Joseph J. Ellis Quotes
Beyond independence, Americans had no consensus on what being an American meant.
Joseph J. Ellis, Historian, Revolutionary Summer. 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Despite the fact that she had been born in Russia and had been deported from the United States, she was one of the first left wing radicals to realize that America was more liberal than Russia after the revolution.
At the time sectionalism was extensive in America. Most Iowa and Northern families still remembered a relative who had been “killed by the rebels” in the Civil War. The South still resented the rest of the country. The East and Midwest had much better educated than the rest of the country. Most important, there was very little contact between Americans of different sections. Until the great Eisenhower initiative of a National Highway System sectionalism was common. Presidents were constantly trying to develop a national American spirit.
This was written by a French Journalist who had been assigned to America for 7 years when he wrote this in 1939. WWII was just breaking out in Europe. America is one of the few countries where naturalized citizenship is based on nothing other than desire and commitment.
Joseph John Ellis is an American historian whose work focuses on the lives and times of the founders of the United States of America. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson won a National Book Award and Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for History. Both these books were bestsellers.
