Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest for a Relatable Past

In this concise, engaging book, Foster (Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man) explores the intimate lives of six Founding Fathers, and, more importantly, the way their sex lives have been presented and analyzed over the years. Focusing on George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and the oft-forgotten Gouverneur Morris, Foster deftly demonstrates the ways these men’s private lives have been essentially rewritten to present the normative, virtuous, and manly Founders Americans choose to believe in. Drawing primarily from popular biographies, from the colonial era through present day, the book explores the ways biographers present their subjects in response to the times: strict Victorian morals, Freudian psychoanalysis, and contemporary attempts to embrace, rather than hide, all aspects of their lives. Foster addresses the glossing over of Washington’s lack of children (perhaps he was sterile, but god forbid he was impotent), the refashioning of Franklin’s Parisian affairs as the “harmless” pleasures of a “foxy grandpa,” and the romanticized marriage of John and Abigail Adams—the “Romeo and Juliet of the American Revolution”. Proving that you can’t trust biographers, Foster ably reveals that sex has always factored into national identity and that the Founders were flesh-and-blood men, unable to support idealistic American standards of morality. (Feb.)