The Words That Made Us Quotes

“When Madison and Jefferson opposed Hamilton, they also opposed Washington, who generally sided with Hamilton, and whom Hamilton served loyally. This is one factor that should weigh against Madison’s and Jefferson’s constitutional claims circa 1791–1797. Several other factors also weigh against Madison’s and Jefferson’s views in this time period. The duo themselves in later years quietly slinked away from some of their most outlandish claims; judges of all stripes, including men they themselves placed on the Court, repeatedly rejected many of their views; and later generations of judges have generally followed suit.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“FRANKLIN AND WASHINGTON WERE AMERICA’S two greatest founding figures, and it is remarkable that Washington’s de facto farewell message, when he passed away in 1799 at his Mount Vernon home, was so similar in substance—though not at all in tone—to Franklin’s parting soliloquy. Metaphorically, both men died with abolition and emancipation on their lips. Rosebud. Franklin envisioned virtuous public action: Congress should pass laws freeing all slaves. Washington embodied virtuous private action: slaveholders should take actions freeing their own slaves, just as he was doing on his deathbed.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“When out of power, Jefferson talked about judicial independence, but when in power, he never named a great and independent jurist to the bench because he was not, in truth, looking for judicial independence and excellence. He sought party loyalism.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“Marshall here was a smooth and understated southern gentleman. Here is what he meant by “embarrassments”: Thanks to the Articles of Confederation’s inadequate authorization of Congressional power, America almost lost its War of Independence, and countless heroes died needlessly at Valley Forge and elsewhere. I would know; unlike my kinsman Jefferson, I was there. And so was Washington and so was Hamilton and so were many others who somehow survived and who later pointedly omitted the word “expressly” from the original Constitution and successfully opposed all efforts to insert it into the Bill of Rights.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“Morgan, The Meaning of Independence, at 60: “He placed a higher value on collecting books and drinking good wine than he did on freeing his slaves.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“A second existential threat—slavery—was internal, subtler, and insidiously increasing. Human bondage, if not placed on a path of ultimate extinction, threatened to destroy the soul of the American republic. A closely related threat was regional polarization. As time passed, slavery shrank in the North and metastasized in the South. This divergence made it harder for the two regions to converse with each other, as the South increasingly came under the grip of pro-slavery extremists who disdained discourse and democracy and who would ultimately take up arms against both the Constitution and the American union that it embodied.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“Proper republics, by contrast, depended on widespread civic virtue, citizen participation, and patriotism. In the best of such regimes, common folk informed themselves about politics, especially by reading newspapers; deliberated in good faith with their fellow citizens; voted in free and fair elections, with the aim of choosing the most able and virtuous; willingly obeyed democratically enacted laws, including tax laws; participated in juries and militias when summoned; and staffed elective and appointed positions of public service when called to do so by their fellow citizens.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“When America’s first census was taken in 1790, no slaves were recorded in Massachusetts. Somewhere, the spirit of James Otis was smiling.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“The Massachusetts Convention declined to follow the Virginians down the tortuous rabbit hole of equality for me but not for thee.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“These were legal weasel words. Pro-slavery lawyers could tell themselves that “natural” law could be displaced by “positive law”—by statutes or custom. Even though slavery was “unnatural,” positive law in Virginia and elsewhere allowed”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“was not one to hold back, and he genuinely loved conversing with his extraordinarily clever and articulate spouse, who in much of their back-and-forth wore the affectionate nickname Portia.63”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“While he greatly admired the orderliness of lower Manhattan’s layout and the grandeur of its best buildings, he found its inhabitants overbearing: “With all the Opulence and Splendor of this City, there is… no Conversation that is agreeable. There is no Modesty—No Attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast, and all together. If they ask you a Question, before you can utter 3 Words of your Answer, they will break out upon you, again—and talk away.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“The solution was nonviolent. Unlike the soldiers at the Massacre, the Sons killed no one. Unlike the mob at Hutchinson’s house, the Sons did not come close to killing anyone. The solution was proportionate. The Sons destroyed no more property than necessary. They tossed overboard and thus ruined approximately 340 chests of East India tea, valued at about 9,700 pounds sterling. But no books or papers were disturbed or destroyed, as had happened at Hutchinson’s mansion. The three tea-laden ships involved in the episode were unharmed, and their non-tea cargo was untouched. The Sons made a point of sweeping the decks. The patriots would have preferred simply to scare the ships off, but Governor Hutchinson (no longer merely acting governor as he had been at the Massacre) had forbidden the ships to leave the harbor, and for technical customs-law reasons the clock was ticking down fast.84 