Two of Diamonds

Benjamin Franklin,
Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania
1749

History will also afford frequent, opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion, from its usefulness to the public; the advantage of a religious character among private persons; the mischiefs of superstition, and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern.

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Ace of Clubs

James Madison,
Federalist Number 62
1788

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood: if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes, that no man who knows what the law is to-day.

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

King of Clubs

Benjamin Franklin,
On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor
November 29, 1766

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it... I observed ... that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Queen of Clubs

Thomas Jefferson,
letter to Albert Gallatin
June 16, 1817

Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but is restrained to those specifically enumerated, and . . . it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers.

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Jack of Clubs

Thomas Jefferson,
letter to William Johnson
June 12, 1823

Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding, and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties, which may make anything mean everything or nothing, at pleasure.

... The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers.

* Jefferson warns against allowing the general government to invent new powers for itself beyond the letter of the constitution, using purposeful confusion to do so.

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Ten of Clubs

Thomas Jefferson,
Kentucky Resolutions excerpt of proposed wording of section 8
1798

It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power: that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go...

* Jefferson warns of the price of our rulers taking care of the people - that price being our very freedom

* Jefferson warns of undue confidence placed in any government or in our elected politicians, particularly when those politicians promise to protect us if we would only surrender more power time and time again

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Nine of Clubs

Thomas Jefferson,
letter to Doctor Joseph Priestley
June 19, 1802

I was in Europe when the Constitution was planned, & established, & never saw it until after it was established. On receiving it I wrote strongly to Mr. Madison, urging the want of provision for the freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, habeas corpus, the substitution of militia for a standing army, and an express reservation to the States of all rights not specifically granted to the Union.

observations:

* Jefferson favored a freedom of religion, not a freedom from religion

* Jefferson was a strong advocate of states' rights, favoring a limited central government restricted to a few specified powers

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Eight of Clubs

Thomas Jefferson,
Kentucky Resolutions: exerpt of proposed wording of section 1
1798

That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force...

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Seven of Clubs

Thomas Jefferson,
Kentucky Resolutions: exerpt of proposed wording of section 7
1798

The construction applied by the General Government (as is evidenced by sundry of their proceedings) to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power 'to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,' and 'to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution, the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof,' goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to their powers by the Constitution: that words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers, ought not to be so construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument...

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Six of Clubs

Thomas Jefferson,
letter to Albert Gallatin
June 16, 1817

Our tenet ever was... that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money.

There is nothing in the United States constitution granting the federal government the power to involve itself in the following aspects of American society:

* education
* retirement
* health care
* benevolence


Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Five of Clubs

Thomas Jefferson,
opinion on the constitutionality of a National Bank
February 15, 1791

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.' [xii* amendment.] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States, by the Constitution."

*(Twelve articles were originally submitted for a Bill of Rights, but only the last ten were finally ratified, and came into effect as constitutional amendements on December 15, 1791)

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Four of Clubs

Thomas Jefferson,
Letter to Gideon Granger
August 13, 1800

The true theory of our constitution is surely the wisest & best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves, & united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, & a very unexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Three of Clubs

Thomas Jefferson,
Letter to Gideon Granger
August 13, 1800

You have seen the practises by which the public servants have been able to cover their conduct, or, where that could not be done, delusions by which they have varnished it for the eye of their constituents. What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building & office hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the general government.

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.

Two of Clubs

Thomas Jefferson,
Letter to Gideon Granger
August 13, 1800

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, & from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer & overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens, and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder & waste. And I do verily believe, that if the principle were to prevail, of a common law being in force in the U S, (which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government,) it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.

Find more in the new card game Quint: Early America Edition. Quint is a 5-suit deck of playing cards. The "Early America Edition" features numerous quotations, with original source references, from America's founders and more.

Reading American history is one thing. Being able to recall facts and events in the middle of a discussion is quite another. This "Early America Edition" Quint game is designed to strengthen memory while also proving a fun reminder of America's invaluable patriotic history. For others, it's an education.