The Traumatic Colonel. Ed White

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      had more in common with the characterological portraits of heroic historiography (from which it drew and which it fed), whereas the configuration of the ’90s inevitably drew more on the novel, in which women were often, if not always, central figures. Thus, the ’90s witnessed a dual gendering and sexualization of the Founders, already prefigured in Judith Sargent Murray’s portrait of the republican mother as commonwealth president—a female Washington. Again we may draw on our seemingly trivial and nonacademic knowledge of the Founders to sketch out their respective positions. Washington could emerge as the Father of the Nation not despite his apparent sterility and childlessness⁴⁶ but precisely because of it, a position affirmed by the complementarily vague status of Martha Washington: cautious and reluctant action found its sexual manifestation in surrogate parenting. By contrast, the “knowing” Franklin emerged as a figure of sexual activity, with his wife receding into the shadows, obscured by the more prominent William, the bastard son who became the royalist governor as a marker of sexual excess. The Jefferson and Hamilton positions played out these masculine variants—the Jeffersonian scandals of the day stressed his widower status but also his illicit sexual relationships (first the assault on Elizabeth Walker, his neighbor’s wife; later the liaison with Sally Hemings). He was not quite masculine in a solid sense but still sexually active, and his nonpromotable heirs (slaves) signaled a variant of the childless Washington and Franklin’s bastard. Meanwhile, Hamilton was himself the bastard son, and his tremendous intellect could not prevent him from entanglement with Maria Reynolds and her husband. In each instance, the gendered and sexual characterization rounded out the political portrait: Washington’s restraint meant that his citizens (or, in some variants, his slaves) were his “children”; Franklin’s ideological tendencies became manifest in excessive sexuality; Jefferson’s focus on reflexive theorization meant that he produced not a solid republican family but property to be analytically assessed; and Hamilton’s focus on aggressive masculine enactment led to a spectacularly self-destructive affair.