First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

by Thomas E. Ricks

In his first inaugural address, delivered in New York City on April 30, 1789, Washington promised to be a good steward of “the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”5 Washington uttered the words, but they almost certainly were drafted by James Madison, America’s first great political insider.