Under the direction of President John Adams, the Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a criminal offence to publish statements critical of the federal government. The first individual to be tried under the law was Rep. Matthew Lyon, who unsurprisingly had voted against its passage. Lyon was re-elected from jail.
Learn the story of a place through the people that represented it through history
The House impeached President Donald J. Trump for a second time, an unprecedented feat in U.S. history, on charges of fomenting insurrection
Before she became Vice President, Kamala Harris was the first South Asian-American woman elected to the Senate
Robert Smalls, born enslaved in South Carolina, stole the CSS Planter and delivered it to Union troops. After the Civil War, Smalls was elected to the South Carolina legislature and later to the U.S. Congress where he served 5 terms during and after Reconstruction.
