Quotes from Joseph J. Ellis

no shared sense of American nationhood existed in 1776, even though the Continental Congress and the Continental Army can be regarded as embryonic versions of such. All alliances among the colonies, and then the states, were presumed to be provisional and temporary arrangements. Allegiances within the far-flung American population remained local

The virtual extinction of the French expeditionary force, which had been scheduled to proceed to New Orleans after dispatching the blacks of Santo Domingo, was the immediate cause of Napoleon's decision to cut his losses in the Western Hemisphere. In that sense, Jefferson was not only extraordinarily lucky but also beholden to historical forces that he had actually opposed.

It is uncommon for the same men who make a revolution also to secure it.

I verily beleive [sic] Page that I shall die soon, and yet I can give no other reason for it but that I am tired with living. At this moment when I am writing I am scarcely sensible that I exist.

The Constitution was intended less to resolve arguments than to make argument itself the solution. For judicial devotees of originalism or original intent, this should be a disarming insight, since it made the Constitution the foundation for an ever-shifting political dialogue that, like history itself, was an argument without end. Madison's original intention was to make all original intentions infinitely negotiable in the future.

ever observed that a choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom" and that the

Not only was he a thoroughly marginal player within Virginia's cast of stars, he lacked precisely those qualities that the members of Congress considered most essential. His most glaring deficiency was the talent most valued in Philadelphia: He could not speak in public.

He found himself in the ironic position of being the indispensable man in a political world that regarded all leaders as disposable.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

All, all dead: and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know not us.

Jefferson was not a profound political thinker. He was, however, an utterly brilliant political rhetorician and visionary. The genius of his vision is to propose that our deepest yearnings for personal freedom are in fact attainable. The genius of his rhetoric is to articulate irreconcilable human urges at a sufficiently abstract level to mask their mutual exclusiveness.

How the right hand became disabled would be a long story for the left to tell," he wrote to William Stephens Smith. "It was by one of those follies from which good cannot come, but ill may.

When Jefferson visited Adams in England in the spring of 1786, the two former revolutionaries were presented at court and George III ostentatiously turned his back on them both. Neither man ever forgot the insult or the friend standing next to him when it happened.

the historian must be part hedgehog and part fox; that is, he must know "one big thing" and several "little things," must pursue a unifying vision while remaining sensitive to the peculiarities and the bedeviling varieties of his subject.

This argument made logical and legal sense to almost everyone except the Virginians, who were accustomed to thinking of the Old Dominion as an empire of its own, with the Ohio Valley and the Kentucky as extensions of greater Virginia. Even James Madison, the most nonprovincial member of the Virginia delegation, felt obliged to defend his state's claim to Kentucky's border, though he opposed the threat of the Virginia legislature to revoke its previous cession.

What engine is more powerful than the theatre? No arts can be made more effectual for the promotion of good than the dramatic and the histrionic. They unite music, poetry, painting, and eloquence. The engine is powerful for good or ill—it is for society to choose.

In his first year as president he received 1,881 letters, not including internal correspondence from his cabinet, and sent out 677 letters of his own. This

Asked to explain the defeat, Adams put it succinctly: "In general, our Generals were out generalled.") Washington

Though many historians have taken a compromise or split-the-different position over the ensuing years, the basic choice has remained constant, as historians have declared themselves Jeffersonian or Hamiltonians, committed individualists or dedicated nationalists, liberals or conservatives

namely, never interfere when your enemies are busily engaged in flagrant acts of self-destruction.

The fledgling and ragtag American army turned its state into a semi-plausible advantage, encouraging enlistees to wear their own hunting shirts to build on the reputation of frontier marksmen.

If it should be revealed or demonstrated that there is no future state, my advice to every man, woman, and child would be Ã¢â'¬Â¦ to take opium."48

You are sure to be censured by malevolent Criticks and Bug Writers, who will abuse you while you are serving them, and wound your Character in nameless Pamphlets, thereby resembling those little dirty stinking Insects that attack us only in the dark, disturbing our Repose, molesting and wounding us while our Sweat and Blood is contributing to their Subsistence. Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris JULY 26, 1781

When the first American colonies were founded, William Bradford—Webster's distinguished ancestor—spelled the same word differently in the same sentence; his orthography and grammar were regarded as legitimate expressions of his personality.