Negro President Quotes

“[During Election of 1800]
[Jefferson] fanned the talk of armed resistance. In his Pennsylvania Avenue onversation with John Adams, he told the president that any act to block his election 'would probably produce resistance by force and incalculable consequences,' Considering this threat of violence, perhaps we should not be surprised that Adams did not stay in Washington for Jefferson's inauguration. Perhaps that threat was still ringing in his ears. Nor was this an isolated remark of Jefferson's.”
― Garry Wills, Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power

“Jefferson belonged to that large class if southerners--including the best of them, nen like Washington and Madison--who knew that slavery was evil, but felt they could not cut back in the evil without cutting the ground out from under them. They knew, as well, that they would lose their influence over other southerners if they went against the system off which they lived.”
― Garry Wills, Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power

“Louisiana looked like a bonanza to people anxious to unload their slaves at high prices--and it looked that way precisely because Jefferson excluded slave importations from abroad.”
― Garry Wills, Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power

“The creation of a "designated" ticket also made it possible for the president to run not as an individual but as a member of a team chosen for geographical spread and numerical inclusiveness. This can be seen as helping build national unity, but it undercut states' rights, as the small states argued in the debate over the amendment. (Delaware refused to ratify the amendment on just those grounds.) Even the reduction of the chances for a tie vote in the Electoral College took power away from the small states, since they had an equal vote in cases of a tie.”
― Garry Wills, Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power

“Th fight over the [twelfth] amendment also confirms what Henry Adams treated as the "comedy" of Jefferson in power--that his efforts, and those of his followers, continually worked against their declared object. Jefferson came saying that he would reduce the power of the executive and the centralizing nationalism of the Federalists. But the Twelfth Admendment, by subordinating the vice president, increased the power of the president, who was able to run unopposed by anyone in his party once he was nominated, and who was served by the man in second place.”
― Garry Wills, Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power