‘Founding Brothers’ Tells Tale of the Founders, Warts and All

“Founding Brothers,” the two-part History Channel documentary that begins tonight, presents the “clashes and collaborations” of the big six of the American Revolution: John Adams, Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and, the superstar of them all, George Washington.

“In 1776 they stood together against the British,” we are told by way of introduction. “Twenty years later America’s founding brothers were standing against each other in an ideological struggle for the hearts and minds of America.”

They fussed, they feuded, they backstabbed, they leaked, they skirt-chased, they mixed high principle and low tactics. They were the original American politicians. And along the way they created the most marvelous, confounding, contradictory, enduring government the world has ever seen.

Yes, but can their stirring story be made interesting in an age that needs visuals and sound bites? Hollywood has flubbed several times. Maybe it’s the wigs and prissy clothing and oracular way of speaking that is so off-putting.

Judged on a curve against other efforts, “Founding Brothers”--the title comes from historian Joseph Ellis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning book--is a success.

Moments of great historic drama and conflict are brought alive with narration by Edward Herrmann, guest shots by intellectuals, a good mix of period artwork and dramatic re-creations, and celebrity voices for the writings of the six.

But be prepared: There are snooze-ifying stretches. The debate over whether the government should pay the Revolutionary War debts of the states was key to all that followed, but as television it’s heavy sledding.

Still, there are moments that should be required viewing for all of us. Of those, the most compelling is the segment on the early debate over slavery.

Franklin was deeply ashamed of having owned slaves and his final act was a rousing campaign against slavery.

But when he died, the others found it politically inexpedient to risk the fragile union between north and south.

“America’s leadership had chosen to stay silent on the great moral and political dilemma of U.S. history,” Herrmann says. Wood-carvings showing the casual and endemic brutality of slavery drive the point home with great impact.

Some of the stories mix the personal and the political. Washington donned the airs of aristocracy, but Jefferson answered the door in slippers and a robe.

Hamilton was caught in the nation’s first high-profile sex scandal, tricked by a woman with low morals and a high talent for extortion. Madison and Jefferson heard about it and leaked the story to newspaper muckraker James T. Callendar.

Hamilton responded with a mea-culpa pamphlet expressing “disgust and self-condemnation.” These days he would have given an interview to Barbara Walters.

Jefferson was a man of great vision and compassion, but he was also a gutter-fighter and smear artist and once wrote a phony letter-to-the-editor praising himself while president.

“Since the early 1790s, character assassination had become a common tactic in American politics,” “Founding Brothers” tells us. “No one used those tactics to greater effect than Thomas Jefferson.”

See, and you thought it all started with Nixon and Gary Hart.

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Part one of “Founding Brothers” can be seen tonight on the History Channel, 9-11 p.m. Part two is Tuesday, same channel, same time.