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Book: The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789
Quotes of Book: The Quartet: Orchestrating the
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  1. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    Perhaps the most uplifting interpretation of all came from David Howell. As a Rhode Island delegate, Howell was on record as regarding the western lands as a source of revenue. But as a true believer in the semi-sacred character of republican values, his view of the west assumed a spiritual aura that Jefferson himself would later embrace in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase: The Western World opens an amazing prospect. As a national fund, in my opinion, it is equal to our debt. As a source of future population & strength, it is a guarantee of our Independence. As its Inhabitants will be mostly cultivators of the soil, republicanism looks to them as its Guardians. When the States on the eastern shore, or Atlantic shall have become populous, rich, & luxurious & ready to yield their Liberties into the hands of a tyrant-The Gods of the Mountains will save us.28
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  2. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    In Madison's formulation, the right to bear arms was not inherent but derivative, depending on service in the militia. The recent Supreme Court decision {Heller v. District of Columbia, 2008} that found the right to bear arms an inherent and nearly unlimited right is clearly at odds with Madison's original intentions.37
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  3. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    Madison's experience at both the state and the federal level had convinced him that "the people" was not some benevolent, harmonious collective but rather a smoldering and ever-shifting gathering of factions or interest groups committed to provincial perspectives and vulnerable to demagogues with partisan agendas. The question,
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  4. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    There was in Madison's critical assessment of the state governments a discernible antidemocratic ethos rooted in the conviction that political popularity generated a toxic chemistry of appeasement and demagoguery that privileged popular whim and short-term interests at the expense of the long-term public interest.
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  5. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    Over the ensuing decades and centuries, to be sure, the Bill of Rights has ascended to an elevated region in the American imagination. But in its own time, and in Madison's mind, it was only an essential epilogue that concluded a brilliant campaign to adjust the meaning of the American Revolution to a national scale.
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  6. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    For Adams it was especially distressing to witness such conspicuous failure "in the first formation of Government erected by the People themselves on their own Authority, without the poisonous Interposition of Kings and Priests." There was, to be sure, such a thing as "The Cause," but the glorious potency of that concept did not translate to "The People of the United States."16
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  7. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    Madison's experience at both the state and the federal level had convinced him that "the people" was not some benevolent, harmonious collective but rather a smoldering and ever-shifting gathering of factions or interest groups committed to provincial perspectives and vulnerable to demagogues with partisan agendas.
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  8. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    His massive probity, combined with his persistent geniality, made him impossible to hate. He lacked Washington's gravitas, Hamilton's charisma, and Madison's cerebral power, but he more than compensated with a conspicuous cogency in both his conversation and his prose that suggested a deep reservoir of learning he could tap at will. Permanently poised, always the calm center of the storm, when a controversial issue arose, he always seemed to have thought it through more clearly and deeply than anyone else, so that his opinion had a matter-of-fact quality that made dissent seem impolite.
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  9. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    The delegates from the southern states insisted that slaves were property, like horses and sheep, and therefore should not be counted as "Inhabitants." Franklin countered this claim with an edgy joke, observing that slaves, the last time he looked, did not behave like sheep: "Sheep will never make any insurrections.
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  10. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    Contemporaries of Alexander Hamilton noticed "his conspicuous sense of self-possession, his unique combination of serenity and energy.
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  11. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    It took him {Washington} more than a year to gain control over his own aggressive instincts.
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  12. Joseph J. Ellis _ The Quartet: Orchestrating the

    permitting the continuance and expansion of slavery as the price to pay for nationhood. This decision meant that tragedy was also built into the American founding, and the only question we can ask is whether it was a Greek tragedy, meaning inevitable and unavoidable, or a Shakespearean tragedy, meaning that it could have gone the other way, and the failure was a function of the racial prejudices the founders harbored in their heads and hearts.10
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