Author Ray Raphael is a bit miffed about the idea of the United States having Founding Fathers. Over the course of more than 500 pages in his book Founders: The People Who Brought You A Nation, Raphael makes the case that the list of the nation?s ?founders? should include a lot more names than Washington, Jefferson, Adams, etc.

While Raphael?s analysis seems to give the traditional Founders too little credit ? Would all the ordinary folks he extols have accomplished as much without leadership from those who had the most to lose from an unsuccessful break from England? From those who had spent entire careers thinking about better ways to organize a government that could avoid both the tyranny of the majority and that of a powerful minority? ? he does provide interesting observations.

Among them is the precarious situation in which the new nation?s government operated, even after enough states had endorsed the U.S. Constitution for the new document to take effect as supreme law of the land in 1788:

[O]n August 2, North Carolina became the first state to take a firmer stance: ratification would be contingent on calling a second constitutional convention to consider amendments. Unless and until that happened, delegates refused to give their assent. In November, Virginia added its voice to that of New York and North Carolina and called for a second constitutional convention.

Consider, then, the state of the nation: eleven states were in, one was out, and one had placed itself in waiting. That might seem good enough, but it wasn?t. Margins of victory in the key states of Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York had been embarrassingly small, and three states had formally issued a call for a new national convention to consider changes. Dissidents in Pennsylvania, although their state had been among the first to approve, continued to growl. Worse yet, throughout the nation, farmers who had hoped for reform remained hesitant, defiant, and potentially even rebellious. Even if statesmen within chambers managed some sort of solution, great numbers of people on the grassroots level remained too fearful of a powerful central government to grant it moral authority. Not a good start for a national that styled itself a republic.

Follow the links for other interesting books about the Founders and their efforts.