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to hold the Union of the States as the basis of their peace and happiness;
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“to hold the Union of the States as the basis of their peace and happiness;”

James Madison

Source
First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1809
Date
1809
Meaning

Meaning of “to hold the Union of the States as…”

Madison presents preservation of the federal union as one of the governing principles he intends to follow in office.

Source context

Where does it come from?

First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1809, represented by Founders Online / National Archives. This clause occurs in Madison’s long statement of presidential principles and remains historical political rhetoric rather than a prediction or current constitutional instruction.

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PeaceResponsibilityShortThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionDemocracyPoliticsUnity
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“Society in equality is its normal state.”

John Stuart Mill · The Subjection of Women · 1869
Meaning & context

Mill contrasts relations organized around command and obedience with equal association, presenting equality as the normal direction of an improving society.

Source details

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter II, printed page 79, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill contrasts command-and-obedience relations with equal association and states that society in equality is the normal state toward which improving social relations should move.

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Meaning & context

People with different roles can still share responsibility for preserving the larger community on which all of their particular roles depend.

Source details

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Aristotle · Politics: A Treatise on Government · 4th century BCE
Meaning & context

Good law is idealized as judgment governed by reason rather than by the changing appetites or personal passions of an individual ruler.

Source details

Politics: A Treatise on Government, Book III, Chapter XVI, William Ellis translation; represented through the 1912 Dent witness / Project Gutenberg #6762. In comparing rule by a person with rule by law, Aristotle says that passion can affect even the best rulers and concludes that law is reason without desire.

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Let us have faith that right makes might.
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“Let us have faith that right makes might.”

Abraham Lincoln · Cooper Union Address · 1860
Meaning & context

Lincoln reverses the idea that power establishes right, arguing that moral judgment should guide sustained political action rather than treating strength or intimidation as proof of justice.

Source details

Cooper Union Address, February 27, 1860, closing passage. Lincoln is defending Republican opposition to the extension of slavery into federal territories; the line retains that antislavery political context.

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In politics we cannot keep our hands clean.
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“In politics we cannot keep our hands clean.”

Henry Adams · Democracy: An American Novel · 1880
Voice: Fictional character · Senator Silas Ratcliffe
Meaning & context

Ratcliffe bluntly argues that political action can involve morally compromising choices, exposing the novel’s conflict between expediency and personal integrity.

Source details

Democracy: An American Novel, represented by Project Gutenberg #2815. Senator Silas Ratcliffe says this to Madeleine Lee while defending questionable acts in his political career. It is fictional character dialogue in Adams’s political novel, not Adams speaking autobiographically or prescribing political conduct.

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The object of this publication is to tell the facts,
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“The object of this publication is to tell the facts,”

Ida B. Wells · The Red Record · 1895
Meaning & context

Wells states the documentary purpose of her anti-lynching work plainly: public action requires facts about violence that institutions and public narratives had obscured.

Source details

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