History Has Its Eyes on YouThe musical phenomenon Hamilton follows the life of one ambitious immigrant who helps win a revolution and shape early American politics, all while earnestly sticking to noble ideals.
Updated June 15, 2019 48.7K votes 3.8K voters 80.6K views
Voting Rules
Vote up the US Founding Fathers who are most attractive based on physical appearance only - not whether or not they became President or if you have ever even heard of them.
Hey, ladies and gentlemen. Are you poking around the Internet looking for some foxy new faces to ogle? Well, here is a list of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, ranked by hotness. Unlike many of the US Presidents, every single guy on this list was dead by the time photography rolled around. Do you know what that means? You guessed it: Every image on this list is based on an oil painting. Which Founding Father looked most physically attractive when immortalized on canvas (or, eventually, some form of currency)?
This isn't a list of all U.S. founding fathers - just the sexy ones. What even is a Founding Father, anyway? Well, the hot dudes on this list signed either one or two or all of these documents: the Declaration of Independence (1776 duh), the Articles of Confederation (1777), and/or the freaking Constitution (1787). There are 50 of those fellows pictured below. If you ask an official American historian's opinion, he might say that there are seven main Founding Fathers. They are John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. Don't worry; they are all listed here, too, and you vote on one of them as Hot or Not as you please. But if you are like, "Well, I don't see Nathaniel Scudder on this list," I hate to tell you, but he was not even close to one of the Top 50. But the rest of your ATFFFs (All-Time Favorite Founding Fathers) are here, including caddish Thomas Heyward, ladies' man Francis Lightfoot Lee, and heartbreaker Elbridge Gerry.
What do you think the American Founding Fathers were like IRL? A lot were lawyers, some were speculators (what), and many owned and managed slaves (yikes!). But the real question is whether they were too busy being revolutionaries and sticking it to King George to really give their wives the time of day. (Only four of the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention remained lifelong bachelors, btw). After all, what good is a strong jawline and shapely calves built for breeches if you are never even at home? What are we even talking about anymore? Enjoy this gallery of hot guys from the 1770s and 1780s, and vote up the ones who give you the tingles.
Benjamin Harrison V (April 5, 1726 – April 24, 1791), of Charles City County, Virginia, was an American planter and merchant, a revolutionary leader, and a Founding Father of the United States. He received his higher education at the College of William and Mary and was a representative to the Virginia House of Burgesses for Surry County, Virginia (1756–1758, 1785–1786) and Charles City County (1766–1776, 1787–1790). He was a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1777 and a signer of the Declaration of Independence during the Second Continental Congress. He served as Virginia's fifth governor from 1781 to 1784. His direct descendants include two presidents: his son William Henry Harrison and his great-grandson Benjamin Harrison.
Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757 – July 12, 1804) was an American statesman, politician, legal scholar, military commander, lawyer, banker and economist. He was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was an influential interpreter and promoter of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the founder of the nation's financial system, the Federalist Party, the United States Coast Guard, and the New York Post newspaper. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was the main author of the economic policies of George Washington's administration. He took the lead in the Federal government's funding of the states' debts, as well as establishing a national bank, a system of tariffs, and friendly trade relations with Britain. His vision included a strong central government led by a vigorous executive branch, a strong commercial economy, a national bank and support for manufacturing, and a strong military. Thomas Jefferson was his leading opponent, arguing for agrarianism and smaller government.
Hamilton was born out of wedlock in Charlestown, Nevis. He was orphaned as a child and taken in by a prosperous merchant. When he reached his teens, he was sent to New York to pursue his education. He took an early role in the militia as the American Revolutionary War began. In 1777, he became a senior aide to General Washington in running the new Continental Army. After the war, he was elected as a representative from New York to the Congress of the Confederation. He resigned to practice law and founded the Bank of New York.
Hamilton was a leader in seeking to replace the weak national government under the Articles of Confederation; he led the Annapolis Convention of 1786, which spurred Congress to call a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He helped ratify the Constitution by writing 51 of the 85 installments of The Federalist Papers, which are still used as one of the most important references for Constitutional interpretation.
Hamilton led the Treasury Department as a trusted member of President Washington's first Cabinet. Hamilton successfully argued that the implied powers of the Constitution provided the legal authority to fund the
national debt, to assume states' debts, and to create the government-backed Bank of the United States. These programs were funded primarily by a tariff on imports, and later by a controversial whiskey tax. He mobilized a nationwide network of friends of the government, especially bankers and businessmen, which became the Federalist Party. A major issue in the emergence of the American two-party system was the Jay Treaty, largely designed by Hamilton in 1794. It established friendly trade relations with Britain, to the chagrin of France and supporters of the French Revolution. Hamilton played a central role in the Federalist party, which dominated national and state politics until it lost the election of 1800 to Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party.
