Unit 2 Quotes AHTG

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."

James Madison, Federalist 51

"As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form."

James Madison, Federalist 55

"Experience proves the inefficiency of a bill of rights on those occasions when its control is most needed. Repeated violations of these parchment barriers have been committed by overbearing majorities in every State."

James Madison, on a Bill of Rights

"The rights in question are reserved by the manner in which the federal powers are granted."

James Madison, on a Bill of Rights

"There is great reason to fear that a positive declaration of some of the most essential rights could not be obtained in the requisite latitude."

James Madison, on a Bill of Rights

"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. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution."

Jefferson, Virtue of the American Farmer

"Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth."

Jefferson, Virtue of the American Farmer

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing." "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep is a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty..."

Lincoln's Parable

Multiplicity, mutability, injustice, and impotence of the laws

Madison's diagnosis of problems within the states

"The Constitution of 1787 is supposed to have created a government of 'separated powers.' It did nothing of the sort. Rather it created a government of separated institutions sharing powers."

Richard Neustadt

"Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, or lightly punished, but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death."

Samuel Adams on Shays' Rebellions

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

The Gettysburg Address

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Gettysburg Address

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth...."

Alexander Stephens

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

1st Amendment

"No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."

3rd Amendment

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

Alexander Hamilton

"The mode of appointment of the chief magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure...I...hesitate not to affirm that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent."

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 68

"For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?"

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 84

"The truth is, after all the declamations we have heard, that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS."

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 84

"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."

Thomas Jefferson on Shays' Rebellion

"The House of Representatives ... shall have the sole Power of Impeachment."

Article 1, Section 2

"The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.... Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States."

Article 1, Section 3

"Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in Congress."

Article 2, Section 1

"no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector."

Article 2, Section 1

"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Article 2, Section 4

"When a building is to be erected which is intended to stand for ages, the foundation should be firmly laid. The constitution proposed to your acceptance, is designed not for yourselves alone, but for generations yet unborn. The principles, therefore, upon which the social compact is founded, ought to have been clearly and precisely stated, and the most express and full declaration of rights to have been made — But on this subject there is almost an entire silence."

Brutus 2

Blacks "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States." "On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings." The writers of the Declaration of Independence "perfectly understood the meaning of the language they used, and how it would be understood by others; and they knew that it would not in any part of the civilized world be supposed to embrace the negro race, which, by common consent, had been excluded from civilized Governments and the family of nations, and doomed to slavery."

Dred Scott Decision

"It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided." "Acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice."

Federalist 68

Avoid leaders with "talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity."

Federalist 68

"Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy ..."

Federalist 70

Find leaders with "courage and magnanimity enough to serve [the people] at the peril of their displeasure."

Federalist 71

"Of all the flattery, the grossest (gross indeed to blasphemy) is, that the voice of the people is the voice of God; that the opinion of a majority like that of the Pope, is infallible." "We are sliding down into the mire of a democracy, which pollutes the morals of the citizens before it swallows up their liberties."

Fisher Ames on the "Mire of Democracy"

"I am mortified beyond expression when I view the clouds that have spread over the brightest morn that ever dawned in any country... What a triumph for the advocates of despotism, to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious."

George Washington on Shays' Rebellion

"The confederation itself is defective, and requires to be altered. It is neither fit for war nor peace." "The fundamental defect is a want of power in Congress." "Another defect in our system is want of method and energy in the administration." The national government needs "power sufficient to unite the different members together, and direct the common forces to the interest and happiness of the whole."

Hamilton in his letter to James Duane

"the final arrangement of it took place in the latter stage of the Session, it was not exempt from a degree of the hurrying influence produced by fatigue and impatience in all such Bodies: tho' the degree was much less than usually prevails in them."

James Madison

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

James Madison, Federalist 47

"A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

James Madison, Federalist 51

"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place."

James Madison, Federalist 51

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

James Madison, Federalist 51

"A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference..."

Thomas Jefferson

"I will now add what I do not like. First the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land ..."

Thomas Jefferson