5 Quotes by Pauline Maier

Hamilton, [Melancton Smith] said, spoke ‘frequently, very long, and very vehemently,’ and ‘like publius,’ had ‘much to say’ that was ‘not very applicable to the subject’ at hand.

Mason was responsible for giving Congress the power to “declare” – not “make” – war, which he saw as a way of “facilitating peace,” and supplied the phrase about giving the country’s enemies “aid and comfort” in the constitutional definition of treason.

According to the legal historian Akhil Reed Amar, before the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1868, “the Supreme Court never – not once – referred to the 1792 decalogue as ‘the’ or ‘a’ bill of rights.

Adams began his reply with a devastating comment on the preamble to the Constitution: “I confess,” he said, “as I enter the Building I stumble at the Threshold. I meet with a National Government, instead of a federal Union of Sovereign States.

Under the state constitutions, “every thing which is not reserved is given,” but under the federal Constitution “every thing which is not given, is reserved.