Bryan Skelton

“Pitt and Burke were two of the most eloquent and respected members of Parliament, and taken together, by early 1775, they were warning the British ministry that it was headed toward a war that was unwise, unnecessary, and probably unwinnable.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence

“When we understand people;
when we understand situations;
when we understand what matters;
when we understand the why’s, the what’s and the how’s;
when we understand the trigger of actions, we least inflict pain on ourselves and unto others.”
― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

“Unquestionably, New York enjoyed enormous strategic significance. As Adams had already apprised Washington, it was “the nexus of the Northern and Southern colonies … the key to the whole Continent, as it is a Passage to Canada, to the Great Lakes, and to all the Indian Nations.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence

“Namely, the very values that the American patriots claimed to be fighting for were incompatible with the disciplined culture required in a professional army. Republics were committed to a core principle of consent, while armies were the institutional embodiments of unthinking obedience and routinized coercion. The very idea of a “standing army” struck most members of the Continental Congress and the state legislatures as a highly dangerous threat to republican principles.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence