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When fighting for their liberty from Great Britain, most Americans denounced slavery. Many slaves escaped to freedom during the war—some by serving in the army and navy, others by running away, and others by manumission. In wrestling with their consciences, slaveowners had to determine whether or not to free their slaves. Many slaveowners freed their slaves, but far more found ways to rationalize their continued ownership of human beings. John Jay, a staunch opponent of slavery, bought a slave in 1779. Was Jay a hypocrite?

Shortly after the end of the war for independence, the Marquis de Lafayette proposed a plan emancipating some slaves. Lafayette asked Washington to join in the proposal. Lafayette instituted his plan alone in the French West Indies. Had Washington joined Lafayette in the proposal it could have contributed to a more general emancipation movement throughout America.

Americans throughout their history have protested their government’s actions and inaction. In the mid-1780s, a wave of violent protests swept through half a dozen states, the most significant being Shays’s Rebellion in Massachusetts. Most Americans condemned this violence with one notable exception. Thomas Jefferson, serving as U.S. minister to France and thus separated from the political maelstrom occurring in America, praised “a little rebellion now and then” as a means to preserve liberty against the inevitable oppression of government.

Thousands of metaphors and similes filled the debate over the ratification of the Constitution. On January 16, 1788, these metaphors took on an actual visual image as the Massachusetts Centinel, a Boston weekly newspaper published by Benjamin Russell, printed a woodcut entitled “The Federal Pillars.”

The Constitution provides that the President and Vice President have four-year terms and are eligible to be re-elected. Starting with George Washington as the first President, no person ever attempted to serve more than two terms as President until in 1940 Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to a third term and then a fourth term in 1944. In response to Roosevelt’s longevity, Republicans proposed the Twenty-second Amendment which was adopted in 1951 limiting the President to no more than two terms. Consequently, the transference of presidential power occurs frequently and has generally gone smoothly, if not always cordially. Each of the first three transfers of power was unique.

At the end of every President’s term of office we’ve come to expect a flurry of pardons and reprieves to be granted. Some of these dispensations arouse public outrage, some praise, while most receive unnoticed acquiescence. The President’s unlimited power to grant pardons and reprieves (except in cases of impeachment) stimulated a limited though forceful debate during the year-long struggle to ratify the Constitution.

December 15 has long been celebrated as the anniversary of the U.S. Bill of Rights. On that day in 1791, Virginia became the eleventh state to ratify ten amendments proposed by Congress to the newly-implemented Constitution, thus satisfying the three-quarters requirement in Article V of the Constitution. The history of a bill of rights stretched far back to ancient Greece and Rome. Colonial Americans embraced bills of rights in their charters and other fundamental laws. In debating whether to ratify a new federal Constitution, Americans demanded that it should contain a bill of rights. Only with such assurances was the Constitution adopted. Within six months, the first federal Congress proposed twelve amendments, and two and a half years later Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson informed the states that ten of the amendments had been adopted.

The Northwest Ordinance is one of the great American Founding documents. Often it is considered as the single most important accomplishment under the Articles of Confederation. The Ordinance prohibited slavery in the territory northwest of the Ohio River, but a fugitive slave clause provided for the return of runaway slaves. That clause—nonexistent in the Articles of Confederation—was copied into the draft Constitution in 1787 and was supported by Southerners and opposed by some Northerners during the debate over ratification. The clause provided the constitutional justification for federal fugitive slave acts in 1793 and 1850. The former was largely ignored, but the latter became an important step in the coming of the Civil War.

The results of the presidential election in Wisconsin have now been certified. But now lawsuits are attempting to overturn the results of both the popular election and the anticipated vote of the electoral college. Federal courts have consistently rejected these attempts to change the outcome of the current presidential election. A similar attempt to undermine the will of the people occurred in 1800 when New York’s Governor John Jay refused to participate in a bit of legislative chicanery orchestrated by Alexander Hamilton that would have manipulated the electoral college and perpetuated the incumbent President John Adams and defeated his challenger Thomas Jefferson.

Politics nowadays often turn nasty as opposing political parties seek to discredit their opponents. Although more common today, political shenanigans occasionally occurred when Americans debated whether to adopt or reject the newly proposed Constitution in 1787–1788. A good example of such trickery occurred in Hertford County, N.C., in March 1788.