“I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true title of our people to distinction above others; but … I would guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it.” —Fisher Ames (1789)
*Image: “The Committee of Five” [detail] from The Declaration of Independence by John Turnbull, 1818 [U.S. Capitol Rotunda, Washington, DC]. Presenting the Declaration [to John Hancock, not shown here] are John Adams on the left, Thomas Jefferson in the center, and Benjamin Franklin on the right, with Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston behind.