In 1795, he returned to the practice of law in New York. He called for mobilization against the French First Republic in 1798–99 under President John Adams, and became Commanding General of the previously disbanded U.S. Army, which he reconstituted, modernized, and readied for war. The army did not see combat in the Quasi-War, and Hamilton was outraged by Adams' diplomatic success in resolving the crisis with France. His opposition to Adams' re-election helped cause the Federalist party defeat in 1800. Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied for the presidency in the electoral college in 1801, and Hamilton helped to defeat Burr, whom he found unprincipled, and to elect Jefferson despite philosophical differences.
Hamilton continued his legal and business activities in New York City, and was active in ending the legality of the international slave trade. Vice President Burr ran for governor of New York State in 1804, and Hamilton campaigned against him as unworthy. Taking offense, Burr challenged him to a duel on July 11, 1804, in which Burr shot and mortally wounded Hamilton, who died the following day.
Arthur Middleton (June 26, 1742 – January 1, 1787), of Charleston, South Carolina, was a signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence.
His parents were Henry Middleton and Mary Baker Williams, both of English descent. He was educated in Britain, at Harrow School, Westminster School, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He studied law at the Middle Temple and traveled extensively in Europe where his taste in literature, music, and art was developed and refined. In 1764, Arthur and his bride Mary Izard settled at Middleton Place.
Keenly interested in Carolina, Middleton was a more radical thinker than his father, Henry Middleton. He was a leader of the American Party in Carolina and one of the boldest members of the Council of Safety and its Secret Committee. In 1776, Arthur was elected to succeed his father in the Continental Congress and subsequently was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. Also in 1776, he and William Henry Drayton designed the Great Seal of South Carolina. Despite the time he spent in England, his attitude toward Loyalists was said to be ruthless.
During the American Revolutionary War, Middleton served in the defense of Charleston. After the city's fall to the British in 1780, he was sent as a prisoner of war to St. Augustine, Florida (along with Edward Rutledge and Thomas Heyward Jr.), until exchanged in July the following year.
Middleton died on January 1, 1787 at the age of 44 and was buried in the family tomb in the Gardens at Middleton Place. The death notice from the State Gazette of South-Carolina (SC), Jan. 4, 1787, described him as a "tender husband and parent, humane master, steady unshaken patriot, the gentleman, and the scholar."
The plantation then passed to Henry, his eldest son, later Governor of South Carolina, U.S. Representative and Minister to Russia.
Arthur Middleton was also an ancestor of actor Charles B. Middleton, who played Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon movies of the 1930s. Arthur Middleton's son-in-law was Congressman Daniel Elliott Huger who was the grandfather-in-law of Confederate General Arthur Middleton Manigault who was also a descendant of Henry Middleton.
Arthur Middleton's sister, Susannah Middleton, was the great-great-grandmother of Baldur von Schirach, onetime leader of the Hitler Youth and later Governor ("Gauleiter" or "Reichsstatthalter") of the Reichsgau Vienna, who was convicted of "crimes against humanity" at the Nuremberg Trials, through Baldur Von Schirach's mother Emma Middleton Lynah Tillou (1872–1944).
The United States Navy ship USS Arthur Middleton (AP-55/APA-25) was named for him.
John Hancock (January 23, 1737 [O.S. January 12, 1736] – October 8, 1793) was an American merchant, statesman, and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. He served as president of the Second Continental Congress and was the first and third Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He is remembered for his large and stylish signature on the United States Declaration of Independence, so much so that the term "John Hancock" has become a synonym in the United States for one's signature.Before the American Revolution, Hancock was one of the wealthiest men in the Thirteen Colonies, having inherited a profitable mercantile business from his uncle. He began his political career in Boston as a protégé of Samuel Adams, an influential local politician, though the two men later became estranged. Hancock used his wealth to support the colonial cause as tensions increased between colonists and Great Britain in the 1760s. He became very popular in Massachusetts, especially after British officials seized his sloop Liberty in 1768 and charged him with smuggling. Those charges were eventually dropped; he has often been described as a smuggler in historical accounts, but the accuracy of this characterization has been questioned.
Hancock was one of Boston's leaders during the crisis that led to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. He served more than two years in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and he was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence in his position as president of Congress. He returned to Massachusetts and was elected governor of the Commonwealth, serving in that role for most of his remaining years. He used his influence to ensure that Massachusetts ratified the United States Constitution in 1788.
George Ross Jr (May 10, 1730 – July 14, 1779) was a signer of the Continental Association and the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of Pennsylvania. He was also the uncle of the man who married Betsy Griscom in 1773, giving her her famous married name: Betsy Ross. In 1952, he, George Washington, and Robert Morris appeared on a three-cent stamp commemorating Betsy Ross.
Lyman Hall (April 12, 1724 – October 19, 1790), physician, clergyman, and statesman, was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of Georgia. Hall County is named after him.
