George Thatcher served as a U.S. representative from Maine throughout the Federalist Era (1789-1801)—the most critical and formative period of American constitutional history. A moderate on most political issues, the Cape Cod native and Harvard-educated lawyer proved a maverick in matters relating to education, the expansion of the slave interest, the rise of Unitarianism, and the separation of church and state. Written over his forty-year career as a country lawyer, national legislator, and state supreme court justice, the over two hundred letters and miscellaneous writings selected for this edition will appeal to historians, lawyers and legal scholars, teachers, and genealogists as an encyclopedic resource on the Founding generation, and to all readers captivated by the dramatic immediacy and inherent authenticity of personal letters. Following Thatcher’s journey as a New England Federalist, abolitionist, religious dissenter, and pedagogical innovator is to add depth and complexity to our understanding of the early American Republic.

Distributed for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts