Henry Cabot Lodge: “I shall do nothing, therefore, to favor or encourage its further extension.”

One was the conviction that the struggle must be fought out to the bitter end, and must bring either subjugation or complete independence.

It was a difficult thing for men who had been born colonists to rise to a sense of national opportunities, but Washington passed at a single step from being a Virginian to being an American, and in so doing he stood alone.

All that can be said is, that without the influence and the labors of Washington the convention of 1787, in all probability, would have failed of success.

Men are the creatures of the time in which they live, and take their color from the conditions which surround them, as the chameleon does from the grass or leaves in which it hides.