[Ads-l] Founding Fathers

[Baker, John]

An article in the online edition of The Wall Street Journal today (by D.G. Hart, not Ben Zimmer) asserts that the term "Founding Fathers" was coined by Warren G. Harding in a speech at the 1916 Republican National Convention.  The article is a review of Michael D. Hattem, The Memory of '76:  The Revolution in American History (Yale Univ. Press 2024), and the assertion probably derives from that source.  This is actually earlier than the OED, which has nothing earlier than 1941 for founding father, an American statesman of the Revolutionary period, esp. a member of the American Constitutional Convention of 1787.  But of course it can be antedated.

The earliest I see is from a perhaps surprising source, The Sydney Morning Herald, Nov. 15, 1892, at 5, col. 7 (Newspapers.com), quoting a speech by G.H. Reid (presumably George Houston Reid, later prime minister of Australia) at a mass meeting of freetraders celebrating the election of Grover Cleveland as President of the United States:  "In that magnificent electoral revolution which had effaced Harrison and placed Cleveland upon the highest pinnacle of national confidence which had shipwrecked the Republican party and given to the Democrats their grandest opportunity, they saw born again the grand and fearless spirit of the founding fathers of the American Constitution - (loud cheers) -who abhorred injustice, and for liberty's sake braved death in a thousand forms."

Next is a newspaper heading in the Marion (Ohio) Weekly Star, Feb. 19, 1910 (Newspapers.com):  "An Iconoclast Hits Patriots | A Boston Writer Whacks the Founding Fathers, | Severely Jolting Patriotic Idols | Proclaims Adams Defaulter and Franklin a Thief" (title).  This is on the first page of Part Two, which Newspapers.com calls page 8.  According to Wikipedia, Harding owned the Marion Weekly Star, so the headline may well have been his wording.

Harding also used the term several times prior to his 1916 speech.  The earliest of these I see (not counting the 1910 use in his newspaper) is from his speech nominating President Taft for re-election at the 1912 Republican National Convention:  "Human rights and their defense are as old as civilization; but more important in us the founding American fathers wrote the covenant of a people's rule into the bond of national life beyond all erasure or abridgement."  The Des Moines News, June 23, 1912, at 4 col. 3 (NewspaperArchive).

Another example, also quoting a speech by Harding, is from the Hamilton Evening Journal, Apr. 2, 1915, Part 2, at 2, col. 7 (NewspaperArchive):  "The founding fathers gave us an American merchant marine which carried more than 90 per cent of our commerce across the seas."  NewspaperArchive considers this page 10, and the last few words are on what NewspaperArchive considers page 14.


John Baker






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