Law and Politics Documents

Jeannette Rankin was a lifelong activist for peace.  A member of Congress - representing Montana in the House of Representatives before most Amer...

In 1774, Thomas Jefferson was a delegate to the Virginia Convention.  Representing Albemarle County, Jefferson drafted this set of instructions f...

Thomas Jefferson was very upset about John Marshall's opinion in Marbury v Madison.  Year after the 1803 opinion was written, Jefferson wrote abo...

Thomas Jefferson delivered his first inaugural address on the 4th of March, 1801.  This is a page from his handwritten manuscript. The Library o...

About fourteen months before he died, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Henry Lee.  Dated the 8th of May, 1825, the letter expresses (among othe...

This image depicts the concluding page of Thomas Jefferson's May 8, 1825 letter to Henry Lee in which he describes what was important to him as he dra...

Thomas Jefferson surmised who wrote the various articles as they appeared in The Federalist Papers.  This image depicts the notes he made in his ...

  Text of a "Runaway Slave Notice," from the Library of Congress, which indicates that Thomas Jefferson wanted the return of one of his slaves w...

Image of a Defence Motion in the District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania proceedings - 1860. Click on the image for a better view.

After all the colonies signed the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock notified General George Washington.  He enclosed a copy of the Dunlap...

On the 4th of July, 1776, John Hancock sent a letter to General George Washington advising that the colonies had unanimously declared themselves indep...

John Quincy Adams, who represented the Amistad defendants in the Supreme Court, pondered his responsibility and expressed his thoughts in his diary. ...