The Quartet Quotes

“Adams had gone to Harvard, Jefferson to William and Mary. Washington had gone to war.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“The Constitution was intended less to resolve arguments than to make argument itself the solution.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“permitting the continuance and expansion of slavery as the price to pay for nationhood. This decision meant that tragedy was also built into the American founding, and the only question we can ask is whether it was a Greek tragedy, meaning inevitable and unavoidable, or a Shakespearean tragedy, meaning that it could have gone the other way, and the failure was a function of the racial prejudices the founders harbored in their heads and hearts.10”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“It took him (Washington) more than a year to gain control over his own aggressive instincts.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“In Madison’s formulation, the right to bear arms was not inherent but derivative, depending on service in the militia. The recent Supreme Court decision (Heller v. District of Columbia, 2008) that found the right to bear arms an inherent and nearly unlimited right is clearly at odds with Madison’s original intentions.37”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“His massive probity, combined with his persistent geniality, made him impossible to hate. He lacked Washington’s gravitas, Hamilton’s charisma, and Madison’s cerebral power, but he more than compensated with a conspicuous cogency in both his conversation and his prose that suggested a deep reservoir of learning he could tap at will. Permanently poised, always the calm center of the storm, when a controversial issue arose, he always seemed to have thought it through more clearly and deeply than anyone else, so that his opinion had a matter-of-fact quality that made dissent seem impolite.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“Madison’s experience at both the state and the federal level had convinced him that “the people” was not some benevolent, harmonious collective but rather a smoldering and ever-shifting gathering of factions or interest groups committed to provincial perspectives and vulnerable to demagogues with partisan agendas.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“The delegates from the southern states insisted that slaves were property, like horses and sheep, and therefore should not be counted as “Inhabitants.” Franklin countered this claim with an edgy joke, observing that slaves, the last time he looked, did not behave like sheep: “Sheep will never make any insurrections.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“Contemporaries of Alexander Hamilton noticed "his conspicuous sense of self-possession, his unique combination of serenity and energy.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“It is richly ironic that one of the few original intentions they all shared was opposition to any judicial doctrine of “original intent.” To be sure, they all wished to be remembered, but they did not want to be embalmed.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“His greatest gift was resilience rather than brilliance, which just happened to be the quality of mind and heart that the American cause required.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“The Citizens of America, placed in the most evitable conditions, as the Sole Lords and Proprietors of a vast tract of Continent, comprehending all the various Soils and climates of the World, and abounding with all the necessaries and conveniences of life, are now by the late satisfactory pacification, acknowledged to be possessed of absolute freedom and Independency. They are, from this period, to be considered as Actors on a most conspicuous Theatre, which seems to be peculiarly designed by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity.31”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“Perhaps the most uplifting interpretation of all came from David Howell. As a Rhode Island delegate, Howell was on record as regarding the western lands as a source of revenue. But as a true believer in the semi-sacred character of republican values, his view of the west assumed a spiritual aura that Jefferson himself would later embrace in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase: The Western World opens an amazing prospect. As a national fund, in my opinion, it is equal to our debt. As a source of future population & strength, it is a guarantee of our Independence. As its Inhabitants will be mostly cultivators of the soil, republicanism looks to them as its Guardians. When the States on the eastern shore, or Atlantic shall have become populous, rich, & luxurious & ready to yield their Liberties into the hands of a tyrant—The Gods of the Mountains will save us.28”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“Madison’s experience at both the state and the federal level had convinced him that “the people” was not some benevolent, harmonious collective but rather a smoldering and ever-shifting gathering of factions or interest groups committed to provincial perspectives and vulnerable to demagogues with partisan agendas. The question,”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“Over the ensuing decades and centuries, to be sure, the Bill of Rights has ascended to an elevated region in the American imagination. But in its own time, and in Madison’s mind, it was only an essential epilogue that concluded a brilliant campaign to adjust the meaning of the American Revolution to a national scale.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“For Adams it was especially distressing to witness such conspicuous failure “in the first formation of Government erected by the People themselves on their own Authority, without the poisonous Interposition of Kings and Priests.” There was, to be sure, such a thing as “The Cause,” but the glorious potency of that concept did not translate to “The People of the United States.”16”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“There was in Madison’s critical assessment of the state governments a discernible antidemocratic ethos rooted in the conviction that political popularity generated a toxic chemistry of appeasement and demagoguery that privileged popular whim and short-term interests at the expense of the long-term public interest.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“if one was looking for the moment when the first glimmering of a campaign to replace and not just reform the Articles enlisted the enormous prestige of America’s singular figure, this was it.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“have cooled down.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“Conspiracy theories usually look rather bizarre in retrospect, when the issues at stake have lost their relevance and the political temperatures”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“the amount of that loss I will forebear to mention as there might be in it an appearance of ostentation.”28”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“throughout the spring and summer of 1781, no official business could be done because five or more state delegations were either absent altogether or only partially represented.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“At the first session of the Confederation Congress, it was decided that nine states constituted a quorum, with two delegates necessary for a state to qualify as present.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“the marginal status of the Continental Army was reassuring for the vast majority of Americans, since a robust and professional army on the British model contradicted the very values it was supposedly fighting for.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“But when President John Hancock sent the troop quotas to the respective state legislatures, they were regarded as requests, and none of the states complied.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“Washington insisted, and the civilian delegates agreed, that there needed to be a “New Establishment,” consisting of an American army three times larger than the current fifteen-thousand-man force, with enlistments to last three years or, better yet, “for the duration.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“Mr. Henry had without a doubt the greatest power to persuade, [but] Mr. Madison had the great power to convince.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J. Ellis

“It has endured not because it embodies timeless truths that the founders fathomed as tongues of fire danced over their heads, but because it manages to combine the two time-bound truths of its own time: namely, that any legitimate government must rest on a popular foundation, and that popular majorities cannot be trusted to act responsibly, a paradox that has aged remarkably well.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“Within the long arc of the American History, Washington's speech is significant because it prevented the American Revolution from descending the path taken by previous and future revolutionary movements, from republican ideals to military dictatorships. Which is to say that Washington did not do what Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell had done before him and Napoleon would do after him. In the crucible of that moment, however the more immediate significance was that the army ceased to be a pawn in a plot to expand the powers of the Congress.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

“This argument made logical and legal sense to almost everyone except the Virginians, who were accustomed to thinking of the Old Dominion as an empire of its own, with the Ohio Valley and the Kentucky as extensions of "greater Virginia." Even James Madison, the most nonprovincial member of the Virginia delegation, felt obliged to defend his state's claim to Kentucky's border, though he opposed the threat of the Virginia legislature to revoke its previous cession.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789