“We have given you, the United States of America, a Republic, if you can hold on to it.” paraphrased
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excerpt ...
A Free State...If You Can Keep It
by Robert F. Hawes Jr.
It is said that, at the close of the Constitutional Convention, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin and asked him what type of government had been decided upon by the delegates. Franklin stated: “We have given you a Republic, if you can keep it.”
Franklin, of course, also believed that the Constitution could only last as long as the people themselves could sustain it:
“In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults; if they are such; because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and I believe, further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”
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We must be vigilant, our future depends on it. We are very threatened and in danger to lose it now.
I believe the quote you’re referring to was from John Adams who said, “We have won us a country. If we can keep it’’.