A.Ham Book Club discussion
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The Quartet
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Chapter 3
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Mar 20, 2017 05:39AM
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1. Have you learned anything new about John Jay from this chapter? If so, what is it?
2. Do you think Ellis is focusing too much on the people involved in the forming of our Constitution? Or is he balancing the politics and people correctly?
3. Do you have a favorite passage? If so, what is it?
I found this chapter a little more challenging to read. I did learn about Jay, more than I knew, but I do find that Ellis is struggling to balance the people and politics. I feel like I am reading about the politics, but I am not getting pulled in so that I better understand what they were thinking at that time. As for what I learned about Jay, I found this quote interesting: "for I am persuaded that America possesses too much wisdom and virtue to permit her brilliant Prospects to fade away.” This tells me about his vision for the country. His negotiations with Spain demonstrate that he was pragmatic and saw the big picture; e.g. deal with Spain in the short term and as they diminish in strength, we move westward.
I also found the paragraph regarding Jay succeeding (or not) with foreign policy interesting, specifically this quote : "Jay was being asked to convert the American cacophony on foreign policy into a chorus." The states could continue to function separately on issues such as taxes, but they could not form treatises separately. For this, they needed one voice and yet, they were not yet in a place to with a collective voice. As noted by Ellis later in this chapter, things had to get worse before it got better. They were not there yet.
The other part that was kind of fun was reading Jefferson's proposed state names: Sylvania, Chersonesus, Metropotania and Polypotamia. As noted by Ellis, trying to incorporate Native American names is probably one of the more considerate acts of Jefferson.
