Quotes from Carol Berkin

It was a government in which Congress rather than the president was assigned the responsibility of leading the nation.

Washington had also asked that the Bible on which he would swear his oath come from the nearby St. John's Masonic Lodge. The choice carried a more private symbolism, for Washington, like many of the Revolutionary leadership, had long been a member of the secret society know as the Freemasons. With little or no attachment to any church, Washington had two intense organizational commitments: Freemasonry and the Society of the Cincinnati.

the end oF reconstruction 372 The "New Departure" 372 The 1872 Presidential Election 373 The Politics of Terror: The "Mississippi Plan

In eighteenth-century parlance, the president was to be a disinterested leader, removed from the tarnishing effects of ambition, greed, and factional wrangling, a check upon the sectional or class interests of lawmakers in the House and Senate.