Quotes About Constitutional convention

Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.

When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed, in the face of every constitutional convention, only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

Alexander Hamilton

The United States Constitutional Convention, except for three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.

No man is above justice," George Mason preached at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. That sentiment still rings true, yet competes with the political reality offered by then-representative Gerald Ford, who quipped in 1970 that "an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.

At the Constitutional Convention, Elbridge Gerry had bawdily likened standing armies to a tumescent penis: "An excellent assurance of domestic tranquillity, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.

On September 17, 1787, after almost four months of hard-fought battles, the convention ended when thirty-nine delegates from twelve states signed the Constitution

Some states, such as Massachusetts and South Carolina, struggled with heavy debts and were glad to be relieved by the central government. Others, such as Virginia and North Carolina, had settled most of their debts and saw no reason to help. Such differences threatened to explode the brittle consensus that had been so arduous to reach at the Constitutional Convention.

These selfless warriors of the Revolution and sages of the Constitutional Convention had been forced to descend from their Olympian heights and adjust to a rougher world of everyday politics, where they cultivated their own interests and tried to capitalize on their former glory. In consequence, the founding fathers all appear to us in two guises: as both sublime and ordinary, selfless and selfish, heroic and humdrum

The road leading to the Constitutional Convention was a long, circuitous one. It began at Mount Vernon in 1785 when commissioners from Maryland and Virginia resolved a heated dispute over navigation of the Potomac River.

Washington appointed Hamilton, George Wythe, and Charles Pinckney to a small committee that drew up rules and procedures for the convention.

While marking time in Princeton in July, Hamilton drafted a resolution that again called for a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation. This prescient document encapsulated many features of the 1787 Constitution: a federal government with powers separated among legislative, executive, and judicial branches, and a Congress with the power to levy taxes and raise an army.

debates staged that year between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas proved to be the greatest argument over the American experiment since the constitutional convention. Those debates didn't avert the coming war between the

If we really want to make progress and achieve greater fairness as a society, it is time for elemental change. And we should start by looking at the Constitution, with the goal of holding a new Constitutional Convention.

When Franklin suggested on June 28th that each session start with a prayer for heavenly help, Hamilton countered that this might foster a public impression that embarrassments and dissensions within the convention had suggested this measure. According to legend, Hamilton also rebutted Franklin with the jest that the convention didn't need foreign aid.

Washington presided at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and is often credited with its success. But he had no known part in drafting its provisions.

When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed, in the face of every constitutional convention, only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

When Elbridge Gerry proposed in the Convention that no standing army exceed three thousand men, Washington is supposed to have made a countermotion that "no foreign enemy should invade the United States at any time, with more than three thousand troops.

I have always been thankful that so many of our country's greatest leaders and statesmen were able to be on this earth at the same time and place to draft the Constitution.

Let this constitution go forth from this convention, and from the new state, a model instrument of liberal and enlightened principles.

He noted that the same summer that witnessed the Constitutional Convention saw the passage of the Northwest Ordinance barring slavery north of the Ohio River.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention, a citizen asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government our founders had given us. He replied, A republic, if you can keep it. That's a job no president can do alone. It's up to all of us to keep it. And to make the most of it.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention, a citizen asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government our founders had given us. He replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." That's a job no president can do alone. It's up to all of us to keep it. And to make the most of it.

It was a constitutional convention for the female half of the country. After all, we had been excluded from the first one.