THE CONFEDERATION AND THE CONSTITUTION
"The example of changing a constitution by assembling the wise men of the State instead of assembling armies will be worth as much to the world as the former examples we had given them." - Thomas Jefferson, 1789
"America is free, Could not we be?" - East African natives revolting against their Arab masters, 1783
"I object to the word 'obey' in the marriage-service because it is a general word, without limitations or definition... The obedience between man and wife, I conceive, is, or ought to be mutual... Marriage ought never to be considered a contract between a superior and an inferior, but a reciprocal union of interest, an implied partnership of interests, where all differences are accommodated by conference; and where the decision admits of no retrospect." - "Matrimonial republican", 1792, after the revolution enhanced the expectations and power of women as wives and mothers
"march directly to Boston, plunder it, and then... destroy the nest of devils, who by their influence, make the Court enact what they please, burn it and lay the town of Boston in ashes." - Daniel Shays, 1787
"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of people... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by change, they therefore will ever maintain good government." - Alexander Hamilton, on his preference for an aristocratic government, 1787
"What country ever before existed a century and a half without a rebellion?... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson, 1787
"Gov. Randolph observed that the confederation is incompetent to any one object for which it was instituted. The framers of it wise and great men; but human rights were the chief knowle[d]ge of the times when it was framed so far as they applied to oppose Great Britain. Requisitions for men and money had never offered their form to our assemblies. None of those vices that have since discovered themselves were apprehended." - Dr. James McHenry, notes on the arguments for and against a constitution, 1787
"Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" - Anonymous woman's question to Benjamin Franklin, to which he replied "A republic, if you can keep it."
"Tis really astonishing that the same people, who have just emerged from a long and cruel war in defense of liberty, should now agree to fix and elective despotism upon themselves and their posterity." - Richard Henry Lee, attacking the proposed constitution, 1788
"This constitution is said to have beautiful features; but when I come to examine these features, Sir, they appear to me horridly frightful: Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints towards monarchy: And does not this raise indignation in the breast of every American? Your President may easily become King: Your Senate is so imperfectly constructed that your dearest rights may be sacrificed by what may be a small minority;... Where are your checks in this Government?" - Patrick Henry, attacking the constitution, 1788
"I am a plain man, and I get my living by the plow. I have lived in a part of the country where I have known the worth of good government by the want of it. The black cloud of Shays rebellion rose last winter in my area. It brought on a state of anarchy that led to tyranny... When I saw this constitution I found that it was a cure for these disorders. I got a copy of it and read it over and over... I don't think the worse of the Constitution because lawyers, and men of learning, and moneyed men are fond of it. [They] are all embarked in the same cause with us, and we must all swim or sink together." - Jonathan Smith, Massachusetts farmer
"We fought Great Britain - some said for a three-penny tax on tea; but it was not that. It was because they claimed a right to tax us and bind us in all cases whatever. And does not this Constitution do the same?... These lawyers and men of learning and money men, that talk so finely and gloss over matters so smoothly, to make us poor illiterate people swallow down the pill... They expect us to be the managers of the Constitution, and get all the power and money into their own hands. And then they will swallow up all us little folks, just as the whale swallowed up Jonah!" - Amos Singletary, a "poor" man
LAUNCHING THE NEW SHIP OF STATE
"I shall only say that I hold with Montesquieu, that a government must be fitted to a nation, as much as a coat to the individual; and, consequently, that what may be good at Philadelphia may be bad at Paris, and ridiculous at Petersburg [Russia]." - Alexander Hamilton, 1799
"This people is the hope of the human race... The Americans should be an example of political, religious, commercial, and industrial liberty... But to obtain these ends for us, America... must not become... a mass of divided powers, contending for territory and trade." - Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, expectations for a united America
"He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of public credit, and it sprung upon its feet." - Daniel Webster, commending the work of Alexander Hamilton, 1831
"I saw the operation to be unequal in this country... It is true that the excise paid by the country would be that only on spirits consumed in it. But even in the case of exports, the excise must be advanced in the first instance by the distiller and this would prevent effectually all the poorer part from carrying on the business. I... would have preferred a direct tax with a view to reach unsettled lands which all around us have been purchased by speculating men." - Hugh Henry Brackenridge, on his mediation between the Whiskey Rebels and the town of Pittsburgh
"Never was the memory of a man so cruelly insulted as that of this mild and humane monarch. He was guillotined in effigy, in the capital of the Union [Philadelphia], twenty or thirty times every day, during one whole winter and part of the summer. Men, women and children flocked to the tragical exhibition, and not a single paragraph appeared in the papers to shame them from it." - William Cobbett, on the frenzied reaction in America to the death of Louis XVI
"And as to you, sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide, whether you are an apostate or an imposter; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any." - Thomas Paine, open letter to President Washington regarding his anti-French policies, 1796
"He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men. This is all the ill which can possibly be said of him. He is as disinterested as the Being who made him." - Thomas Jefferson, perspective of John Adams, 1787
"I will never send another minister to France without assurances that he will be received, respected, and honored as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation." - President John Adams, message to Congress, 1798
"The reign of Mr. Adams has, hitherto, been one continued tempest of malignant passions. As president, he has never opened his lips, or lifted his pen, without threatening and scolding. The grand object of his administration has been to exasperate the rage of contending parties, to calumniate and destroy every man who differs from his opinions... Every person holding an office must either quit it, or think and vote exactly with Mr. Adams." - James Callender, criticizing President Adams in a published pamphlet, 1800 - as a result, he was prosecuted under the Sedition Act, fined $250.00, and sentenced to prison for nine months
"While we have land to labor then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a workbench, or twirling a distaff... For the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe... The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body." - Thomas Jefferson, on his preference for farmers, not factory hands, 1784
THE TRIUMPHS AND TRAVAILS OF THE JEFFERSONIAN REPUBLIC
"Timid men... prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty." - Thomas Jefferson, 1796
"the Bible would be cast into a bonfire, our holy worship changed into a dance of [French] Jacobin phrensy, our wives and daughters dishonored, and our sons converted into the disciples of Voltaire and the dragoons of Marat." - Reverend Timothy Dwight, prediction on what would happen if Jefferson were elected president
"I have this morning witnessed one of the most interesting scenes a free people can ever witness. The changes of administration, which in every government and in every age have most generally been epochs of confusion, villainy and bloodshed, in this our happy country take place without any species of distraction, or disorder." - Philadelphia woman describing the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson
"the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." - President Kennedy greeting and describing a group of Nobel Prize winners
"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." - Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
"The Constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law; if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable... It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is... If, then, the courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they are both applicable." - Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison decision, 1803
"It is the case of a guardian, investing the money of his ward in purchasing an important adjacent territory; and saying to him when of age, I did this for your good; I pretend to no right to bind you; you may disavow me, and I must get out of the scrape as I can; I thought it my duty to risk myself for you." - Thomas Jefferson, after accepting the Louisiana Purchase
"Let every man who holds the name of America dear to him, stretch forth his hands and put this accursed thing, this Embargo from him. Be resolute, act like sons of liberty, of God, and your country; nerve your arm with vengeance against the Despot [Jefferson] who would wrest the inestimable germ of your Independence from you - and you shall be Conquerors!!!" - Federalist circular in Massachusetts against the embargo
"Thomas Jefferson still survives." - John Adams' last words, 1826 (NOTE: He was wrong. Jefferson died three hours earlier on the same day)
"The injuries received from France do not lessen the enormity of those heaped upon us by England... In this 'straight betwixt two' we had an unquestionable right to select our enemy. We have given the preference to Great Britain... on account of her more flagrant wrongs." - Editor of Niles' Weekly Register, 1812
