Midterm #2: Quotes

"Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world...."

John Calhoun

"The North has acquired a decided ascendancy over every department of this Government, and through it a control over all the powers of the system."

John Calhoun on Checks and Balances/Separation of Power

"The [Constitutional] Convention meant to leave slavery in the States as they found it, entirely under the authority and control of the States themselves."

John Calhoun on Federalism

"The character of the Government has been changed ... from a federal republic, as it originally came from the hands of its framers, into a great national consolidated democracy."

John Calhoun on Federalism

"If the Constitution were all we had, politicians would be incapable of getting organized to accomplish even routine tasks. Every day, for every bill or compromise, they would have to start from scratch, rounding up hundreds of individual politicians and answering to thousands of squabbling constituencies and millions of voters. By itself, the Constitution is a recipe for chaos."

Jonathan Rauch

"On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings."

Justice Taney, Dred Scott

"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 nstrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States."

Justice Taney, Dred Scott

"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."

Justice Taney, Dred Scott

"It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each."

Marbury v. Madison

"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 ..."

Marbury v. Madison

"[Not striking down unconstitutional laws] would be giving to the legislature a practical and real omnipotence ..."

Marbury v. Madison

"A rapidly expanding catalog of rights - extending to trees, animals, smokers, nonsmokers, consumers, and so on - not only multiplies the occasions for collisions, but it risks trivializing core democratic values. A tendency to frame nearly every social controversy in terms of a clash of rights impedes compromise, mutual understanding, and the discovery of common ground."

Mary Ann Glendon

"It is natural to a republic to have only a small territory, otherwise it cannot long subsist."

Montesquieu

"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

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land ..."

Supremely Clause, Article VI

"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

"All the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated in and were given to the world from this Hall. I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence."

Abraham Lincoln

"I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments."

Abraham Lincoln

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing."

Abraham Lincoln

"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,

"It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue."

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #68

"Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State;"

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #68

"Those who are to be vested with [judicial power] are to be placed in a situation altogether unprecedented in a free country. They are to be rendered totally independent, both of the people and of the legislature."

Brutus

"If respect is to be paid to the opinion of the greatest and wisest men who have ever thought or wrote on the science of government, we shall be constrained to conclude, that a free republic cannot succeed over a country of such immense extent, containing such a number of inhabitants..."

Brutus 1 (Robert Yats)

"History furnishes no example of a free republic, anything like the extent of the United States."

Brutus I: Robert Yats

War is "an extension of politics by other means."

Carl von Clausewitz

"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."

Constitution: Article II sec. 1

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

Constitution: Article II sec. 1

"Political parties created modern democracy and modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties."

E.E. Schattschneider

"America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future."

Fredrick Douglas

"Masters treat their sick, infant, and helpless slaves well, not only from feeling and affection, but from motives of self-interest."

George Fitzhugh

"The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world.... when the labors of the day are over, and free in mind as well as body; for the master provides food, raiment, house, fuel, and everything else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and family."

George Fitzhugh

"We do not agree with the authors of the Declaration of Independence, that governments 'derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.' The women, the children, the negroes, and but few of the non-property holders were consulted, or consented to the Revolution, or the governments that ensued from its success...."

George Fitzhugh

"they hold that all men, women, and negroes, and smart children are equals, and entitled to equal rights... The experiment which they will make, we fear, is absurd ..."

George Fitzhugh

"The spirit of party agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, [and] kindles the animosity of one part against another."

George Washington

"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."

Hamilton, Fed. 84

"Acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice."

Hamilton, Federalist #68

"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."

Hamilton, Federalist #68

"Men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station"

Hamilton, Federalist #68

"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."

Hamilton, Federalist #68

"and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure."

Hamilton, Federalist #71

"It is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches."

Hamilton, Federalist 78

"It may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments."

Hamilton, Federalist 78

"No legislative act ... contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize but what they forbid."

Hamilton, Federalist 78

"The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever."

Hamilton, Federalist 78

"The difference between [North and South] is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people.... Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South."

James Hammond

"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

"No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability."

James Madison

"By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

James Madison on factions

"The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man..."

James Madison, Federalist #10

"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

"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

"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

"[Contrive] the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places."

James Madison, Federalist #51

"...the House of Representatives is so constituted as to support in the members an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people."

James Madison, Federalist #57

"Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things."

Thomas Jefferson

"We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists."

Thomas Jefferson