Hacker News Reader

Comment by GuerraEarth | Hacker News Reader

Oh baddox, you are right, (I forgot) and alas, it is young idealists whom we so often need to lead us into the future. Those Revolutionary lads founding our country were below presidential age bar and that is why they were so mighty--they were still idealists full of passion.

View on HN

Revolutionary lads founding our country were below presidential age bar

Uh... no they weren't.

Excuse me, dear Locke1689, but the lads were. Young. My gx5 grandfather was 16 or 17 and fought and Alexander Hamilton and a bunch of college boys left Columbia (then King's College) to fight under Washington. And some chap who signed the Constitution named Dayton was age 26. A whole bunch of them were young.

> Excuse me, dear Locke1689, but the lads were. Young.

If you're setting the benchmark as the signers of the US Constitution, I disagree with this assertion. For the sake of argument, let's also include the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which is IMO a much more idealistic--and traitorous thing from the perspective of the crown.

Of the 40 signers of the constitution about 8 were below the minimum age requirements of US President (35) [1] with an average age of about 44. Of the 66 signers of the Declaration of Independence, about 7 were below the minimum age requirements [2]. The rest were at or above 35, and there were many men in their 60s and 70s. These numbers are not exact as I'm going off quick calculations and a spreadsheet drafted in a couple minutes.

[1] http://hercules.gcsu.edu/~hedmonds/U.S.%20Constitution/Const...

[2] http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_signer...

Edit: Missed one and bumped the signer count.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com