Quotes from Joseph J. Ellis

But if insecurity was the primal source of Hamilton's incredibly energy, one would have to conclude that providence had conspired to produce at the most opportune moment perhaps the most creative liability in American history.

All well and good, but for our purposes these otherwise-valuable insights are mere subplots almost designed to carry us down side trails while blithely humming a tune about the rough equivalence of forests and trees.

Hindsight history, sometimes call counterfactual history, is usually not history at all, but most often a condescending game of oneupmanship in which the living play political tricks on the dead, who are not around to defend themselves.

The strategic center of the rebellion was not a place – not New York, Philadelphia, not the Hudson corridor – but the Continental Army itself.

Contemporaries of Alexander Hamilton noticed his conspicuous sense of self-possession, his unique combination of serenity and energy.

One of the petitioners, an infamous do-gooder of uncertain sanity named Warner Mifflin, had actually acknowledged that his antislavery vision came to him after he was struck by lightning in a thunderstorm.

Honor mattered because character mattered. And character mattered because the fate of the American experiment with republican government still required virtuous leaders to survive.

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.

Taking on Washington was the fastest way to commit political suicide in the revolutionary era.

I have often thought how much happier I should have been if, instead of accepting a command under such Circumstances, I should have taken my musket upon my Shoulder & entered the Ranks or Ã¢â'¬Â¦ had retir'd to the back country & lived in a Wig-wam. —GEORGE WASHINGTON

First, it is crucial to recognize that Washington's extraordinary reputation rested less on his prudent exercise of power than on his dramatic flair at surrendering it. He was, in fact, a veritable virtuoso of exits.

In the summer of 1776, the average British soldier was 28 years old with seven years experience in the Army. The average American soldier was 20 and had known military life for only six months.

They were trying to orchestrate a revolution, which almost by definition generated a sense of collective trauma that defied any semblance of coherence and control. If we wish to rediscover the psychological context of the major players in Philadelphia, we need to abandon our hindsight omniscience and capture their mentality as they negotiated the unknown.

the land of opportunity, where credentials mattered less than demonstrated ability.

Unquestionably, New York enjoyed enormous strategic significance. As Adams had already apprised Washington, it was "the nexus of the Northern and Southern colonies Ã¢â'¬Â¦ the key to the whole Continent, as it is a Passage to Canada, to the Great Lakes, and to all the Indian Nations.

It is well known, that when one side only of a story is heard, and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it, insensibly.

The term American, like the term democrat, began as an epithet, the former referring to an inferior, provincial creature, the latter to one who panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses.

As far as his contemporaries were concerned, there was no question about his stature in American history. In the extravaganza of mourning that occurred in more than four hundred towns and hamlets throughout the land, he was described as the only indisputable hero of the age, the one and only "His Excellency.

Namely, the very values that the American patriots claimed to be fighting for were incompatible with the disciplined culture required in a professional army. Republics were committed to a core principle of consent, while armies were the institutional embodiments of unthinking obedience and routinized coercion. The very idea of a "standing army" struck most members of the Continental Congress and the state legislatures as a highly dangerous threat to republican principles.

It is richly ironic that one of the few original intentions they all shared was opposition to any judicial doctrine of "original intent." To be sure, they all wished to be remembered, but they did not want to be embalmed.

But the question made no sense to the bulk of the troops, who regarded instinctive obedience to orders and ready acceptance of subordination within a military hierarchy as infringements on the very liberty they were fighting for. They saw themselves as invincible, not because they were disciplined soldiers like the redcoats but because they were patriotic, liberty-loving men willing to risk their lives for their convictions.

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, the acknowledged architect of the British victory in the French and Indian War, rose to condemn the decision to militarize the conflict. He recommended the withdrawal from Boston of all British troops, who could only serve as incendiaries for a provocative incident that triggered a war.

Pitt and Burke were two of the most eloquent and respected members of Parliament, and taken together, by early 1775, they were warning the British ministry that it was headed toward a war that was unwise, unnecessary, and probably unwinnable.

Physically as well as psychologically, Dickinson was the opposite of Adams: tall and gaunt, with a somewhat ashen complexion and a deliberate demeanor that conveyed the confidence of his social standing in the Quaker elite and his legal training at the Inns of Court in London.