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Online Library of Liberty The OLL is a curated collection of scholarly works that engage with vital questions of liberty.

Spanning the centuries from Hammurabi to Hume, and collecting material on topics from art and economics to law and political theory, the OLL provides you with a rich variety of texts to explore and consider.

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Liberty Matters: A Forum for the Discussion of Ideas About Liberty Hans Eicholz, "Understanding Jefferson: Slavery, Race, and the Declaration of Independence" (July 2021)

Welcome to the July 2021 edition of Liberty Matters. This month we convene a panel of distinguished scholars to ask, "Who was Thomas Jefferson, and how did his views--particularly those on race, slavery, and freedom--inform his writings, including the Declaration of Independence?" Lead essayist Hans Eicholz, an historian and Senior Fellow at Liberty Fund, kicks things off in our lead essay by s...

Explore the OLL Collection: Quotations About Liberty and Power Jefferson's list of objections to the British Empire in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence (1776)

We reproduce here a selection of the objections to acts of the British Empire which enraged the colonists in 1776. This comes from the first draft written by Thomas Jefferson before it was amended by his colleagues. Most notable for its exclusion from the final version are Jefferson’s remarks about slavery, “this war against human nature itself”:

Explore the OLL Collection: Images of Liberty and Power Thomas Jefferson in the Cyclopedia

Images of Thomas Jefferson in the Jeffersonian Cyclopedia (1900) The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: A Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson. Classified and Arranged in Alphabetical Order Under Nine Thousand Titles, Relating to Government, Politics, Law, Education, Political Economy, Finance, Science, Art, Literature, Religious Freedom, Morals, etc. Edited by John P. Foley (New...

Best of the OLL BOLL 40: Thomas Jefferson, “The Declaration of Independence” (1776)

This is part of “The Best of the Online Library of Liberty” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. A thematic list with links to HTML versions of the texts is available here. The Declaration of Independence from Great Britain was originally penned by Thomas Jefferson in June 1776 when he was part of committee which was created to draw up a draft for the Second ...

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