Fourteen episodes documenting the seven most documented founders across every major event of the founding era — from the Seven Years War to the deaths of Adams and Jefferson on July 4, 1826. Washington, Adams (John and Samuel), Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton. Every claim traced to a named primary document at a confirmed institutional archive.
He lost more battles than he won. He commanded an army of farmers, tradesmen, and volunteers against the British military — at the time the largest professional army in the world.
He was persuaded to attend the Constitutional Convention, presided over it in near-silence, and signed the result. He served two terms as the first President and refused a third.
Born in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1735. Graduated Harvard at twenty. Taught school, read law under James Putnam, and built a practice in Braintree and Boston.
In 1770 John Adams defended the British soldiers who fired at the Boston Massacre — while leading colonial resistance against Britain. "Facts are stubborn things." He signed the Declaration.
He organized resistance before independence was thinkable. Sons of Liberty. Committees of Correspondence. The Boston Massacre. The Tea Party. He signed the Declaration.
He completed Princeton's four-year curriculum in two years. He stayed a third year to study theology and Hebrew. He returned to Virginia at twenty-one with no clear occupation.
No delegate arrived at the Constitutional Convention more prepared. Madison wrote the Virginia Plan, kept the only notes of what was said, wrote Federalist Nos.
He taught himself architecture, law, Greek, Italian, and Anglo-Saxon. He designed Monticello at twenty-five. He wrote the Declaration of Independence at thirty-three.
He was in Paris when the Constitution was written and ratified. He invented a wheel cipher to secure his diplomatic correspondence. He argued that the earth belongs to the living.
He designed the University of Virginia at seventy-three. He cut the New Testament with a razor at seventy-seven, keeping the moral teachings and removing every miracle.
He was born the fifteenth of seventeen children of a Boston candle-maker. He ran away from his brother's print shop at seventeen.
His experiments at forty-six demonstrated that lightning and electricity were the same phenomenon. He was examined before Parliament on the Stamp Act at sixty.
He was born in the British West Indies, the illegitimate son of a Scottish merchant who abandoned the family. He was working as a clerk at fifteen when a hurricane destroyed St. Croix.
He wrote 51 of the 85 Federalist Papers — under a pseudonym — in eight months. He designed the American financial system from scratch as the first Treasury Secretary.