James

“There are very few men-and they are the exceptions-who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment”
― Carl Von Clausewitz

“General Harmar led a force of some three hundred regulars and twelve hundred militia northward from Fort Washington (present-day Cincinnati) to attack Indian villages in the area of what is now Fort Wayne. Although the Americans burned Miami and Shawnee villages and killed two hundred Indians, they lost an equal number of men and were forced to retreat. This show of force by the United States had proved embarrassing, and the administration was determined not to rely on militia to the same extent again.”
― Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815

“173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one,” wrote Jefferson in 1785 in his Notes on the State of Virginia. “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.”31”
― Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815

“These critics thought that the general commercialization of English life, including the rise of trading companies, banks, stock markets, speculators, and new moneyed men, had undermined traditional values and threatened England with ruin. The monarchy and its minions had used patronage, the national debt, and the Bank of England to corrupt the society, including the House of Commons, and to build up the executive bureaucracy at the expense of the people’s liberties, usually for the purpose of waging war.”
― Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815