The solution was public spirited and non-piratic. The Sons dumped the tea to make a legal and political point. They did not plunder or pilfer for their own private use—again, unlike the mob at Hutchinson’s mansion, where looters disgraced the patriot cause. The Sons and their allies in the press proudly stressed this fact: “A watch… was stationed to prevent embezzlement, and not a single ounce of Tea was suffered to be purloined by the populace.”85 The solution was conversation-starting and attention-grabbing, designed to win publicity across America and also in London, to counter the ministry’s low-tax-now gambit that threatened high taxes later. (What comes down must go up, thought the Sons.) Like Revere’s eye-catching cartoons, Otis’s ear-grabbing slogans, Pitt’s soaring speeches, and Barré’s fetching phraseology, the Sons’ performance art was part of an emerging democratic culture that rewarded those able to capture the attention and woo the hearts of the many. The solution was playful, satiric, and stylish—worthy of Hogarth himself. London snobs had treated their colonial cousins as if they were uncivilized aborigines, rather than proper New World Englishmen entitled to all the rights of proper Old World Englishmen. Well, the Sons replied, winkingly, don’t blame us for the destruction of tea. Blame the Indians, against whom your soldiers are allegedly protecting us! The Sons may also have relished the performance pun that New World “Indians” were thwarting Britain’s East India monopoly. In a note the following day to James Warren (brother-in-law of James Otis Jr.), John Adams gave the Sons’ theatrical performance a rave review: “This is the grandest Event which has ever yet happened Since the Controversy with Britain opened! The Sublimity of it charms me!”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“The residents of Georgetown, MA, expressed their contempt in a particularly witty way reminiscent of Otis: 'Rejected... Because... a man being born in Africa (or) India or ancient American, or even being much sun burnt deprived him of having a Vote of Representative.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“From the British point of view, who better to pay than colonists, who had been the war’s beneficiaries? The war, after all, had eliminated a major threat to British America. From the colonial point of view, why should colonists pay for a British shield that they no longer needed?”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“the first global war began in 1754 with the killing of a French Canadian officer in America’s backcountry. The slaying of Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville on May 28, 1754, forty miles south of the Forks of the Ohio (modern-day Pittsburgh), occurred at the hands of colonial and Indian fighters led by a young Virginia officer named George Washington.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“Yorktown, where friendly French soldiers and sailors had outnumbered American ground troops more than two to one.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“with all America and the world looking on, the Federalists in New York at the end of the process reaffirmed what had been clear from the beginning: ratification would be “in toto, and for ever.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“the most remarkable features of these first state constitutions were certain overarching elements that are now so commonplace that we forget how truly revolutionary they were in 1776: writtenness, concision, replicability, rights declaration, democratic pedigree, republican structure, and amendability. Never before in history had this particular combination of features come together.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“in 1775 there arose a remarkable civic society that aimed to end slavery itself. The society was formed not by Johnson, nor in Johnson’s vaunted London, nor indeed anywhere in Britain proper, but rather in Philadelphia, the host city of the Continental Congress. Two of the society’s early leaders were Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, who both, in the summer of 1776, added their names to the American Declaration of Independence.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“Uniquely in the history of the world, Americans in the late eighteenth century constituted themselves as a people and as a nation in a series of epic and self-conscious acts of democratic self-invention. In 1776, thirteen British North American colonies renounced their common parent and created what would later become the world’s mightiest power.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“Americans rewarded George Washington with the presidency. Indeed, the Electoral College unanimously backed Washington in 1789; every single elector who participated cast a vote for America’s George. By installing Washington by acclamation, Americans in effect consented yet again—truly, deeply—to the Constitution that was now inextricably intertwined with Washington himself.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840

“precisely because each state was sovereign, and precisely because a strong union was necessary if states were to survive and thrive, a strong majority of these sovereign states should be free to reunite in a different way. Rather than creating another rope of sand—another mere treaty or league or confederation—the states should combine to form a new continental people under a new continental Constitution. In that new Constitution, each state could no longer be fully “sovereign,” as it had been between 1776 and 1787. The consenting states would need to merge into a new, larger, Westphalian nation-state, much as the separate kingdoms of Scotland and England had merged eighty years earlier to form—this was the key phrase in 1707—“an entire and perfect union.”5 Scotland and England had entered this merger for geostrategic reasons: the British snake would be easier to defend if not divided in two. Four score years later, America would need to do something similar for similar reasons.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840