Fergus M. Bordewich > Quotes

“...Far from the near sanctification of military service common in today´s United States, the Americans of 1790 regarded a standing army virtually by definition as the coercive arm of oppressive government, owing loyalty not to the public but to kings and dictators.--”
― Fergus M. Bordewich, The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government

“The Underground Railroad was, in many ways, a seminal movement in American history, one that deserves far more recognition than it has received. It was a kind of prelude to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and it offered lessons in social activism, political resistance, and moral courage that continue to inspire Americans today.”
― Fergus M. Bordewich, Bound For Canaan: The Epic Story Of The Underground Railroad, America's First Ci

“Of the House of Representatives, Rep. James G. Blaine later remarked, “There is no place where so little deference is paid to reputation previously acquired, or to eminence won outside; no place where so little consideration is shown for the feelings or the failures of beginners. What a man gains, he gains by sheer force of his own character,”
― Fergus M. Bordewich, Congress at War: How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America

“The past,” as the British novelist L. P. Hartley wrote, “is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”
― Fergus M. Bordewich, Congress at War: How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America

“The method of operating was not uniform but adapted to the requirements of each case,” as Isaac Beck, an underground stationmaster in southern Ohio, put it. “There was no regular organization, no constitution, no officers, no laws or agreement or rule except the ‘Golden Rule,’ and every man did what seemed right in his own eyes.”
― Fergus M. Bordewich, Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad