The founders

George Washington is called the Father of Our Country. He did three great things. He led the army that won independence. He presided over the meeting that wrote the Constitution. He was the first President of the United States.

He was born in Virginia in 1732. He worked as a land surveyor, and then as a planter, which means the owner of a large farm. As a young officer he commanded troops in the war between Britain and France in North America. That war gave him military experience that few colonists had.

In June 1775 the Second Continental Congress made him General of the Continental Army. His soldiers were short of food, clothing, pay and training, and he lost many battles. But he held the army together for six years, until the British surrendered at Yorktown in 1781.

When the fighting ended he did something people did not expect. In December 1783 he handed his command back to Congress and went home to his farm, rather than using the army to take power for himself. That choice is one reason Americans were willing to trust him with power afterwards.

In 1787 the delegates in Philadelphia chose him to preside over the Constitutional Convention. In 1789 he became the first President. The states choose electors to vote for President, and Washington is the only President who ever received every one of their votes. He served two four-year terms and then chose not to run again, setting a habit that much later became a rule in the 22nd Amendment.

So there are several correct answers if the test asks what George Washington is famous for: Father of Our Country, first President of the United States, General of the Continental Army, or President of the Constitutional Convention.

His name is everywhere in the country today. The capital city, Washington, D.C., and the state of Washington are named after him, and his face is on the one-dollar bill and the twenty-five-cent coin.

The men who led the country to independence and wrote its founding documents are called the Founding Fathers. Four of them come up again and again on the civics test. For each one you only have to name a single thing he is famous for, so one clear fact per person is enough.

Benjamin Franklin was the oldest of them and the most widely known. He was a printer and writer whose Poor Richard's Almanack sold across the colonies, and he started what is remembered as the first free public library. He was the first Postmaster General of the United States, an inventor, and the diplomat who persuaded France to help America during the war. He helped write the Declaration of Independence and was the oldest member of the Constitutional Convention, but he was never President.

Thomas Jefferson is remembered for words. Congress appointed a committee of five men, and the committee chose Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. He was thirty-three years old when he did it. He believed a government must leave a person's religion alone, and he wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom to say so. Later he founded the University of Virginia. He also served as the first Secretary of State, and then as the third President. As President he bought the Louisiana Territory from France, which doubled the size of the country.

James Madison is called the Father of the Constitution, and he earned that name before the Convention even began. He came to Philadelphia in 1787 with a plan of government already written. He took notes every day, which is why we know what was said behind those closed doors. He then wrote essays for the Federalist Papers to win the states over, and in the first Congress he wrote much of the Bill of Rights. He became the fourth President, and he was President during the War of 1812.

Alexander Hamilton is remembered for money. He came from the Caribbean as a young man with no money and no important family behind him. During the war he served as an aide to General Washington, and he sat in the Continental Congress. He wrote more of the Federalist Papers than either of the other two writers. He then became the first Secretary of the Treasury. In that job he built the young country's finances. He took on the war debts and set up taxes to pay them. He also helped establish the First Bank of the United States.

A simple way to keep them apart: Franklin the printer and diplomat, Jefferson the writer of the Declaration, Madison the writer of the Constitution, Hamilton the man of money.

Two of the four, Jefferson and Madison, later became President; Franklin and Hamilton never did. Jefferson was not even in the country when the Constitution was written, because he was serving as the American representative in France.

Writing the Constitution in 1787 did not put it into force. It had to be approved by conventions in the states, and nine of the thirteen had to say yes. Many Americans were against it. They feared a strong central government that might one day behave like the king they had just fought. They also pointed out that the new plan contained no list of the people's rights.

New York was one of the states where the argument was fiercest. To win it, three men wrote a series of essays for New York newspapers in 1787 and 1788. The essays explained the Constitution part by part. They also answered the objections. There were eighty-five essays in all, and together they are known as the Federalist Papers.

The three writers were Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. They did not sign their own names; every essay appeared under a single pen name, Publius. On the test, Madison, Hamilton, Jay or Publius are all accepted when you are asked to name one of the writers.

Hamilton and Madison wrote most of them. Jay fell ill early and wrote only a few, although he went on to become the first Chief Justice of the United States.

Why do the Federalist Papers matter? Two answers are accepted: they helped people understand the Constitution, and they supported passing the Constitution. In plain words, they were the argument for the new plan, written for ordinary readers at the very moment the country was deciding.

The other side wrote essays too. Theirs are called the Anti-Federalist Papers, and their main complaint, that the Constitution protected no rights by name, was answered soon afterwards. The first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, were added in 1791.

The Federalist Papers are not law. They are not part of the Constitution and they bind nobody. They matter because they show us what the men who built the system wanted it to do. Judges and lawyers still quote them today.