal is for serious students of the Constitution to know not only what is in that document, but also why it is in there. According to Wolverton, “We must recognize that if we expect to create a new James Madison, for example, we must do those things that made James Madison who he was.”
Wolverton tells the story of his grandmother’s banana pudding, which was made from a special recipe. In his words, he wants to “share with you the recipe … that made our Founders who they were.” In 1984, two political science professors researched nearly 15,000 writings, letters, diaries, and sermons cited by the Founding Fathers. Wolverton looks at 37 of these sources — all ingredients in the “recipe.”
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