"I prefer the troubled sea of war, demanded by the honor and independence of this country, with all its calamities and desolation, to the tranquil and putrescent pool of ignominious peace." - Henry Clay
"Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds, and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?" - Tecumseh
"one of those uncommon geniuses who spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things. If it were not for the vicinity of the United States, he would perhaps be founder of an Empire that would rival in glory that of Mexico or Peru." - William Henry Harrison, describing Tecumseh
THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE AND THE UPSURGE OF NATIONALISM
"The American continents... are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers." - President James Monroe, 1823
"The free men of colour in [your] city are inured to the Southern climate and would make excellent Soldiers... They must be for or against us - distrust them, and you make them your enemies, place confidence in them, and you engage them by every dear and honorable tie to the interest of the country, who extends to them equal rights and [privileges] with white men." - Andrew Jackson, appeal to the governor of Louisiana for help recruiting free blacks to defend New Orleans, 1814
"We have our firesides, our comfortable habitations, our cities, our churches and our country to defend, our rights, privileges and independence to preserve. And for these are we not justly consenting? Thus it appears to me. Yet I hear from our pulpits, and read from our presses, that it is an unjust, a wicked, a ruinous, and unnecessary war... A house divided upon itself - and upon that foundation do our enemies build their hopes of subduing us." - Abigail Adams, letter to Mercy Otis Warren describing American disagreement over the War of 1812
"I don't like Americans; I never did, and never shall like them... I have no wish to eat with them, drink with them, deal with, or consort with them in any way; but let me tell the whole truth, nor fight with them, were it not for the laurels to be acquired, by overcoming an enemy so brave, determined, and alert, and in every way so worthy of one's steel, as they have always proved." - Michael Scott, lieutenant in the Royal Navy
"Never before, perhaps, since the institution of civil government, did the same harmony, the same absence of party spirit, the same national feeling, pervade a community. The result is too consoling to dispute too nicely about the cause." - National Intelligencer, recognizing Monroe's early months as president as the Era of Good Feelings, 1817
"The Missouri question... is the most portentous one which ever yet threatened our Union. In the gloomiest moment of the revolutionary war I never had any apprehensions equal to what I feel from this source... [The] question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror... [With slavery] we have a wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go." - Thomas Jefferson, on the Missouri debate
"I take it for granted that the present question is a mere preamble - a title-page to a great, tragic volume." - John Quincy Adams, on the Missouri debate
"The chief place in the supreme tribunal of the Union will no longer be filled by a man whose political doctrines led him always... to strengthen government at the expense of the people." - New York newspaper rejoicing at the death of John Marshall
THE RISE OF A MASS DEMOCRACY
"In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to those natural and just advantages artificial distinctions... and exclusive privileges... the humble members of society - the farmers, mechanics, and laborers... have a right to complain of the injustice of their government." - Andrew Jackson, 1832
"General Jackson's mother was a Common Prostitute, brought to this country by the British soldiers! She afterwards married a MULLATO man with whom she had several children, of which number GENERAL JACKSON is one." - Anti-Jackson newspaper
"When I was President of the Senate he was a Senator; and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage. His passions are no doubt cooler now... but he is a dangerous man." - Thomas Jefferson, describing Andrew Jackson, 1824
"The people are all alike too. There is no diversity of character. They travel about on the same errands, say and do the same things in exactly the same manner, and follow in the same dull cheerless round. All down the long table there is scarcely a man who is in anything different from his neighbor." - Charles Dickens, describing the United States
"I never use the word 'nation' in speaking of the United States. I always use the word 'union' or 'confederacy.' We are not a nation, but a union, a confederacy of equal and sovereign states." - John C. Calhoun, viewing nullification as a way to preserve the Union and prevent secession
"Our federal Union: It must be preserved." - Andrew Jackson, a dinner toast, 1830
"To the Union, next to our liberty, most dear." - John C. Calhoun, response to Jackson's dinner toast, 1830
"One each day, and all are gone. Looks like maybe all dead before we get to new Indian country, but always we keep marching on. Women cry and make sad wails. Children cry, and many men cry, and all look sad when friends die, but they say nothing and just put heads down and keep on toward west... She [his mother] speak no more; we bury her and go on." - Survivor account of the forced "Trail of Tears" Indian march
"I have always deplored making the Bank a party question, but since the President will have it so, he must pay the penalty of his own rashness. As to the veto message, I am delighted with it. It has all the fury of a chained panther biting the bars of his cage. It is really a manifesto of anarchy... and my hope is that it will contribute to relieve the country of the domination of these miserable [Jackson] people." - Nicholas Biddle, a banker writing to Henry Clay, 1832
"The savings-bank also sustained a most grievous run yesterday. They paid 375 depositors $81,000. The press was awful; the hour for closing the bank is six o' clock. I was there with the other trustees and witnessed the madness of the people - women nearly pressed to death, and the stoutest men could scarcely sustain themselves; but they held on as with a death's grip upon the evidence of their claims, and, exhausted as they were with the pressure, they had strength to cry 'Pay! Pay!'" - Philip Hone, a New businessman describing a phase of the financial crisis, 1837
"The greatest annoyance I was subjected to in travelling was in exchanging money. It is impossible to describe the wretched state of the currency - which is all bills issued by private individuals; companies; cities and states; almost all of which are bankrupt; or what amounts to the same thing, they cannot redeem their issues... And these do not pass out of the state, or frequently, out of the city in which they are issued." - Foreign traveler, describing the chaotic state of American currency
"The people ought to inquire [of political candidates] - are you opposed to a national bank; are you in favor of a strict construction of the Federal and State Constitutions; are you in favor of rotation in office; do you subscribe to the republican rule that the people are the sovereign power, the officers their agents, and that upon all national or general subjects, as well as local, they have a right to instruct their agents and representatives, and they are bound to obey or resign; in short, are they true Republicans agreeable to the true Jeffersonian creed?" - President Andrew Jackson, summarizing the Jacksonian philosophy, 1835
FORGING THE NATIONAL ECONOMY
"The progress of invention is really a threat [to monarchy]. Whenever I see a railroad I look for a republic." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1866
"A lot of people come over here who were well off in Germany but were enticed to leave their fatherland by boastful and imprudent letters from their friends or children and thought they could become rich in America. This deceives a lot of people, since what can they do here? If they stay in the city they can only earn their bread at hard and unaccustomed labor. If they want to live in the country and don't have enough money to buy a piece of land that is cleared and has a house then they have to settle in the wild bush and have to work very hard to clear the trees out of the way so they can sow and plant. But people who are healthy, strong, and hard-working do pretty well." - German immigrant living in Cincinnati, 1847
"This is a good place and a good country, but there is one thing that's ruining this place. The emigrants have not money enough to take them to the interior of the country, which obliges them to remain here in New York and the like places, which causes the less demand for labor and also the great reduction in wages. For this reason I would advise no one to come to America that would not have some money after landing here that would enable them to go west in case they would get no work to do here." - Margaret McCarthy, Irish immigrant, 1850
"I have seen the Indian in his forests and the Negro in his chains, and thought, as I contemplated their pitiable condition, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness; but I did not then know the condition of unfortunate Ireland." - French traveler, impressions of America and Ireland
"Americans must rule America; and to this end, native-born citizens should be selected for all state, federal, or municipal offices of government employment, in preference to naturalized citizens." - American (Know-Nothing) party, 1856
"The patent system secured to the inventor for a limited time exclusive use of his invention, and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things." - Abraham Lincoln
"The operatives work thirteen hours a day in the summer time, and from daylight to dark in the winter. At half past four in the morning the factory bell rings, and at five the girls must be in the mills... So fatigued... are numbers of girls that they go to bed soon after receiving their evening meal, and endeavor by a comparatively long sleep to resuscitate their weakened frames for the toil of the coming day." - Newspaper account of conditions in New England factories, 1836
"The Mayor, who acts with vigour and firmness, ordered out the troops, who are now on duty with loaded arms... These measures have restored order for the present, but I fear the elements of disorder are at work; the bands of Irish and other foreigners, instigated by the mischievous councils of the trades-union and other combinations of discontented men, are acquiring strength and importance which will ere long be difficult to quell." - Philip Hone, after striking laborers attacks scabs, 1836
