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30cdc47
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Hamilton used the sinking fund to maintain the confidence of creditors in the government's securities; he had no intention of paying off the outstanding principal of the debt. Retiring the debt would only destroy its usefulness as money and as a means of attaching investors to the federal government.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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913d22b
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But what is worse than all," observed the English traveler Isaac Weld, "these wretches in their combat endeavor to their utmost to tear out each other's testicles."31"
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Gordon S. Wood |
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49a5630
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Nevertheless, some Southerners like James Monroe still had serious reservations about the compromise, believing that assumption would reduce "the necessity for State taxation" and thus would "undoubtedly leave the national government more at liberty to exercise its powers and increase the subjects on which it will act."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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db8ffef
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Americans became so thoroughly democratic that much of the period's political activity, beginning with the Constitution, was diverted to finding means and devices to tame that democracy.
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self-government
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Gordon S. Wood |
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4dd863a
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Realizing the extent to which people in the past struggled with circumstances that they scarcely understood is perhaps the most important insight flowing from historical study. To understand the past in all its complexity is to acquire historical wisdom and humility and indeed a tragic sense of life. A tragic sense does not mean a sad or pessimistic sense of life; it means a sense of the limitations of life.
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GordonS. Wood |
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c262b42
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Yet the Pennsylvania radicals continued to assault judges for their abuse of discretionary authority."Judges," the popular radicals contended in 1807,"very often discover that the law, as written, may be made to mean something which the legislature never thought of. The greatest part of their decisions are in fact, and in effect, making new laws."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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672640f
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Private associations of men for the purpose of promoting arts, sciences, benevolence or charity are very laudable," declared Noah Webster, but associations formed for political purposes were "dangerous to good government."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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11edbae
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These critics thought that the general commercialization of English life, including the rise of trading companies, banks, stock markets, speculators, and new moneyed men, had undermined traditional values and threatened England with ruin. The monarchy and its minions had used patronage, the national debt, and the Bank of England to corrupt the society, including the House of Commons, and to build up the executive bureaucracy at the expense ..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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7218fa2
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In 1788 Dr. Rush had told the clergy that, whatever their doctrinal differences, "you are all united in inculcating the necessity of morals," and "from the success or failure of your exertions in the cause of virtue, we anticipate the freedom or slavery of our country."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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7a2e38c
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Do not give to persons able to work for a living," declared a critic of the traditional paternalistic charity in 1807. "Do not support widows who refuse to put out their children. Do not let the means of support be made easier to one who does not work than to those who do."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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18ab510
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Consequently, as Samuel Chase pointed out in the Maryland ratifying convention, the states would end up "without power, or respect and despised--they will sink into nothing, and be absorbed in the general government." Some Federalists actually hoped for this to happen--for the states eventually to be reduced to mere administrative units of the national government."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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698c8f5
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James Wilkinson, an ex-Revolutionary War officer, and tried to convince them that the future of Americans in the West belonged to Spain. Spain offered trading licenses to Kentucky settlers, negotiated with leaders in Tennessee, and sought to attract Americans to settle in Spanish territory. Spain even enlisted Wilkinson as a paid agent of its government. Wilkinson secretly swore allegiance to the Spanish crown and for fifteen years received..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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222f85f
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The land north of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachians was to be surveyed and marked off in a rectangular pattern--with east-west baselines and north-south ranges--before any of it was sold. This territory was to be divided into townships six miles square, with each township in turn cut up into thirty-six numbered sections of 640 acres each. Land was to be sold at auction, but the minimum price was set at one dollar per acre, and no ..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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bc67a63
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The advice part of the Senate's role in treaty making was dropped.125 When the president issued his Proclamation of Neutrality in 1793, he did not bother to ask for the consent of the Senate, and he thus further established the executive as the dominant authority in the conduct of foreign affairs.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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9fa9a1f
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With every ordinary person now being told that his ideas and tastes, on everything from medicine to art and government, were as good as if not better than those of "connoisseurs" and "speculative men" who were "college learnt," it is not surprising that truth and knowledge, which had seemed so palpable and attainable to the enlightened late eighteenth century, now became elusive and difficult to pin down.65 As popular knowledge came to seem..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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9704cb0
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When Elbridge Gerry proposed in the Convention that no standing army exceed three thousand men, Washington is supposed to have made a countermotion that "no foreign enemy should invade the United States at any time, with more than three thousand troops."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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c68053b
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Foreigners thought the Americans' eating habits were atrocious, their food execrable, and their coffee detestable. Americans tended to eat fast, often sharing a common bowl or cup, to bolt their food in silence, and to use only their knives in eating. Everywhere travelers complained about "the violation of decorum, the want of etiquette, the rusticity of manners in this generation."36"
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Gordon S. Wood |
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0ecd78b
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General Harmar led a force of some three hundred regulars and twelve hundred militia northward from Fort Washington (present-day Cincinnati) to attack Indian villages in the area of what is now Fort Wayne. Although the Americans burned Miami and Shawnee villages and killed two hundred Indians, they lost an equal number of men and were forced to retreat. This show of force by the United States had proved embarrassing, and the administration ..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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79b67b1
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In 1812 the U.S. Army consisted of fewer than seven thousand regular troops.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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6a6075e
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Unlike in the Northern states, the only elected officials in Virginia were federal congressmen and state legislators; all the rest were either selected by the legislature or appointed by the governor or the county courts, which were self-perpetuating oligarchies that dominated local government. Thus popular democratic politics in Virginia and elsewhere in the South was severely limited, especially in contrast to the states of the North, whe..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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c0d96e5
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Showing oneself eager for office was a sign of being unworthy of it, for the office-seeker probably had selfish views rather than the public good in mind.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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d548c8d
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The Federalists resisted every attempt by Northern artisans to organize, lest their success, as one Federalist writer put it, "excite similar attempts among all other descriptions of persons who live by manual labor."79"
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Gordon S. Wood |
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1399daf
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By contrast with this extensive Republican use of the press, the Federalists did little. Presuming that they had a natural right to rule, they had no need to stir up public opinion, which was what demagogues did in exploiting the people's ignorance and innocence.37 Federalist editors and printers of newspapers like John Fenno and his Gazette of the United States did exist, but most of these supporters of the national government were conserv..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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8ee7d5b
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In the decades following the Revolution, America changed so much and so rapidly that Americans not only became used to change, but came to expected and prize it.
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progress
novelty
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Gordon S. Wood |
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5ab5fa2
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Jefferson's extraordinary efforts to defend the rights of neutrals to trade freely drove the country into a deep depression and severely damaged his presidency. He ended up violating much of what he and his party stood for.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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e45e2f7
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The Baptists expanded from 94 congregations in 1760 to 858 in 1790 to become the single largest religious denomination in America. The Methodists had no adherents at all in 1760, but by 1790 they had created over seven hundred congregations--despite the fact that the great founder of English Methodism, John Wesley, had publicly opposed the American Revolution.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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34d2ece
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In a republic that depended on the intelligence and virtue of all citizens, the diffusion of knowledge had to be widespread. Indeed, said Noah Webster, education had to be "the most important business in civil society."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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a9d2bbf
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Between 1798 and 1808 American colleges were racked by mounting incidents of student defiance and outright rebellion--on a scale never seen before or since in American history.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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cf0c4cc
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In a republic, they believed, no person should be allowed to exploit the public's authority for private gain.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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37c1f92
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Between 1803 and 1812 Britain and France and their allies seized nearly fifteen hundred American ships, with Britain taking 917 to France's 558.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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0157c03
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Allowing unelected judges to declare laws enacted by popularly elected legislatures unconstitutional and invalid seemed flagrantly inconsistent with free popular government. Such judicial usurpation, said Richard Dobbs Spaight, delegate to the Constitutional Convention from North Carolina, was "absurd" and "operated as an absolute negative on the proceedings of the Legislature, which no judiciary ought ever to possess." Instead of being gov..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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b333e33
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Both Jefferson and Madison remained convinced to the end of their lives that all parts of America's government had equal authority to interpret the fundamental law of the Constitution--all departments had what Madison called "a concurrent right to expound the constitution."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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29ec307
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After much jousting between the Congress and the president over the appointment of more officers, Madison by the end of the year had issued commissions to over eleven hundred individuals, 15 percent of whom immediately declined them, followed by an additional 8 percent who resigned after several months of service.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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bf380a2
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Once the Constitution became a legal rather than a political document, judicial review, although not judicial supremacy, became inevitable.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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06d29fa
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Wilkinson remained a central figure in the Spanish Conspiracy even after he became a lieutenant colonel and later general and commander of the U.S. Army. Even without knowing that he was a paid agent of Spain, John Randolph of Virginia said that Wilkinson was the only man he ever knew "who from the bark to the very core was a villain."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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bc9ec66
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THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION of 1787 was designed in part to solve the problems created by the presence in the state legislatures of these middling men. In addition to correcting the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution was intended to restrain the excesses of democracy and protect minority rights from overbearing majorities in the state legislatures. But
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Gordon S. Wood |
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ba90d3a
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It was the family, John Adams had said in 1778, that was the "foundation of national morality."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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3eacda6
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The Court had a rule that it would indulge in wine-drinking only if it were raining. Marshall would look out the window on a sunny day and decide that wine-drinking was permissible since "our jurisdiction extends over so large a territory that the doctrine of chances makes it certain that it must be raining somewhere."11"
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Gordon S. Wood |
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bc6ee71
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Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina was only one of many Republicans who in the early months of 1812 voted against all attempts to arm and prepare the navy, who opposed all efforts to beef up the War Department, who rejected all tax increases, and yet who in June 1812 voted for the war.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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85f37d7
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Most basic and dangerous of all was the Federalist creation of a huge perpetual federal debt, which, as New York governor George Clinton explained, not only would poison the morals of the people through speculation but would also "add an artificial support to the administration, and by a species of bribery enlist the monied men of the community on the side of the measures of the government. . . . Look to Great Britain."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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ba91820
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Madison and other supporters of the Consitution--the Federalists as they called themselves--hoped that an expanded national sphere of operation would prevent the clashing interests of the society from combining to create tyrannical majorities in the new national government.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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eebbb28
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The gunman shifted his aim, following Victor's path as he leaped into the adjacent bathroom, bullets blowing a line of neat holes out of the wall behind him. Ejected brass cases clinked together on the carpet around the assassin's feet. In the bathroom, Victor came out of his roll into a crouch, letting off a quick shot, firing blind before he'd fully turned around. The bullet whizzed through the open doorway, sending up a puff of plaster a..
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Tom Wood |
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6bbb40f
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malcriadas, moverse inutilmente
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Barbara Wood |
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186858b
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In the absence of love, there is nothing worth fighting for.
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Elijah Wood |