The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J Ellis explains the inner workings of "the room where it happened" and, specifically, how Washington, Hamilton, Jay, and Madison with the critical support of Goveurneur Morris and Robert Morris (unrelated) transformed the path of a politically sensitive nascent America.
To set the stage for the time period, there was no sense of "America"; democracy meant mob rule until about 1830; capitalism had never appeared until the mid nineteenth century. The colonies would not pay for the Continental Army, forcing the government into debt. Our Continental Army was fighting the British without shoes or coats. The America we know today was, structurally, nothing like the one we know today. After the American Revolution, there was such intense scrutiny on Britain and its government that, after the war, the colonies were largely uninterested in supporting a new version of Britain, aka, federal government. The initial document holding America together was the Articles of Confederation, lacking any central anchor for the 13 colonies. Washington, Hamilton, Jay, Madison, Morris G. and Morris R. saw through the war's debt that, unless the colonies came together under some type of central government, there would be no America.
In terms of personal reflections, it was interesting to read this book after finishing Imagined Communities which explored nationalist movements, indeed highlighting America's. To think of these men as nationalists is a funny framework; nationalism was a critical mechanism to making America work at all. In other countries, nationalism tended to be a dividing force between the colonizers and the colonized.
Additionally, in today's context, the book is extremely relevant: "the confederation model nearly lost the war. And if it persisted in its current form, [George Washington] believed that it would lose the peace," (p24). The idea of giving too much control to the states creates a decentralization of unity and power which, for a country of our size, is not sustainable.
There were two primary political takeaways from this book: 1) Having a plan first will always benefit the plan creator by default 2) Compromise will last.
Miscellaneous:
In persuading Robert Morris to take over the finances of the US, Ben Franklin wrote that his decisions and character would be villified: "[Critics] resembling those little dirty stinking insects that attack us only in the dark, disturbing our repose, molesting and wounding us while our sweat and blood is contributing to their subsistence," (p37). This comment stuck out to me as so intense. I feel like we always look back at history and its figures as wise or benevolent, but they're just human!
I'd never heard of Robert Morris, but truly his initial financial plan is the one we ended up adopting; Hamilton was his protege (p43).
The trend before the revolution of northern conspiracy and north vs. south sectionalism is persistent today and I can't help but wonder why (p89). Clearly there is a long standing perception that the north does not understand and thus should not control the south, but how can this trend continue for hundreds of years?
Robert Morris, a name we're never taught, is the one who changed the constitution to say "We the People of the United States" instead of listing each colony, one of most consequential edits in American history (p151).
Madison wrote the Bill of Rights, and, at the time, it was just a way to appease the south. He did not want to include it in the Constitution, and the south also felt like it was disingenuous. But today, it is clearly one of the most significant documents of that time (p206).
The documents rested on "two time-bound truths of the time: namely, that any legitimate government must rest on a popular foundation, and that popular majorities cannot be trusted responsibly, a paradox that has aged remarkably well," (p218).
Thanks, Jeremy, for finding this book. We read it before a trip to Philadelphia and it set the stage perfectly.
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