"You wish to know minutely of our hours of labor. We go in [to the mill] at five o'clock; at seven we come out to breakfast; at half-past seven we return to our work, and stay until half-past twelve. At one, or quarter-past four months in the year, we return to our work, and stay until seven at night. Then the evening is all our own, which is more than some laboring girls can say, who think nothing is more tedious than a factory life." - Woman worker in the Lowell mills, 1844
"Never shoot on the road as the noise might frighten the horses... Don't point out where murders have been committed, especially if there are women passengers... Expect annoyances, discomfort, and some hardships." - Warning to stagecoach passengers
"Another prominent feature is the love of 'smart' dealing which gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust; many a defalcation [embezzlement], public and private; and enables many a knave to hold his head up with the best, who well deserves a halter." - Charles Dickens, criticizing national character, 1842
THE FERMENT OF REFORM AND CULTURE
"We [Americans] will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak with our own minds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar," 1837
"Let the churches of all denominations speak out on the subject of temperance, let them close their doors against all who have anything to do with death-dealing abomination, and the cause of temperance is triumphant. A few years would annihilate the traffic. Just so with slavery... It is a great national sin. It is a sin of the church. The churches by their silence, and by permitting slaveholders to belong to their communion, have been consenting to it... The church cannot turn away from this question. It is a question for the church and for the nation to decide, and God will push it to a decision." - Charles Grandison Finney
"It is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism - Polygamy and Slavery." - Excerpt from the Republican platform, 1856
"There were some schools so-called [in Indiana], but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond 'readin', writin' and cipherin' to the rule of three... There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity. I was raised to work, which I continued till I was twenty-two." - Abraham Lincoln, 1859
"The mass of mankind are very ignorant and wicked. Wherefore is this? Because the mother, whom God constituted the first teacher of every human being, has degraded by men from her high office; or, what is the same thing, been denied those privileges of education which only can enable her to discharge her duty to her children with discretion and effect... If half the effort and expense had been directed to enlighten and improve the minds of females which have been lavished on the other sex, we should now have a very different state of society." - Godey's Lady's Book, 1845
"Lincoln. A woman in a cage. Medford. One idiotic subject chained, and one in a close stall for seventeen years. Pepperell. One often doubly chained, hand and foot; another violent; several peaceable now... Dedham. The insane disadvantageously placed in the jail. In the almshouse, two females in stalls...; lie in wooden bunks filled with straw; always shut up. One of these subjects in supposed curable. The overseers of the poor have declined giving her a trial at the hospital, as I was informed, on account of expense." - Record from Dorothea Dix's diary
"While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relation of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no... promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority." - Vow added to the nuptial ceremony of early feminist Lucy Stone and her husband Henry B. Blackwell
"The alarm about the cholera has prevented all the usual jollification under the public authority... The Board of Health reports today twenty new cases and eleven deaths since noon yesterday. The disease is here in all its violence and will increase. God grant that its ravages may be confined, and its visit short." - Philip Hone, 1832
"haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens - election - members of congress - liberty - Bunker's Hill - heroes of seventy-six - and other words, that were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle." - Washington Irving, "Rip Van Winkle," 1819
"All men recognize the right of revolution; the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now... I say, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty more urgent is the fact, that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army." - Henry David Thoreau, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience", 1849
"At this point [in the planning of the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott] I began to think about Thoreau's Essay on Civil Disobedience. I remembered how, as a college student, I had been moved when I first read this work. I became convinced that what we were preparing to do in Montgomery was related to what Thoreau had expressed. We were simply saying to the white community, 'We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system.'" - Martin Luther King, Jr., 1958