The Vineyard of Liberty, 1787–1863 Quotes

“Finally the job was done—a canal 363 miles long, 4 feet deep, 28 feet wide at the bottom and 40 at the top, with 83 locks lifting boats to a height of almost 600 feet, and costing over $7 million. Such a feat called for celebration, and the New Yorkers did not fail the occasion. On a morning late in October 1825 the canalboat Seneca Chief nosed into the canal at Buffalo carrying two kegs of the “pure water of Lake Erie,” Governor Clinton and other dignitaries, and a”
― James MacGregor Burns, The Vineyard of Liberty, 1787–1863

“began with a dire prediction: someday, when Americans would be asked what had become “of the flower of their crop, and the rich produce of their farms,” they would answer as had the Man of La Mancha, “The Steward of my Lord has seized and sent it to Madrid,’ ” or more literally, tax collectors of the new national government had seized that produce and transmitted it to the “Federal City.”
― James MacGregor Burns, The Vineyard of Liberty, 1787–1863

“But history—a moving, organic network of causally related events—is hard to outwit or outflank. History embodies a logic and momentum of its own with resistances, rewards, and penalties. History soon outwitted the Whigs and left them in its dustbin.”
― James MacGregor Burns, The Vineyard of Liberty, 1787–1863