Quotes from Edward J. Larson

Corporations must serve the people, Americans thought.

Washington resorted to this procedure during the 1780s, with the healthy teeth coming from his slaves, who received thirteen shillings per tooth, or about one-third of what Le Moyer typically paid on the free market.

Civil liberty," explained Federalist leader John Jay, who then served as New York's governor, "consists not in a right to every man to do just as he pleases, but it consists in an equal right…to do…whatever the equal and constitutional laws of the country admit to be consistent with the public good.

Back at his beloved Mount Vernon in 1797, Washington threw himself into farming and even became a whiskey distiller. No product ever netted him a larger return on his investment than this potent, rye-based intoxicant that he sold straight from the still. His distillery became the largest in the United States by 1799.

Washington had dreamed of Potomac River navigation long before independence made it a patriotic cause. Not only could such a waterway improve access to his frontier holdings, it would channel western trade through the mouth of the Potomac near his Mount Vernon plantation. Both would increase his wealth.

By 1787, four years since the United States secured its independence, Washington had come to believe that the country faced as grave a threat from internal forces of disunion in the mid-1780s as it had from external ones of tyranny in the mid-1770s, when he accepted leadership of the patriot army at the outset of the Revolutionary War.

As a fellow member of Virginia's House of Burgesses, Washington had known Jefferson since 1768, and, at age nineteen, James Monroe had crossed the Delaware River with Washington on that already legendary Christmas night in 1776 for the battles that revived the patriot cause.

Clarence Darrow," the New York Times proclaimed in its lead story, "bearded the lion of Fundamentalism today, faced William Jennings Bryan and a court room filled with believers of the literal word of the Bible and with a hunch of his shoulders and a thumb in his suspenders defied every belief they hold sacred.

Virtue, I fear, has, in a great degree, taken its departure from our Land, and the want of disposition to do justice is the source of the national embarrassments," he concluded.5

In its next issue, the Albany Journal featured a song that began: Behold Columbia's empire rise, On freedom's solid base to stand; Supported by propitious skies, And seal'd by her deliverer's hand.118 In case any reader missed its meaning, newspapers reprinting this song added a footnote stating that the last line referred to Washington's signature on the Constitution.

The people's delegates had ratified Washington as much as they had ratified a constitution.

Washington rightly called this "a new phenomenon in the political & moral world; and an astonishing victory gained by enlightened reason over brutal force.

We exhibit at present the novel & astonishing Spectacle of a whole People deliberating calmly on what form of government will be most conductive to their happiness; and deciding with an unexpected degree of unanimity in favor of a system which they conceive calculated to answer the purpose.

Providence, too, Washington believed, played a part, and assured a bright future for the United States.

in government became the principal supporters of the

Washington clearly enjoyed himself in Annapolis. He danced every dance at the governor's ball, accommodating all the ladies who lined up for the privilege of getting a touch of him. After the thirteen formal toasts at Congress's banquet, he added a concluding one of his own: "Competent Powers to Congress for general purposes."59 It had become his mantra. As much as he wished to get home to Virginia, he was also at home here in the swirl of continental politics.

Every art that could inflame the passions and touch the interests of men has been essayed," Washington complained in early April 1788.

Their decision to keep above the fray made sense. Franklin and Washington were thin-skinned and recoiled from ad hominem attacks. Neither was particularly adept at defending a proposal in a contentious up-or-down vote, especially a proposition they helped to craft. Franklin might begin fiddling with the text and Washington might lose his temper.

In republican Government the majority however composed, ultimately give the law," he wrote in his memorandum and implied in his letters, and "what is to restrain them from unjust violations of the rights and interests of the minority, or of individuals?

Madison's examples suggested a particular concern with factions united by economic or religious passions. Through state-issued paper money, he observed, debtor factions had devalued property rights.

Religion, too, he warned, especially when "kindled into enthusiasm," is a "force like that of other passions" and "may become a motive to oppression.

and balance their interests. Of course, except for the romanticized examples of remote Swiss cantons and ancient Greek city-states, the founders had no examples of effective republican rule to draw on in framing their governments. They dreamed of creating something better in the New World than the monarchies

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise

No law can shackle human thought