Hamilton agreed to influence the location of the national capital to be on the Potomac River if Madison agreed to Hamilton's national finance program. This compromise impacted the financial policies being developed that would withstand the test of time. Ellis not only writes of Madison and Hamilton's dispute, but also uses Madison and Benjamin Franklin's disagreement to further reinforce his goal. Madison disagreed with Franklin's anti-slavery principle and influenced many to become pro-slavery.
"Taken together [Madison and Franklin], he and Franklin would have made a nearly unbeatable team. But in 1790, they were on different sides." p. 113.
Madison's cold response to Franklin's effort was the central reason slavery was not abolished during this era. By Madison opposing Franklin, the issue of slavery was pushed aside and was not discussed until later when necessary. This became a contributing factor to the bloody battle that later would be fought over this issue, all because it was put under the table when it was first mentioned. These conflicts and their outcomes give further evidence of how Ellis achieved his objective in informing a reader that every monumental event throughout Founding Brothers is connected to conflicts between these statesmen and how their conflicts impacted the development of our infant nation. Ellis successfully shows how the concept of checks and balances that enabled the new nation to last, was not entirely political, but linked to dynamic relationships between leaders with different visions and morals.
Ellis wants to emphasize the importance of how quickly our nation was created, rather than over hundreds of years. In the preface Ellis quotes, .
"The creation of a separate American nation occurred suddenly rather than gradually, in revolutionary rather than evolutionary fashion, the decisive events that shaped the political ideas and institutions of the emerging state all taking place with dynamic intensity during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
