This question was asked by political science professors at the University of Houston.12 They rightfully felt that they could determine the source of the Founders’ ideas if they could collect writings from the Founding Era and see whom the Founders were quoting. The researchers assembled 15,000 writings from the Founding Era—no small sample—and searched those writings. That project spanned ten years; but at the end of that time, the researchers had isolated 3,154 direct quotes made by the Founders