The Founding Fathers Were Bloggers

Well, OK, let me rephrase that. Many of the Founders were the 18th-century equivalent of a certain category of modern-day bloggers — writers on political topics, typically using a pen name, who are also connected to formal journalism and simultaneously active in partisan politics.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Gouveuneur Morris — these and other notables of the Founding were not just drafters and signers of America’s founding documents, wartime leaders, statesmen, diplomats, and jurists. They were also prolific media commentators capable of great works of political philosophy as well as ribald jests, character assassination and political rumor-mongering.

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