Five episodes checking the most contested founding era topics against the primary record. Religion and the state. The Second Amendment. Slavery. Democracy versus republic. And the twenty most circulated founding era quotes — confirmed, disputed, and not in the record at all. The documents are in the archive. The reader decides.
The founders disagreed with each other on religion. Washington used explicitly religious language in official proclamations and in the same year signed a treaty stating the government was not founded ...
Twenty-seven words ratified in 1791. The debate that produced them ran for years — across convention floors, newspaper columns, and the chambers of the First Congress.
Jefferson's original Declaration draft called the slave trade an execrable commerce. Congress struck the passage.
The Constitutional Convention debated direct election versus representative government across four months in Philadelphia. Ten documented voices. Six surviving note-taking records.
Twenty quotes circulate widely under founding era names. Some are confirmed at named primary documents at institutional archives.