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In the weeks before it declared independence, the Continental Congress was already hard at work building the institutions it would need to maintain the…
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In 1796 Daniel Hylton, a wealthy Virginian farmer, brought a suit before the United States Supreme Court arguing that a federal tax on carriages…
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Author’s Note: Selections from all resolutions and working drafts are italicized. Most of what we know about the framers’ discussions comes from James Madison’s…
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As adopted by the Constitutional Convention, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution mandated that the population numbers forming the basis for…
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“There has been hell to pay in Philadelphia,” exclaimed Samuel Shaw, referring to the Fort Wilson Riot of October 4, 1779 in a letter…
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Through four months in the summer of 1787, passionate arguments over political principles filled the Pennsylvania State House while hard-nosed political horse-trading buzzed in…