Republics are fragile. That is For the People, For the Country?s especially timely reminder. Moving beyond the typical recounting of the tumultuous partisan fights in the 1790s between the Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians, Ragosta highlights, with sharp insight, the little-noted but pivotal role that Patrick Henry played in holding together the American Union in 1799, when it seemed that partisan bickering would put an end to the American experiment. This is a story that Americans today should know about and take to heart.
Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
John Ragosta has given us an important and compelling book about a critical man and a critical question: Patrick Henry and the nature of loyalty within a constitutional republic. If American democracy is to long endure, dissent and disagreement must be resolved with the ballot and the law?not with violence and passion. So Henry came to believe, and so must we. Ragosta?s revealing account is a powerful contribution to the literature of the early republic and to the debates of our own time.
Jon Meacham, Rogers Chair in the American Presidency, Vanderbilt University, author of The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
A compelling recasting of Henry as an institutional patriot. Ragosta makes a persuasive case for his importance as a counterexample to the oft-cited understanding of the legacy of the Revolution
Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College Law School, author of Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution
Mr. Ragosta's persuasive and insightful book reminds us that opposition without loyalty to the government becomes lawlessness and riot, unworthy of those who created our republic.
Wall Street Journal
