Twelve episodes on the founders who appear in the historical record but not in the textbooks — the men who wrote the documents, refused to sign them, designed the institutions, and paid the price. Sherman, Morris, Mason, Dickinson, Henry, Carroll, Witherspoon, Wilson, Wythe, Lee, Gerry, and four signers the archive can barely find.
The Continental Association (1774). Declaration of Independence (1776). Articles of Confederation (1781). Constitution (1787). Roger Sherman signed every one. No one else did.
The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776). The Constitutional Convention (1787). The Objections to the Constitution (1787).
The Continental Association (1774). The Declaration on Taking Up Arms (1775). The Articles of Confederation (1776). John Dickinson wrote or co-wrote all of them.
Patrick Henry's name is synonymous with the Revolution's demand for liberty. His relationship to that word — what he meant by it, who it included, and what he did when the government that promised it ...
Maryland was founded as a Catholic refuge. Then the law spent seventy years dismantling that refuge. By 1776, Charles Carroll of Carrollton could not vote, could not hold office, could not practice la...
In May 1776 he stood in Princeton and preached that Providence was guiding the Revolution — six weeks before he was elected to Congress. He signed the Declaration of Independence.
One of only six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He proposed the single executive — a president, not a committee of three.
He taught law to Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Henry Clay, and James Monroe. He signed the Declaration of Independence. He was the first law professor in America.
Caesar Rodney rode 80 miles through a storm to break Delaware's deadlock. John Morton cast Pennsylvania's deciding vote and was dead nine months later.
On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee stood in the Pennsylvania State House and introduced the resolution for independence. Not Jefferson. Not Adams. Lee.
He signed the Declaration of Independence. He refused to sign the Constitution. He moved for a Bill of Rights on September 12, 1787 — the Convention unanimously rejected it.