Henry Cabot Lodge: “They are especially eager to go forward with a man who never sounds a retreat.”

No man of that time, with the exception of Hamilton, ever grasped and realized as he did the imperial future which stretched before the United States.

He had that entire simplicity of manners and modes of life which is the crowning result of the highest culture and the finest nature.

Let us imitate this prudence; and, before we float farther on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may, at least, be able to conjecture where we now are.

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.