The Great Contradiction Quotes

“The only problem with this morally correct approach is that no document that met our modern-day standard of social justice—in effect, any document that refused to make compromises with the slave states of the deep south—could ever have been passed or ratified.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding

“The irony was obvious: the only way to end slavery was to create a national government empowered to make domestic policy for the states, but placing emancipation on the agenda in Philadelphia instantly destroyed any realistic prospect for creating such a government.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding

“Both sides, in fact, agreed that the slavery question should be deferred. But in the north that meant until after the war; in the south it meant until hell froze over.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding

“In the Adams political universe, justice delayed was not denied but, rather, deferred until it could “glide insensibly” into place.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding

“These mindlessly celebratory and naïvely judgmental responses to the founders are in fact complementary cartoons, the front and back sides of the same childlike portrait that we periodically rotate, like adolescents fluctuating between the emotional imperatives of unconditional love and Oedipal hate.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding