1
One-year enlistment had proven problematic since the troops were scheduled to rotate out of the army just when they had begun to internalize the discipline of military service and became reliable soldiers.Joseph J. Ellis
2
If you knew how the journey was going to end, you could afford to be patient along the path.Joseph J. Ellis
3
They were trying to orchestrate a revolution, which almost by definition generated a sense of collective trauma that defied any semblance of coherence and control. If we wish to rediscover the psychological context of the major players in Philadelphia, we need to abandon our hindsight omniscience and capture their mentality as they negotiated the unknown.Joseph J. Ellis
4
If he (John Adams) could not control events, he could at least record them for posterity — perhaps the ultimate form of control.Joseph J. Ellis
5
His (Washington's) apparent paralysis was the result of balancing two imperatives: his reputation against the survival of the Continental Army.Joseph J. Ellis
6
Ordinary British soldiers harbored several strange preconceptions of their own. Some were surprised that the colonists wore clothes, thinking they would dress like Indians. Other had expected to encounter roving bands of wild animals in the manner of African jungles. And when a loyalist came aboard one ship to help it into port, the British crew and troops were dumbfounded. "All the People had been of the Opinion, " they exclaimed, "that the inhabitants of America were black.Joseph J. Ellis
7
Clinton had displayed his lifelong tendency to make enemies of all his superiors, who never seemed to appreciate his advice as much as he thought it deserved.Joseph J. Ellis
8
It was no accident that the beau ideal of his (John Adams') political philosophy was balance, since he projected onto the world the conflicting passions he felt inside himself and regarded government as the balancing mechanism that prevented those factions and furies from spending out of control.Joseph J. Ellis
9
The strategic center of the rebellion was not a place — not New York, Philadelphia, not the Hudson corridor — but the Continental Army itself.Joseph J. Ellis
10
Washington not only fit the bill physically, he was also almost perfect psychologically, so comfortable with his superiority that he felt no need to explain himself. (As a young man during the French and Indian war he had been more outspoken, but he learned from experience to allow his sheer presence to speak for itself.) While less confident men blathered on, he remained silent, thereby making himself a vessel into which admirers for their fondest convictions, becoming a kind of receptacle for diverse aspirations that magically came together in one man.Joseph J. Ellis