With most of the republics in the...
With most of the republics in the Soviet Union declaring independence, it might be timely to consider our own struggle for freedom from the British Empire more than 200 years ago.
Through Jan. 26, more than 60 letters, political cartoons and documents from that period are on display at the Huntington Library in San Marino.
In the collection are original letters by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison setting out their thoughts on democracy, a letter written by King George III giving independence to his former American colonies, rare drafts of the U.S. Constitution and a 700-year-old copy of England’s Magna Carta.
“A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth,” Jefferson wrote Madison in December, 1787, in one of the letters in the exhibit.
The exhibit, called “The Sacred Fire of Liberty: The Creation of the American Bill of Rights” also includes original copies of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln and of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which in 1865 outlawed slavery.
Other letters on display include Jefferson’s monogrammed seal, encircled with the motto “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God”--words that came to life again in recent weeks in Moscow.
The Huntington is open Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. A donation of $5 per adult is suggested.
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