A History of Liberty

A History of Liberty

“At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities...If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more; and [true liberty's] advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge as much as in the improvement of laws.”
— Lord Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity”

This collection of short biographies highlights the life and thought of central characters in the history of liberty.

THE MIDDLE AGES

• Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141)
• Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)
• Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406)
• St. Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444)

THE RENAISSANCE

• Tommaso de Cajetan (1469–1534)
• Bartholomew de Las Casas (1474–1566)
• Francisco Marroquín (1499–1563)
• Girolamo Zanchi (1516–1590)
• Luis de Molina (1535–1600)
• Francisco Suarez (1548–1617)
• Johannes Althusius (1557–1638)
• William Perkins (1558–1602)
• Hugo Grotius (1583–1645)
• Juan de Lugo ((1583–1660)
• John Winthrop (1588–1649)
• Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661)
• John Milton (1608–1674)
• Sir Henry Vane (1613–1662)
• John Locke (1632–1704)
• Samuel von Pufendorf (1632–1694)
• William Penn (1644–1718)
• Joseph Addison (1672–1719)

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

• Adam Smith (1723–1790)
• John Witherspoon (1723–1794)
• Issac Backus (1724–1806)
• Samuel Cooper (1725–1783)
• Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781)
• Ferdinando Galiani (1728–1787)
• Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
• Anders Chydenius (1729–1803)
• Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737–1832)
• Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
• James Madison (1751–1836)
• Fisher Ames (1758–1808)
• Noah Webster (1758–1843)
• William Wilberforce (1759–1833)
• K. Wilhelm Freiherr von Humboldt (1767–1835)
• Benjamin Constant (1767–1830)
• Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832)
• Lyman Beecher (1775–1863)

NINETEENTH CENTURY

• Richard Whately (1787–1863)
• James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)
• Antonio Rosmini-Serbati (1797–1855)
• Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850)
• John Henry Newman (1801–1890)
• Jean-Baptiste-Henri Dominique Lacordaire (1802–1861)
• Orestes Brownson (1803–1876)
• Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
• William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898)
• Charles le Comte de Montalembert (1810–1870)
• John Bright (1811–1889)
• Frederick Douglass (1818–1895)
• Isaac Thomas Hecker (1819–1888)
• Lord Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834–1902)
• Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920)
• Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)

TWENTIETH CENTURY

• J. Gresham Machen (1881–1936)
• Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)
• J. Howard Pew (1882–1971)
• Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968)
• Emil Brunner (1889–1966)
• Walter Eucken (1891–1950)
• Michael Polanyi (1891–1976)
• John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973)
• Christopher Dawson (1898–1970)
• C.S. Lewis (1898–1963)
• Leonard E. Read (1898–1983)
• Friedrich August von Hayek (1899–1992)
• Edward A. Keller, C.S.C. (1903–1989)
• John Courtney Murray, S.J. (1904–1967)
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945)
• Frank S. Meyer (1909–1972)
• Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999)
• Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963)
• Ronald Reagan (1911–2004)
• Carl F. H. Henry (1913–2003)
• Edmund A. Opitz (1914–2006)
• Russell Kirk (1918–1994)
• Rafael Termes (1918–2005)
• Karol Wojtyla (1920–2005)
• Lord Ralph Harris of Highcross (1924–2006)
• William F. Buckley (1925–2008)