The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J. Ellis. 

2/5 rating. 

Book #105 of 2019. Read September 2, 2019. 

This book goes into the impacts the quartet of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison had on the making of the Constitution and more-importantly, the sense of a united America immediately following the Revolution. While there was plenty of info about the process and these four men’s lives, it just wasn’t a very interesting book.

Quotes:

“But I know also, that laws and institutiona must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered… institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him as a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regime of their barbarous ancestors.” – Thomas Jefferson

“It is richly ironic that one of the few original intentions [the Founding Fathers] all shared was opposition to any judicial doctrine of ‘original intent.’ To be sure, they all wished to be remembered, but they did not want to be embalmed.”

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