The Cause Quotes

“Keep in mind that the past is not history, but a much vaster region of the dead, gone, unknowable, or forgotten. History is what we choose to remember.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783

“We must also be capable of thinking paradoxically. The American Revolution succeeded because it was not really a revolution.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783

“Although the culmination of Indian removal did not occur for fifty years—during the presidency of Andrew Jackson—it was embedded in the American founding from the start; and as Washington observed during his own presidency, nothing short of a “Chinese wall” could have altered the outcome.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783

“The Treaty of Paris had defined the Native American population in the entire trans-Appalachian region as “a conquered people” who should be grateful to be consulted at all. “You are mistaken in supposing that you can make what terms you please,” one American commissioner explained. “It is not so. You are a subdued people.” The Native tribes were effectively ordered to surrender a portion of their tribal land or face war with the United States. 10”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783

“The clairvoyance of hindsight actually obscures the choices perceived by the Native tribes caught in the moment. It never occurred to most tribal chiefs that the scratch of a pen in Paris had dispossessed them of lands they had lived on for centuries. (The assumption that land was property that could be owned by mere mortals was also incomprehensible.)”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783

“the past is not history, but a much vaster region of the dead, gone, unknowable, or forgotten.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783

“History is what we choose to remember.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783