James

“James Wilkinson, an ex–Revolutionary War officer, and tried to convince them that the future of Americans in the West belonged to Spain. Spain offered trading licenses to Kentucky settlers, negotiated with leaders in Tennessee, and sought to attract Americans to settle in Spanish territory. Spain even enlisted Wilkinson as a paid agent of its government. Wilkinson secretly swore allegiance to the Spanish crown and for fifteen years received $2,000 a year as Agent 13 of the Spanish government, an arrangement not authenticated until the twentieth century.”
― Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815

“When Elbridge Gerry proposed in the Convention that no standing army exceed three thousand men, Washington is supposed to have made a countermotion that “no foreign enemy should invade the United States at any time, with more than three thousand troops.”
― Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815

“Booker T. also made a point of giving lengthy interviews to journalists because newspaper articles were solid forums for his ideas. “Do you think the time might ever come, that any circumstance might ever arise, by which a black man might become president of the United States?” the Memphis Commercial Appeal asked him point-blank in a conversation about the future of the black man in America. “I should hope so,” was Booker T.’s reply.”
― Deborah Davis, Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation

“173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one,” wrote Jefferson in 1785 in his Notes on the State of Virginia. “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.”31”
― Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815