Ned M Campbell

“The political liberty for which they fought had led them to an extreme expectation of personal liberty to the point of selfishness. Patriotism and sense of duty were still new ideas for the provincial armies.63”
― Derek W. Beck, The War Before Independence: 1775-1776

“Power naturally grows … because human passions are insatiable. But that power alone can grow which already is too great; that which is unchecked; that which has no equal power to control it. —JOHN ADAMS”
― Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made it

“I am not going to lose Vietnam," he said. "I am not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went."2 For many Americans then and later the struggle in Vietnam was simply "Johnson's War."3”
― James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

“the man was incapable of accepting blame, or assuming responsibility, for the mistakes that had been made. Already he was beginning to cover his tracks, to write his own posterity papers. He had started to formulate a defense for himself, a counter-narrative that, in many ways, would appear to be delusional. He would argue that he had known all along that the Chinese were going to intervene en masse. He had seen it coming for many weeks.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle