The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America

Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center, examines what "the pursuit of happiness"—identified in the Declaration of Independence as an unalienable right alongside life and liberty—meant to America's Founders and how it shaped the nation's democracy. Rosen profiles six influential Founders: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. By exploring the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired them, he demonstrates how these Founders understood the pursuit of happiness not as feeling good, but as a quest for virtue—lifelong moral development rather than short-term pleasure. They valued habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity as part of daily self-improvement and character development. The Founders believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with the enslavement of African Americans, though the Virginians among them failed to uphold this principle. The book offers an examination of the Declaration's famous phrase and an exploration of the Founders' ideas and the foundation of American democracy.