To Rescue the Constitution Quotes

“According to David Humphreys, with whom Washington shared his views for a biography that Humphreys was planning, Washington later in his life expressed regret about slavery: “The unfortunate condition of the persons, whose labor in part I employ, has been the only unavoidable subject of regret. To make the adults among them as easy and comfortable in their circumstances as their actual state of ignorance and improvidence would admit, and to lay a foundation to prepare the rising generation for a destiny different from that in which they were born, afforded some satisfaction to my mind, and could not I hoped be displeasing to the justice of the Creator.”
― Bret Baier, To Rescue the Constitution: George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment

“Nothing is more common than for a free people, in times of heat and violence, to gratify momentary passions, by letting into the government, principles and precedents which afterwards prove fatal to themselves. Of this kind is the doctrine of disqualification, disfranchisement and banishment by acts of legislature. The dangerous consequences of this power are manifest. If the legislature can disfranchise any number of citizens at pleasure by general descriptions, it may soon confine all the votes to a small number of partisans, and establish an aristocracy or an oligarchy; if it may banish at discretion all those whom particular circumstances render obnoxious, without hearing or trial, no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a government would be a mockery of common sense.”
― Bret Baier, To Rescue the Constitution: George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment

“Compromise remained the word of the day. And what is compromise but agreeing at times to vote against one’s desires in order to reach a higher goal? Those who”
― Bret Baier, To Rescue the Constitution: George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment

“would define freedom as the right to cling to every precious principle dear to one’s heart could not form a nation—especially not this one. The key was to decide together which principles were sacred and—no small detail—would make a nation governable. Earlier”
― Bret Baier, To Rescue the Constitution: George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment