History of the United States of America during the Administrations of James Madison by Henry Adams

• "In truth, the manufactories of New England were created by the embargo, which obliged the whole nation to consume their products or to go without." - 16
• "Macon's Bill No. 2 [April 7, 1810] marked the last stage toward the admitted failure of commercial restrictions as a substitute for war." - 137
• "'This scene on the Continent,' he continued to Jefferson, 'and the effect of English monopoly on the value of our produce are breaking the charm attached to what is called free-trade, foolishly by some and wickedly by others.' He [Madison] reverted to his life-long theory of commercial regulations." - 205
• "England and the United States, like two vultures, hovered over the expiring empire, snatching at the morsels they most coveted, while the unfortunate Spaniards, to whom the rich prey belonged, flung themselves, without leadership or resources, on the ranks of Napoleon's armies. England pursued her game over the whole of Spanish America, if not by government authority, more effectively by private intrigue; while the United States for the moment confined their activity to a single object [West Florida], not wholly without excuse." - 213
• "No acid ever worked more mechanically on a vegetable fibre than the white man acted on the Indian. As the line of American settlements approached, the nearest Indian tribes withered away." - 343
• "Men would do little but talk politics, and very few professed themselves satisfied with the condition into which their affairs had been brought. The press cried for war or for peace, according to its fancy; but although each of the old parties could readily prove the other's course to be absurd, unpatriotic, and ruinous, the war men, who were in truth a new party, powerless to restore order by legitimate methods, shut their ears to the outcry, and waited until actual war should enforce a discipline never to be imposed in peace." - 439
• "In every respect as the Federalists looked back on the past twelve years their prophecies had come true. The Republican party, they argued, had proved itself incompetent, and had admitted the failure of its principles; it had been forced to abandon them in practice, to replace the government where the Federalists had put it, and to adopt all the Federalists' methods; and even then the party failed...The government was ruined in credit and character; bankrupt, broken, and powerless, it continued to exist merely because of habit...Society held itself together merely because it knew not what else to do." - 666
• "All great nations had fought, and at one time or another every great nation in Europe had been victorious over every other; but no people, in the course of a thousand years of rivalry on the ocean, had invented or had known how to sail a Yankee schooner." - 841
• John Quincy Adams "had been allowed to seem to kindle the greatest war of modern times, and had been invited to make use of Russia against England; but the Czar's reasons for granting such favor were mysterious even to Adams, for while Napoleon occasionally avowed motives, Alexander never did. Russian diplomacy moved wholly in the dark." - 857
• "I am not anxious to accelerate the approach of the period when the great mass of American labor shall not find employment in the field; when the young men of the country shall be obliged to shut their eyes upon external Nature, ---upon the heavens and the earth, -- and immerse themselves in close and unwholesome workshops" - Daniel Webster, 879
• "With the repeal of the embargo [on April 14, 1814] ended the early period of United States history, when diplomatists played a part at Washington equal in importance to that of the Legislature or the Executive. The statecraft of Jefferson and Madison was never renewed. Thenceforward the government ceased to balance between great foreign Powers, and depended on its own resources." - 892
• "The Treasure was bankrupt. The formal stoppage of payments in interest on the debt was announced, November 9 [, 1814], by an official letter from the secretary [Dallas], notifying holders of government securities in Boston that the Treasury could not meet its obligations, and that 'the government was unable to avert or to control this course of events.' After that date the Treasury made no further pretense of solvency." - 1079
• "Of all the machinery created by the Constitution, the House alone directly reflected and represented the people; and if the people disliked it, they disliked themselves." - 1272
• "The continent lay before them, like an uncovered ore-bed. They could see, and they could even calculated with reasonable accuracy, the wealth it could be made to yield. With almost the certainty of a mathematical formula, knowing the rate of increase of population and of wealth, they could read in advance their economical history for at least a hundred years." - 1300
• "A people which had in 1787 been indifferent or hostile to roads, banks, funded debt, and nationality, had become in 1815 habituated to ideas and machinery of the sort on a great scale." - 1314
• "Should history ever become a true science, it must expect to establish its laws, not from the complicated story of rival European nationalities, but from the economical evolution of a great democracy." - 1333
• "In a democratic ocean science could see something ultimate. Man could go no further. The atom might move, but the general equilibrium could not change." - 1335

History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson by Henry Adams

• "Until they [Americans] were satisfied that knowledge was money, they would not insist upon high education; until they saw with their own eyes stones turned into gold, vapor into cattle and corn, they would not learn the meaning of science." - 53
• "The political partnership between the New York Republicans and the Virginians was from the first that of a business firm." - 80
• "Jefferson aspired beyond the ambition of a nationality, and embraced in his view the whole future of man...Hoping for a time when the world's ruling interests should cease to be local and should become universal; when questions of boundary and nationality should  become insignificant...he set himself to the task of governing, with the golden age in view." - 101
• "in the foreigner's range of observation, love of money was the most conspicuous and most common trait of American character." - 112
• "the new President found in the Constitutional power 'to regulate commerce with foreign nations' the machinery for doing away with navies, armies, and wars." - 144
• "as he privately declared and as was commonly believed, the actual office-holders were monarchists at heart, and could not be trusted to carry the new Republican principles into practice, the public welfare required great changes. For the first time in national experience, the use of patronage needed some definite regulation." - 152
• "The essence of Virginia republicanism lay in a single maxim: The government shall not be the final judge of its own powers." - 174
• "The whole of Jefferson's theory of internal politics...rested in the Act making an annual appropriation of $7,300,000 for paying interest and capital of the public debt; and in the Act for repealing the internal taxes." - 185
• April 30, 1802: "Perhaps the most important legislation of the year...authorized the people of Ohio to form a Constitution and enter the Union...Gallatin inserted into the law a contract, which bound the State and nation to set aside the proceeds of a certain portion of the public lands for the use of schools and for the construction of roads between the new State and the seaboard. This principle, by which education and internal improvements were taken under the protection of Congress, was a violation of the States-rights theories, against which, in after years, the strict constructionists protested" - 205
• "That the Spaniards should dread and hate the Americans was natural...In their eyes, United States citizens proclaimed ideas of free-trade and self-government with no other object than to create confusion, in order that they might profit by it." - 231
• "Peace is our passion, and wrongs might drive us from it. We prefer trying every other just principle, right and safety, before we would recur to war." - Jefferson, 300
• "Bonaparte had been taught by Talleyrand that America and England, whatever might be there mutual jealousies, hatred, or wars, were socially and economically one and indivisible." - 337
• "The Louisianians, it was said, had shed tears when they saw the American flag hoisted in place of the French; they were not prepared for self-government." - 385
• "The doctrines of 'strict construction' could not be considered as the doctrines of the government after they had been abandoned in this leading case [Louisiana] by a government controlled by strict constructionists." - 386
• "Jefferson wanted no treaties which could prevent him from using commercial weapons against nations that violated American neutrality; and therefore he reserved to Congress the right to direct commerce in whatever paths the Government might prefer." - 542
• "With nations, as with individuals, our interests, soundly calculated, will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties" - Jefferson, 603
• "It is beyond question that there exists in this country an infinite number of adventurers, without property, full of ambition, and ready to unite at once under the standard of a revolution which promises to better their lot." - 767
• "France [under Napoleon] had made all Europe violent and brutal; but England could boast that at the sound of British cannon the chaos had become order, that the ocean had been divided from the land, and as far as the ocean went, that her fleets made law. Two Powers only remained to be considered by Great Britain, -- Russia and the United States. Napoleon showed an evident intention to take charge of the one; England thought herself well able to give law to the other." - 876
• "In charging America with having lost her national character, Napoleon said no more than the truth. As a force in the affairs of Europe, the United States had become an appendage to England." - 1020
• "The Federalists of 1801 were the national party of America; The Federalists of 1808 were a British faction in secret league with George Canning." - 1094
• "the principle was thus settled that the Constitution, under the power to regulate commerce, conferred upon Congress the power to suspend foreign commerce forever; to suspend or otherwise regulate domestic inter-state commerce; to subject all industry to governmental control, if such interference in the opinion of Congress was necessary or proper for carrying out its purpose; and finally, to vest in the President discretionary power to execute or to suspend the system, in whole or in part." - 1111
• "He had undertaken to create a government which should interfere in no way with private action, and he had created one which interfered directly in the concerns of every private citizen in the land. He had come into power as the champion of States-rights, and had driven States to the verge of armed resistance. He had begun by claiming credit for stern economy, and ended by exceeding the expenditure of his predecessors. He had invented a policy of peace, and his invention resulted in the necessity of fighting at once the two greatest Powers in the world." - 1239