The Lifelong Pursuit of Virtue
When Benjamin Franklin set out on what he called his “bold and arduous project” of moral perfection, he did not imagine he would arrive at the summit of virtue. He knew better. The point was not arrival but effort. “Though I fell far short of perfection,” he wrote late in life, he became “a better and a happier man” for having tried.
That insight captures a central conviction shared across the founding generation: virtue is a lifelong journey, not a mere destination. And happiness, rightly understood, is not a mood to capture, but a character to cultivate.
Happiness as Self-Government
For the Founders, happiness was inseparable from disciplined self-government.
Franklin operationalized this in his famous list of virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, tranquility, and humility. He built a chart, examined himself nightly. Franklin began each week by focusing on a single virtue, starting with temperance because he believed it produced the clarity necessary for governing the rest.
Thomas Jefferson echoed this same framework. Drawing from Cicero’s reflections on the tranquil soul, he praised a life governed by restraint and consistency rather than ambition or fear. For Jefferson, liberty was not license. It was the power to pause, deliberate, and choose long-term good over short-term impulse.
John Adams made humility his lifelong project. In his diaries, Adams recorded his battle with vanity and resolved that no one is fit for high office who leaves a single passion unsubdued. George Washington practiced resolution by cooling the first heat of emotion and acting only after reflection. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton translated this philosophy into constitutional design, crafting institutions that would check public passion and allow reason to prevail.
To these Founders, the personal and the political were never separate spheres. A constitutional democracy has always required citizens who could do internally what the Constitution required externally: let reason, not rage, rule.
The Daily Struggle for Character
Key figures throughout American history understood life as a daily struggle for self-improvement and emotional discipline.
Franklin’s method was practical. “If Passion drives, let Reason hold the reins,” he advised. Imperfectly practiced, these habits nonetheless formed the architecture of his happiness.
John Quincy Adams kept a diary for 70 years as a second conscience, recording his failures, restraining temper, and renewing resolutions. For him, self-rule preceded public rule. You cannot sway a nation if you cannot govern yourself.
Phillis Wheatley drew on the same classical tradition to ground her poetry in virtue. Writing in the shadow of slavery, she asserted the universal capacity for moral excellence and exposed the gap between America’s professed principles and its practices.
Abraham Lincoln, shaped by early reading and lifelong self-education, warned against the “mobocratic spirit” and called for “cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason” to preserve liberty. Passion may ignite change, he suggested, but only disciplined judgment sustains a constitutional democracy.
Frederick Douglass called education and disciplined labor the path to self-making. Character, he insisted, is built by regular and thoughtful exercise of one’s faculties.
The lesson is constant across generations. Virtue is not an inheritance nor a heroic display; it is the steady discipline of daily practice.
Being Good and Being a Citizen
Being a good person and being a good citizen are inseparable.
George Mason insisted that liberty can be preserved only through justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue. The stability of free government depended on habits formed long before a ballot was cast.
Madison warned that passion can “wrest the scepter from reason” in popular assemblies. Constitutional checks were essential, but they could not succeed unless citizens themselves practiced self-restraint and civic virtue.
Jefferson believed that a free people can govern themselves only if individuals first master their own passions. Liberty without self-discipline gives way to faction and instability. The pursuit of happiness is thus public work: cultivating the character required to sustain freedom.
A Call to Pursue Happiness Together
In an age that often confuses happiness with impulse and success with speed, the Founders and other key figures offer a different path. Happiness means disciplined self-government. It means aligning reason and passion. It means learning, reflecting, correcting, and beginning again.
Temperance, humility, industry, moderation, and sincerity are not relics of the 18th century. They are practices for every generation seeking to strengthen constitutional democracy. The pursuit of happiness is not solitary or self-indulgent. It is the steady work of forming character so that we can contribute to the common good and sustain the freedoms we inherit.
Franklin did not achieve moral perfection. Neither did Jefferson, Adams, nor Washington. That is precisely the point. The work continues, calling each generation and each individual to take it up anew.
If you are ready to engage in that work, we invite you to continue the journey through the National Constitution Center and Arizona State University’s new free online course for adult learners, What the Founders Meant by Happiness: A Journey Through Virtue and Character. Building on NCC CEO Emeritus Jeffrey Rosen’s 2024 book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America, this course brings the Founders’ moral world to life through engaging video lectures with Jeff, close study of primary sources, and interactive materials.
At the heart of the course, and at the heart of the American experiment, is a simple but demanding truth: self-government begins with government of the self.
Julie Silverbrook is vice president of civic education at the National Constitution Center.