Benjamin Franklin fathered a child out of wedlock. His common law “marriage” to Deborah Read was not really legal. Her husband had abandoned her and fled to Barbados, but he was still alive when she took up residence with Franklin. Apparently, there was no divorce. Franklin apparently carried on amours, when stationed in London (and still married), before the Revolution, as well as when Ambassador to France.
Gouverneur Morris, who wrote the final draft of the Constitution and is the probable author of the Preamble (”We, the People...”) cut a wide swathe through the women of the U.S., as well as France — there was one woman who was simultaneously a mistress of both Morris and Talleyrand.
Alexander Hamilton, when describing his ideal of a wife, wrote, “She must believe in God and hate a saint.” Whether or not his wife was such a woman, he found time to have an affair with her sister. Another affair with Maria Reynolds wrecked his political career — and he paid her husband off in attempt to keep it secret, while continuing the affair — but it didn’t keep him off the $10 bill.
As a young man, James Madison nearly got thrown out of The College of New Jersey (now Princeton) for writing Ribald verse. As Secretary of state, he hired prostitutes for an delegation from Tunis, who was demanding “concubines.” He paid the prostitutes out of state department funds and listed it in the books as “Expenses for foreign intercourse.”
Certainly there were founding fathers, who were more up to moral snuff. George Washington, most likely (though his growing hemp might be frowned on today) and John Adams come to mind.
But to cast the founding fathers as universally — or, even, in the main — as exemplars of strict morality is historically incorrect. They were men of a wide variety of habits, practices, and religious beliefs. Many were, shall we say, men of the world.
What they had in common was a genius understanding that no man has perfect understanding of God. And that, therefore, He who created the universe created Humans with rights, so that one man would not be bound by the state to commit another man’s error.
These men, various in morals and practice, managed to write the greatest collection of political writings and construct the greatest political system that mankind has seen — perhaps the greatest that mankind has ever seen. But they did not do it, because they were of one moral accord. They did it because they recognized than no man is perfect in understanding.
So it was that Gouverneur Morris wrote the Constitution. So it is that James Madison is the Father of the Bill of Rights.
It is admirable to live a religiously moral and conservative life. It is necessary that such a morality be preached — if for no other reason than that the widest range of ideas and ideals may be presented for consider.
But to demand that a conservative religious morality be basis of American law is not conservative in a political sense. And it is definitely not conservative in an American sense.