Revolutionaries Quotes

“how do we explain the appearance of the remarkable group of leaders who carried the American colonies from resistance to revolution, held their own against the premier imperial power of the day, and then capped their visionary experiment by framing a Constitution whose origins and interpretation still preoccupy us over two centuries later?”
― Jack N. Rakove, Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America

“The leaders of the colonial protests against Britain were thus all provincials before they became revolutionaries, revolutionaries before they became American nationalists, and nationalists who were always mindful of their provincial roots.”
― Jack N. Rakove, Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America

“At the start, we need to recognize that there were at least two generations of 1776: an older cohort who led the colonies into independence (such as the Adamses, Washington, Mason, Dickinson) and another that came of age with it, “young men of the Revolution” (such as John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, who, coincidentally, co-authored The Federalist essays of 1787–1788).”
― Jack N. Rakove, Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America