For all their artistic and philosophical brilliance, the Greeks were failures at politics; Hamilton, in the Federalist, expressed horror and disgust
at the distractions with which they were agitated.
The Romans captured the American imagination because they had done what the Americans themselves hoped to do — sustain an extensive republic over a course of centuries. So the society of Revolutionary War officers called themselves Cincinnati; president,
congress,
and senate
were all Roman terms. But the Roman example was also cautionary, for when they lost their virture, they slid into empire. When Franklin said, in response to a question from Eliza Powel, that the constitutional convention had produced a republic, if you can keep it,
he and she would have remembered that the Romans had failed to keep theirs.
Place | City | |
---|---|---|
Nathan Hale Homestead | Coventry | Built in 1776 and restored. |
Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park | Groton | The site of the Battle of Groton Heights (1781). |
Yale University Art Gallery | New Haven | Home to one of the finest collections of early American art anywhere, it was founded in 1832 when John Trumbull gave more than one hundred of his portraits and historical paintings to Yale. Renovation and expansion completed in 2012. |
Nathan Hale Schoolhouse | New London | The schoolhouse where Nathan Hale taught. |
Shaw Mansion | New London | Built by Nathaniel Shaw; used by both Washington and Lafayette during the war. |
General William Hart House | Old Saybrook | Built in 1767 and restored to its original condition, it is Old Saybrook Historical Society’s museum and headquarters. |
Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum | Wethersfield | Three separate homes comprising a single museum, including the homes of Silas Deane, a member of the Continental Congress, and Joseph Webb; Washington and Rochambeau met there to lay out strategy. |
Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington (1996)