Impressions and Review
The Patriots by Winston Groom is part-biography and part-history. The biography part covers the lives of the three founding fathers who, beside Washington and maybe Franklin, created America: Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. "All three were driven by their own passions and particular genius, and when in the course of human events they saw a new fate opening for America they chanced their fortunes and futures on creating a more just and promising world," Groom writes.
The history part comes from Groom's very high level overview of the events and meetings that started the Revolution, ended the Revolution, and created The United States of America. None of the book seems to me "original" per se, but that doesn't matter because Groom does a wonderful job of taking what we know about the birth of our country and organizing it in a way that's simple to follow. This book probably won't be acclaimed in academic circles, but it's perfect for anyone wanting to better understand the events and people that made America.
Before my notes, I wanted to share this wonderful paragraph from the epilogue:
These men loved with an abiding perseverance the new country they had helped create, and each made deep personal sacrifices to ensure their dream of an ever free United States of America. Each also had strong ideas on how to government would function best, and feared that any other approach might lead to despotism and ruin. After all, the republican government that held together the barely united states was at that time an experiment no nation had tried before. And yet thanks to them these United States have held together for more than two centuries.
Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams made the country what it is today, and their dust still sparkles like stars in the minds of their fellow Americans.
Notes
Alexander Hamilton
"It would be a sin, in Reverend Knox's opinion, if this youth were to live a life of obscurity on a small Caribbean island."
"Hamilton had read John Locke, whose principle theory was that government was a contract between the leaders and the subjects—and that the contract could be canceled if it was abused."
Clearly, this was something Hamilton eventually believed as well.
You never know what you learn will one day come to help you immensely:
"With his joint fluency in English and French, both learned in his Caribbean boyhood, Hamilton quickly rose to be one of Washington's most respected aides, and at length he became his top aide bar none. It wasn't only his writing ability but his reasoning ability that allowed Hamilton to achieve what Washington described as 'thinking as one'."
The American victory at Saratoga wasn't only a moral booster for the Rebels, it also "convinced France that Americans could fight and win. The French Empire was now ready to ally with the Patriots in a war agains Britain, its own longtime enemy."
Philip Schuyler, Hamilton's Father-in-Law wrote him a letter after the wedding saying, "You cannot, my dear sir, be more happy at the connection you have made with my family than I am. Until a child has made a judicious choice, the heart of a parent is in continuous anxiety."
In 1781, despite the amicable and almost father-son sort of relationship Hamilton and Washington shared, there occurred a deep rupture.
"What had inspired this fury? Evidently, Hamilton had been smoldering for months, through all of Washington's refusals of his requests for a change of position. Somehow, Hamilton's frustration and pique had magnified Washington's faults in his mind until they had fashioned a twisted picture of the elder commander."
At the time, Hamilton was merely an aide-de-camp to Washington. But despite that prestigious position, Hamilton wanted a field command. No longer did he want to sit on the sidelines. His value to Washington, however, was too much to let him go. Washington rebuffed Hamilton's requests for a different position multiple times, until, one day Hamilton had enough, and resigned.
There are two lessons on this: 1) When you stifle ambitious employees, their frustration builds. I've seen this happen in real life multiple times, and I'm honestly not sure how to prevent it. Essentially, someone who is an excellent employee wants to do something different. But that person does their job so well, and is trusted, that leadership has a hard time moving that employee around, because they'll have to find someone new. Rarely does this work. What usually happens is the employee leaves the organization all together, or they become bitter and resentful in their current role.
The other lesson (2) is that when you feel angry about something, and refuse to confront or attempt to resolve that something, the anger builds and compounds. Eventually, whoever was involved in that situation turns into the worst person in the world, in your eyes, no matter if what they did isn't really all that bad.
"All through the long war, in between his military duties, Hamilton made a study of finance. In an attempt to understand the mutual relationship among money, governments, and the people of a country, he had read Adam Smith's increasingly popular book The Wealth of Nations, as well as many other, obscure works."
After the war, Hamilton practiced law. "The Hamilton family settled into a comfortable house on Wall Street not far from his legal offices, the courthouse, and city hall. Like Jefferson's, Hamilton's reading habits were insatiable. In the evenings he pored over the works of Sterne, Fielding, Swift, Walpole, Gibbons, Hobbes, Hume, and Voltaire."
Hamilton fought, not necessarily to appease the Tories, but to not be so harsh to them as others were after the war. He didn't think it was good for the country, or its finances, to hold the Tories in contempt. "The state legislature passed draconian laws denying them the vote and all manner of civil and property rights. Hamilton thought this was wrong and said so in long published essays under the name Phocion. This figure of classical myth had come to Athens from a foreign land and a questionable background but became a general who pleaded forgiveness of one's enemies when war ended."
I think that's admirable he did that, and smart he did used the pename that further illustrates his mentality. I want to get to a point in my knowledge of history to be able to use those names, or identify them when someone else uses them, or be able to use them in illustrations during work or something.
The Constitutional Convention was called to amend the Articles of Confederation. But most delegates knew that something bigger would be required to set the government up for success. "Right at the beginning, Virginia's delegation submitted an entirely new proposal: a document largely composed by delegate James Madison that became known as the Virginia Plan. It basically scrapped the Articles entirely and called for a national government that would be superior to state law and consist of coequal executive, legislative, and judicial branches."
The big question at the convention was how large and small states would get equal and fair representation.
Hamilton's Federalist Papers were the result of negative articles about the Constitution in newspapers. James Madison, Hamilton, and John Jay each wrote different numbers, all under the name Publius, the founder of the Roman republic.
As the nations's first treasury secretary, Hamilton's big job was to somehow deal with the debt colonies were settled with during the war. He came up with a plan that had three parts:
- First, "the federal government was to assume the debt owed by the states and retire it by borrowing the money to do so from Europeans at lower rates. Revenue to repay the loans would be raised by tariffs on foreign goods."
- Next, Hamilton wanted to found a national bank, modeled on the Bank of England
- Finally, Hamilton wanted to enact legislation that would help the country's new struggling industries.
"When President Washington was looking for cabinet officers, he wanted 'splendid talents,' 'extensive knowledge', and above all, 'incorruptible integrity—All these he found in Hamilton."
John Adams
Since a young age, John Adams craved recognition and value. Not necessarily riches, but esteem as a gentleman. It's the reason he went into the law. He was also born in a unique time period where, "the notion of making a name for oneself had been quite elusive to anyone not born of the aristocracy prior to the eighteenth century...But the advent of newspapers and the pamphlet offered a platform to those who could express themselves well; characters such as celebrated British author Samuel Johnson and Benjamin Franklin proved that 'fame might be achieved by men born into a lesser social rank.'"
The first time the colonies really began to ponder the relationship between themselves and the mother country was after Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which required any legal document or paper to require paying a tax. "The Stamp Act was seen as a naked attempt to wring revenue from British subjects in America while their counterparts in England had no such obligations...Until the Stamp Act, Adams reasoned, America's relationship with the mother country had been free, open, and tolerant."
The backlash to the Stamp Act allowed Samuel Adams to find an audience for his contempt for Britain, and the creation of the rebel group, The Sons of Liberty.
The second abomination that the colonies faced from Parliament was the [[Townshend Duties]]. Named after Chancellor of the Exchequer (Britain's equivalent of the Treasury Secretary or Fed Chair), Charles Townshend, they taxed all tea, paints, glass, paper, and lead imported from Britain.
Although the Sons of Liberty—Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, Benedict Arnold, John Hancock, and Patrick Henry ("give me liberty, or give me death)—disbanded after The Stamp Act, they once again regrouped to organize mass protests and rallies.
The protests caused Lord Hillsborough, the king's secretary for colonial American affairs, to try and isolate Boston from the rest of the colonies, for he felt that's where the heart of the insurrection was. In 1768, he sent a letter "threatening to dissolve the general assembly of any colony that demanded repeal of the king's taxes and duties. To back this up, four regiments of British redcoats were dispatched to garrison the city of Boston." Those actions only caused more protest and rallies.
The influx of soldiers into Boston also caused Parliament to pass the Quartering Act, which forced the people of Boston to shelter and feed the troops.
After the Boston Massacre trial, which John Adams defended the soldiers honorably, the redcoats were ferried to a nearby island and things settled down. But this didn't last long.
Britain decided to get rid of the tea rotting in London warehouses by selling it at half-price. Since the Townshend Duties, the colonies were boycotting tea, but there was no way they could resist half-priced tea, the British thought. To get their tax money, though, they would put a threepence-a-pound duty on it. When word of this spread around Boston and the ships with tea started to arrive, Samuel Adams called a meeting for December 16. The events of that night are familiar to everyone, and The Boston Tea Party commenced.
Despite Adams' love for law and order, he praised the Tea Party, saying, "This is the most Magnificent movement of all. There is a dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last effort of the Patriots that I admire...This Destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting that I cannot but Consider it as an Epocha in History."
Naturally, the British couldn't take this crap. So members of Parliament voted on four measures that came to be known as the Coercive Acts. To Americans, they would be known as the Intolerable Acts.
They stipulated that Boston Harbor would be blockaded by British warships to all commerce until the cost of the destroyed tea was repaid; that Boston's fishing fleet was banned from tapping into the bounteous Grand Banks fishing ground; that the Massachusetts government would be solely appointed by agents of the Crown, even down to juries (the colony's house of representatives was retained, but its functions were strictly limited); that mass meetings were forbidden; that any British officials, including soldiers, accused of capital offenses would be shipped to England for a fair trial, as would be an British subjects accused of being "disturbers of the King's peace"; that an additional five regiments of redcoats, commanded by the Massachusetts military governor...would be camped on Boston Common, as well as the soldiers that had been quartered in Castle William. Essentially, Bostonians were put under martial law and, with the closing of the port, exposed to starvation.
Other colonies, also outraged by these measures, lent a hand. They sent food and sugar, promising to send enough to "withstand a ten-year siege."
Samuel Adams read a motion he had prepared a General Congress of deputies meet at Philadelphia to consult together on the state of the colonies and to deliberate and determine upon wise and proper measures for the recovery of their just rights and liberties, civil and religious."
And this was how the First Continental Congress eventually met.
At that meeting, Congress voted to pass non-importation/exportation measures. These were essentially boycotts of all British imports and a refusal to export cotton and other crops to Britain. They also voted to encourage colonies to strengthen their various militias.
Between the First and Second Continental Congresses, battles at Lexington and Concord played out. There wasn't yet a full out war, but it was getting close. During the Second Continental Congress, there was debated between an all out break from Great Britain and independence, or a mere refusal of the Coercive acts, but with the goal to still stay with the Crown. The Olive Branch petition was created, which King George III promptly refused.
The question of an army was raised and Adams tossed Washington's name in the hat. With Adams's championing of the Virginia, Washington took the job, refusing pay, but asking for expenses to be reimbursed. On July 3, 1775, Washington left Philadelphia to commend the Patriot militia surrounding Boston.
After the ensuing battles, "Adams was so convinced that complete independence from Great Britain was going to be the end result of the present conflict that he wanted to advertise the fact with a 'declaration."
"A committee of five, led by John Adams, was selected to write the document. The other members were Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston...Jefferson produced the document in seventeen days." On July 4th, 1776, Congress voted in favor of the Declaration. "Americans by their own proclamation, were officially free of British rule. John wrote to Abigail that the date would be commemorated "as the Day of Deliverance," and that it would be "solemnized in Pomp and Parade with...Bonfires and Illuminations from one end of the Continent to the other from this time forward forever more."
[A cool book like Erik Larson style would be to go back and forth between Parliament and the Colonies as they started to rebel. The scenes would be both sides of the Atlantic, and it would show really clearly how much it was a cycle.]
In late 1777, John Adams was appointed America's emissary to France.
"Learning the ropes" is a saying that refers to knowing how to operate a ship's rigging.
John Adams understood that, "Nothing of consequence in those times could be done without the direct approval of the king, as he was an absolute monarch. But all foreign diplomats to the court understood that it was essential to gain the ears of the king's advisers in order to sway his opinion."
As it is today. If you want to persuade someone with power to make a decision, talk to their aides and the people around them. Convince them why the leader ought to make the decision you're fighting for.
The [[Treaty of Paris]] was signed on September 3, 1783.
"The question of pay for the new government's officeholders had not been settled. Both George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were against it on the theory that service to one's country ought to be voluntary and free. Adams opposed their position both on grounds that only the rich would then be able to hold office, which would lead to despotism, and also that he, personally, needed the money if he were to devote years of his life to being vice president."
"There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties...each in opposition to one another," Adams wrote. "This in my apprehension is the greatest political evil of our Constitution." Factions, he said, "could tie the hands and destroy the influence of every honest man." #quotes #politics
[[The Rights of Man]] by [[Thomas Paine]]
"Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots." #quotes #politics John Adams
While in the middle of his eight years as vice president, he complained to Abigail: "My country in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office" ever conceived by man, and that he "can do neither good nor evil."
Every time I read about [[The Alien and Sedition Acts]], I cannot believe it passed. It's absolutely insane, especially at such an early stage of the republic. I guess that's what happens when one party dominates the government. Adams didn't engineer the laws, but he did sign them into law. "Justified as a security measure, they allowed, among other things, the president to deport foreigners he found 'dangerous' although no precise definition of that term was specified."
On July 4, 1826, Jefferson and Adams both died. Jefferson, however, expired just before Adams. But Adams didn't know that. So, as he lay dying, he exclaimed, "Thomas Jefferson survives!"
Thomas Jefferson
I love how the opening chapter to Thomas Jefferson starts out: "Thomas Jefferson was a true Renaissance man. He was a student of philosophy and law, a scientist, inventor, architect, musician, and lover of fine things—a man of vision."
(I hope those words can be used to describe me one day, minus the "lover of fine things.")
Jefferson "gravitated to the cluster of ideas known as the Enlightenment. This great intellectual revolution had begun as a pattern of novel thoughts and notions dating to the previous century and to Sir Isaac Newton. The Enlightenment thinkers sought to throw off the superstitions, delusions, misconceptions, and blind faith to popes and kinds that had ruled Western thought since the Middle Ages and replace them with a world governed by science, logic, and humanity."
Thomas Jefferson's first adventure into the public realm of thoughts came with his A Sumary View of the Rights of British America. It stemmed from the committee of correspondence, an offshoot of the Virginia House of Burgesses to "communicate by letters and other means with its counterparts in the other colonies" while the Stamp Act, Townshend Duties, and Coercive Acts took place. Virginians, and other colonists, thought that if Britain could bully one colony, they could bully them all. John Adams called Jefferson's Summary "a very handsome public paper."
The colonists should remain loyal to the king, Jefferson asserted. But unlike the relationship between England and Scotland, Parliament had denied representatives from the American colonies to join them, while at the same time taxing, bullying, and subjugating them, most recently with the Intolerable Acts. "The true ground on which we declare these acts void," Jefferson wrote, "is that the British Parliament has no right to exercise its authority over us." But the heart of the paper was this gem: "The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time, the hand of force may destroy [the colonies], but cannot disjoin them."
At a church in the Richmond country side, a convention of delegates from Virginia met in response to the Continental Congress appeal for each colony to raise troops. It was there [[Patrick Henry]] gave his famous speech, "give me liberty, or give me death." Jefferson said the speech was "sublime beyond imagination."
Jefferson had roughly three weeks to work on the Declaration of Independence. "He had taken rooms in a handsome building owned and constructed by a Philadelphia bricklayer. Across the hall from his bedroom was a small drawing room where he kept his writing desk, which he had designed himself. There, Jefferson set about composing the famous words. From his intensive study of Enlightenment thinking and his own legal and historical mind, he worked to create a statement of what liberty really meant."
That's a wonderful display of First Principles Thinking.
On September 6, 1782, Patty Jefferson, Thomas' wife, died. "Right before Patty died, she was said to have raised her hand and put it in Jefferson's, telling him that 'she could not die happy if she thought her three children would ever have a stepmother brought in over them.' While she was growing up, Patty had two stepmothers after her mother died, and apparently the experiences were not good. 'Mr. Jefferson promised her that he would never marry again. And he never did,' according to the account given by one of the slaves present."
Jefferson was inconsolable. He took to his room for three weeks and paced incessantly night and day between "violent bursts of grief." After that he spent long hours on horseback in the woods, alternately galloping for stretches then stopping to cry. His love, his best friend of a decade, was gone, and there was nothing to be done about it. #death
After the Constitutional Convention, Washington sent Jefferson a draft of the Constitution. "He found much to like but much to dislike. James Madison had suggested that some sort of Bill of Rights should be included, spelling out in particular what rights the Constitution guaranteed. Jefferson heartily agreed. He wanted a declaration guaranteeing freedom of religion and the press, trial by jury, habeas corpus, and protection against illegal search and seizure."
Later, Jefferson wrote, "What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms."
One evening, Jefferson and a swarm of guests over for dinner, including Alexander Hamilton. "Hamilton asked about a collection of portraits that hung on Jefferson's dining room walls, inquiring as to who the men portrayed were. Sir Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke, Jefferson said. 'I told him they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever produced."
Jefferson on Washington: "He never acted until every circumstance under consideration was weighed. Hearing suggestions, he always did what was best."
In August 1796, Jefferson got a letter from Tennessee senator William Cocke, informing him that the people of that state wish Jefferson to be the next president. Jefferson, after considerable time, replied: "I have not the arrogance to refuse the honorable office you mention to me; but I can say with truth that I would rather be thought worthy of it than to be appointed to it. For well I know that no man will bring out of that office the reputation that carried him into it."
After Adams took the oath of office, George Washington whispered to him, "Ay, I am fairly out and you fairly in! see which one of us is happiest."
Buchanan said something similar to Lincoln when they transferred powers.