More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
April 23, 2017 - February 6, 2018
By
Four people were key to the adoption of the Constitution: Washington, Hamilton, Madison and Governor Morris. Ellis makes history come alive with real life conflicts. It clearly shows that there was much opposition to the creation of a federal government among the founding fathers.
Washington’s mind, then, was completely clear on the substantive question: the Articles needed to be replaced, not just revised, by a federal government empowered to act as a representative of the American people as a whole.
“Radical attempts, although unsuccessful,” he promised, “will at least justify the authors of them.” Better to fail in a noble cause, in short, than to succeed in a more limited effort that would only postpone the inevitable descent into political dissolution.
first,
second,
t...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Looked upon as a collective, the fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention were surprisingly young—average age forty-four—and disproportionately well educated. Twenty-nine had college degrees, and the same number had studied law. Their educational backgrounds were more conspicuous than their wealth, making them more an intellectual than an economic elite. Thirty-five had served
as officers in the Continental Army, and forty-two had served in the Continental or Confederation Congress.28
Our current twenty-first-century perspective demands that we regard the convention as a secular rather than a spiritual occasion,
The narrow margin of victory was rendered possible when John Hancock proposed a procedure that was subsequently copied by five other states: namely, the delegates would vote on ratification, then vote on recommended amendments to the Constitution.
Section.
Section.
Section.
Section.
Section.
Section.
Section.
Section.
Section.
Section.
