About Forrest McDonald

Forrest McDonald (1927-2016) was Distinguished Research Professor of History at the University of Alabama. He was the Sixteenth Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities in 1987 and was awarded the Ingersoll Prize in 1990. Dr. McDonald was the author of countless essays and many books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution, as well as Alexander Hamilton: A Biography, and The American Presidency: An Intellectual History.

The Rhetoric of Alexander Hamilton

By |2023-07-12T00:40:41-05:00September 26th, 2022|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Forrest McDonald, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Political rhetoric of the Founders has received scant scholarly attention, but Alexander Hamilton’s style of rhetorical reasoning enabled him to educate and persuade. The political rhetoric of the Founders of the American Republic has received scant attention from scholars. The relative neglect is understandable. On the one hand, the very concept of rhetoric has, in [...]

Original Unintentions: The Franchise and the Constitution

By |2022-09-16T17:05:19-05:00September 16th, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Constitution, Forrest McDonald, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Certain features of the Constitution are almost invisible because they refer to previously existing institutions, constitutions, laws, and customs that are nowhere defined in the Constitution itself. The controversy over originalism-the question whether judges, in interpreting the Constitution, should be guided by the original intentions of the Framers or by some other standard-has generated a [...]

“The Speech”: Maintaining Sanity in an Insane World

By |2022-08-24T18:52:57-05:00August 24th, 2022|Categories: Civilization, Culture, Forrest McDonald, Hope, Imagination, Timeless Essays, Wisdom|

I propose to address the question, how does one survive—and I mean survive as something—in a world that may not? How does one remain sane in a world that is insane; how does one live without fear in a world in which the only certainty is that nothing is certain? As the new year arrives, [...]

George Washington: Indispensable Man

By |2024-02-22T06:20:09-06:00February 21st, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Forrest McDonald, George Washington, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

George Washington was respected, admired, even revered by his countrymen, and he was the most trusted man of the age. What is more, and different, he was the most trustworthy man. The question of why this is so must be examined if we are to understand Washington’s true legacy. The men who established the American [...]

George Washington: Indispensable Man

By |2021-04-29T16:00:18-05:00April 29th, 2021|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Character, George Washington, Timeless Essays|

George Washington was acutely aware that he had become a legend in his time, a true myth, and he recognized that the presidency made possible the institutionalization of the role he had been playing. That is to say, he endowed the presidency with the capacity—and the awesome responsibility—to serve as the symbol of the nation, [...]

Reflections on the American Presidency

By |2021-01-06T18:35:20-06:00February 16th, 2020|Categories: Audio/Video, Forrest McDonald, History, Presidency|

“Though the caliber of people who have served as chief executive has declined erratically but persistently from the day George Washington left office, the presidency has been responsible for less harm and more good, in the nation and in the world, than perhaps any other secular institution in history." —Forrest McDonald, The American Presidency: An [...]

Fellow Miracles, Let Us Rejoice Together!

By |2021-09-18T08:50:24-05:00January 19th, 2019|Categories: American Founding, Forrest McDonald|

The following is the conclusion of Professor Forrest McDonald's 2002 address to the last class he taught as a regular member of the faculty at the University of Alabama—known as "The Speech." Dr. McDonald retired thereafter from teaching.  The other pre-requisite for living sanely in an insane world is an attitude toward life, which I [...]

The First Function of Founders of Nations

By |2021-12-09T21:30:40-06:00July 4th, 2016|Categories: American Founding, Forrest McDonald, History, Quotation|

The first function of the founders of nations, after the founding itself, is to devise a set of true falsehoods about origin—a mythology—that will make it desirable for nationals to continue to live under common authority, and, indeed, make it impossible for them to entertain contrary thoughts. Ordinarily the founding, being the less subtle of [...]

The Role of the “Middle Delegates” at the Constitutional Convention

By |2020-10-18T13:32:36-05:00January 7th, 2016|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Constitution, Constitutional Convention, Featured, Forrest McDonald, Political Science Reviewer|

The contribution of the middle delegates—from Connecticut, Delaware, North and South Carolina—was crucial to the structural design of the Constitution. Without these these eight men, the Grand Convention might not have succeeded in its undertaking. Oliver Ellsworth Historians of the Constitutional Convention have agreed that there were divisions among the delegates, but have [...]

Conservative Scholarship and the Problem of Myth

By |2022-02-15T00:00:55-06:00October 26th, 2015|Categories: Conservatism, Featured, Myth, Timeless Essays|

Conservatism and truth-seeking historical scholarship are not only compatible but inseparable. One reason has directly to do with foundations: It is impossible to guard or defend anything if the ground is continually shifting underfoot. On the face of things, conservatism and historical scholarship would appear to be antithetical ideals. A viable social order seems to [...]

Is History Subjective?

By |2022-01-06T21:48:32-06:00September 2nd, 2015|Categories: Forrest McDonald, History, Quotation|

History is a mode of thinking that wrenches the past out of context and sequence, out of the way it really happened, and reorders it in an artificial way that facilitates understanding and remembering…. Historians—whether Everyman, recalling his immediate or distant past, or professionals, attempting to reconstruct the past by studying relics of it—deal in [...]

Civil Society and Its Rivals

By |2022-01-06T23:12:47-06:00May 2nd, 2015|Categories: Books, Forrest McDonald|

Government in the West has become so big and cumbersome that it not only has ceased to work, but has also contributed powerfully to the breakdown of the intermediary institutions that constituted civil society in the first place. Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals by Ernest Gellner (240 pages, Penguin Group, 1996) The [...]

The Political Thought of Gouverneur Morris

By |2021-12-02T11:56:42-06:00May 18th, 2013|Categories: American Founding, Constitution, Forrest McDonald, Political Philosophy|

Gouverneur Morris believed that God gives every man the right to liberty (hence his regarding slavery as an abomination), and he believed that legitimate government derives its authority from the consent of the governed. As is well known, Gouverneur Morris, the New York aristocrat who represented Pennsylvania in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, wrote the [...]

John Dickinson: The Most Underrated Founder?

By |2020-07-12T16:57:13-05:00June 18th, 2012|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Books, Constitutional Convention, Forrest McDonald, John Dickinson|

John Dickinson’s standing in the American pantheon is shamefully obscure in view of his contributions toward the establishment of an independent regime of limited government, federalism, and liberty under law. Having studied eighteenth-century America all our adult lives, we are prepared to offer a generalization: the more one learns about the subject, the less prone [...]

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