We the People Quotes

“Neither Jefferson nor Madison asked whether a generation of men has the right to bind a generation of women, even though women like Abigail Adams and Eliza Harriot and Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft were asking that question in letters, speeches, and treatises. The answer has implications into the twenty-first century: if women could neither ratify, reject, nor amend the Constitution in the founding era, if the Constitution, in a fundamental sense, did not recognize women as persons, can it truly be said to bind their posterity? The same question can be asked of enslaved Black men, women, and children, like Sally Hemings, and the poor, and free Black men: could any of these people in any sense ratify, reject, or amend the original Constitution?”
― Jill Lepore, We the People: A History of the US Constitution