George Nicholas (1754–1799) American lawyer
Letter to a friend in Virginia (1798); cited in The Great Quotations, compiled by George Seldes (1960)
Resolution offered in the Philadelphia Convention, May 29, 1787. The United States Constitution was enacted without any protection for religion or the press, but with the understanding that a Bill of Rights would shortly be enacted to address these concerns.
George Nicholas (1754–1799) American lawyer
Letter to a friend in Virginia (1798); cited in The Great Quotations, compiled by George Seldes (1960)
Joseph Story (1779–1845) US Supreme Court justice
Motto of the Salem Register. Adopted 1802. Reported in William W. Story's Life of Joseph Story, Volume I, Chapter VI.
Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher
Rejected resolution for a clause to add to the first article of the U.S. Constitution, in the debates of the Massachusetts Convention of 1788 (6 February 1788); this has often been attributed to Adams, but he is nowhere identified as the person making the resolution in Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Held in the year 1788 And which finally ratified the Constitution of the United States. (1856) p. 86. https://archive.org/details/debatesandproce00peirgoog <br class="br">Disputed
“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade…”
Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged
Source: Atlas Shrugged
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Louisiana Treaty of Cession, Art. III (30 April 1803)
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)
William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist
Source: Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (1796), P. 59.
Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)
Quote, First State of the Union Address (1865)
“I read "no law . . . abridging" to mean no law abridging.”
Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice
Concurring opinion, Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147 (1959).
Context: The First Amendment's language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." I read "no law... abridging" to mean no law abridging.
Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America
Compromise proposal http://www.civilwarcauses.org/comp.htm#Jefferson%20Davis%20of%20Mississippi (24 December 1860) <br class="br">1860s
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)