"I never indeed thought him an honest, frank-dealing man, but
considered him as a crooked gun, or other perverted machine, whose
aim or stroke you could never be sure of."--Thomas Jefferson on
Aaron Burr
" A]lways an honest Man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in
some things, absolutely out of his senses."-- Benjamin Franklin on
John Adams
"I do now know Jefferson] to be one of the most artful,
intriguing, industrious and double-faced politicians in all
America."-- John Nicholas to George Washington
"I shall really regret to leave Mr. Jefferson, he is one of the
choice ones of the Earth."-- Abigail Adams
More than two centuries after the ground-breaking events of the
American struggle for independence, its key figures strike us more
as players in a myth than as people who lived, worked, and
interacted with one another. To recover the human dimension of the
founders, we need look no further than their own words. Through a
series of revealing quotations, historian John P. Kaminski profiles
thirty of the era's best-known individuals, including Benjamin
Franklin, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, Thomas Paine,
and Patrick Henry ("all tongue without either head or heart,"
according to Thomas Jefferson), as well as the early presidents and
their first ladies.
The discourse is unfailingly respectful, and yet this is no
mutual admiration society. The subjects are not afraid to be sharp
about one another, but this only makes their words of praise more
convincing and poignant. One could hardly ask for a more
clear-eyed, and touching, tribute than Thomas Jefferson's appraisal
of George Washington: "He was incapable of fear, meeting personal
dangers with the calmest unconcern.... His integrity was most pure,
his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of
interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to
bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a
wise, a good, and a great man."
Beginning with an introductory essay that provides an overview
of the relationships between the founders, the book then presents
each individual, providing a biographical sketch and a
chronologically arranged series of quotations, clarifying not only
each person's place within the independence movement but the
contours of their character. The authors strike us with their
candor, their insight, and their eloquence as they make their
subjects come alive for us. As this book reveals, greatness is not
only a matter of responding to the times; the people themselves
were remarkable.
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