This Day in History: July 12

It would be the extreme of vanity in us not to be sensible, that we began this revolution with very vague and confined notions of the practical business of government. To the greater part of us it was a novelty: Of those, who under the former constitution had had opportunities of acquiring experience, a large proportion adhered to the opposite side, and the remainder can only be supposed to have possessed ideas adapted to the narrow coloneal sphere, in which they had been accustomed to move, not of that enlarged kind suited to the government of an INDEPENDENT NATION. [More]