In A New Birth of Marriage: Love, Politics, and the Vision of the Founders, political scientist Brandon Dabling presents a compelling case that the American Founders viewed marriage as the bedrock of civilization and a covenant grounded in both courage and unity—and that recovering their vision will encourage greater numbers of Americans to enter into long, enriching marriages.

Conceding that most of the founders wrote fairly little on the topic of marriage, Dabling concentrates on two founding-era thinkers in particular: Abigail Adams and James Wilson. He makes clear that they understood marriage through the lens of both liberal and classical ideas, recognizing sexual equality and sexual difference, while affirming that marriage, once consented to, could not be dissolved except under the most extreme circumstances.

“While most national and state framers spoke relatively little of the family, what they did leave us is remarkably coherent and consistent and speaks to the family’s essential nature,” Dabling writes. “Marriage and family life built upon the principle of marital unity was…understood to be indispensable to human and political flourishing…. The Founders thought marriage and family were vital to maintaining free society.”

Dabling’s explication of this earlier understanding of marriage is particularly useful as 21st-century