Bapa Pengasas Amerika Syarikat merujuk kepada segolongan ahli politik dan negarawan yang terlibat dalam kemerdekaan Amerika Syarikat dengan menandatangani Perisytiharan Kemerdekaan Amerika Syarikat, mengambil bahagian dalam Perang Kemerdekaan Amerika Syarikat, mewujudkan Perlembagaan Amerika Syarikat, atau sumbangan penting yang lain. Dalam kumpulan besar yang dikenali sebagai "Bapa Pengasas", terdapat dua kelompok: pertama "Para Penandatangan Perisytiharan Kemerdekaan" (mereka yang menandatangani Perisytiharan Kemerdekaan Amerika Syarikat pada tahun 1776) dan "Para Penggubal Perlembagaan" (mereka yang menjadi delegasi ke Konvensyen Persekutuan dan mengambil bahagian dalam merangka merangka atau menggubal cadangan Perlembagaan Amerika Syarikat). Kebanyakkan para sejarawan mentaksirkan "Bapa Pengasas" sebagai kumpulan besar, termasuk bukan hanya setakat Para Penandatangan dan Para Perangka tetapi juga kesemua mereka, yang mana terdiri dari ahli politik, para juri, negarawan, tentera, diplomat, atau rakyat biasa, yang mengambil bahagian dalam kemerdekaan Amerika dan penubuhan Amerika Syarikat.[2] Ahli sejarawan Amerika, Richard B. Morris, dalam sebuah buku beliau pada tahun 1973 yang bertajuk Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, mengenalpasti tujuk tokoh berikut sebagai Bapa Pengasas utama:
Warren G. Harding, kemudian menjadi Senator Republikan dari Ohio, menggunakan fasa "Bapa Pengasas" di dalam ucaptama beliau di Konvensyen Kebangsaan Republikan 1916. Beliau menggunakan fasa ini beberapa kali selepas itu, paling penting semasa ucaptama sulung beliau sebagai Presiden Amerika Syarikat pada tahun 1921.[4]
Orang yang menandatangani Pengistiharan Kemerdekaan
Bernstein, Founding Fathers Reconsidered, prologue (which collects all citations for Harding's uses of the phrase or variants thereof between 1912 and 1921).
Unger, Harlow (2009). James Monroe: The Last Founding Father. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN0306818086.
American National Biography Online, (2000).
Richard B. Bernstein, Are We to Be a Nation? The Making of the Constitution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987).
R. B. Bernstein, The Founding Fathers Reconsidered (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Richard D. Brown. "The Founding Fathers of 1776 and 1787: A Collective View," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 33, No. 3 (Jul., 1976), pp.465–480 online at JSTOR.
Henry Steele Commager, "Leadership in Eighteenth-Century America and Today," Daedalus 90 (Fall 1961): 650-673, reprinted in Henry Steele Commager, Freedom and Order (New York: George Braziller, 1966).
Joseph J. Ellis. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History.
Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
Jack P. Greene. "The Social Origins of the American Revolution: An Evaluation and an Interpretation," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Mar., 1973), pp.1–22 online in JSTOR.
P.M.G. Harris, "The Social Origins of American Leaders: The Demographic Foundations, " Perspectives in American History 3 (1969): 159-364.
Mark E. Kann; The Gendering of American Politics: Founding Mothers, Founding Fathers, and Political Patriarchy (New York: Frederick Praeger, 1999).
Adrienne Koch; Power, Morals, and the Founding Fathers: Essays in the Interpretation of the American Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1961).
Frank Lambert. The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America. (Princeton, NJ> Princeton University Press, 2003).
Martin, James Kirby. Men in Rebellion: Higher Governmental Leaders and the coming of the American Revolution, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1973; reprint, New York: Free Press, 1976).
Morris, Richard B. Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
Robert Previdi; "Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America," Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 29, 1999
Rakove, Jack. Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2010) 487 pages; scholarly study focuses on how the Founders moved from private lives to public action, beginning in the 1770s
Cokie Roberts. Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation (New York: William Morrow, 2005); popular
Gordon S. Wood. Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (New York: Penguin Press, 2006)