American Quotations by William J. Federer 2024

Timothy Dwight (May 14, 1752-January 11, 1817) was an American educator and author. He was the president of Yale, 1795-1817. He was the grandson of Princeton president Jonathan Edwards, who started the Great Awakening Revival, which helped unite the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War. Timothy Dwight could read at age 4 and entered Yale at 13. He was a chaplain in the Continental Army until his father died, when, as the eldest of 13, he worked the family farm to pay off debts. He served in Massachusetts' first State Legislature. Timothy Dwight was Yale's 4th president. In 22 years...

Gouverneur Morris (January 31, 1752-November 6, 1816) was an attorney, politician, soldier and diplomat. He penned the final draft of the Constitution of the United States, being the head of the Committee on Style, and was the originator of the phrase "We the people of the United States." He was 35 years old when he served as one of the members of the Continental Congress, and he spoke 173 times during the Constitutional debates (more than any other delegate). He was the first U.S. Minister to France, a U.S. Senator, and helped to write the New York Constitution. A graduate...

Jacob Broom (October 17, 1752-April 25, 1810) was an American banker, entrepreneur, farmer, merchant and surveyor. He was a signer of the Constitution of the United States of America. Jacob Broom was described in the Official Papers of Delaware, written in 1909, as follows: <A fair example of the product of a sturdy, energetic, sagacious ancestry and evangelical Swedish orthodoxy, co-operating amid the trying environments of a struggling colony in an undeveloped land.... He lived in one of the potential crises of history, in which and for which the sublime visions and words of prophets and apostles had developed and...

John Brooks (May 31, 1752-March 1, 1825) was a physician who became the Governor of Massachusetts. He stated: <I look back upon my humble life with humility. I am sensible of many imperfections that cling to me. I know that the present is neither the season nor the place to begin the preparation for death. Our whole life is given us for this great object, and the work of preparation should be early commenced, and be never relaxed till the end of our days. To God I can appeal that it has been my humble endeavor to serve Him with...

James Madison (March 16, 1751-June 28, 1836) was the 4th President of the United States, 1809-17, and Commander in Chief during the War of 1812, having to flee the White House, with his wife Dolley, before it was captured and burned by the British. He was Rector of the University of Virginia, 1826-36; Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson, 1801-09, where he negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, 1803; U.S. Representative, 1789-1801; married Dorothy "Dolley" Payne Todd, 1794; original author and promoter of the Bill of Rights, 1789; penned many of The Federalist Papers, 1788, which were instrumental in convincing the States to...