“We have every opportunity and every encouragement”

Over the Independence Day holiday, the political reporting website called The Bulwark published a provocative article by history professors Timothy C. Hemmis and David Head titled “This July Fourth, Remember the ‘Founding Scoundrels’.”

The subhead explains the thesis: “They helped build America, too.”

As Americans celebrating Independence Day, we tend to want to remember the ideal promised by the new nation: that the United States would be a place where high-minded people led virtuous citizens in a spirit of well-ordered liberty.

That’s what Thomas Paine meant in 1776 when he wrote that “we have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth.” And it’s certainly how the Founding Fathers themselves wanted to be remembered.

But some of their contemporaries interpreted “every opportunity” differently.

These particular individuals would fight for independence from Britain, sure, and even establish new political and social institutions—so long as they could also serve themselves.

Follow the link to see which three scoundrels these authors picked to spotlight.

All three of those men went after opportunities in the old American Southwest, or the new nation’s frontier border with Spain/France. Arguably, such adventurism had as much to do with creating the modern, continent-wide U.S. of A. as the mercantile ventures more typical gentlemen were trying back along the coast.

There’s a book coming, of course. Hemmis and Head are the editors of the collection A Republic of Scoundrels: The Schemers, Intriguers, and Adventurers Who Created a New American Nation, which will arrive in December.