As it happens assisted suicide is one of the questions I pitch the founders in my forthcoming What Would the Founders Do? The key text is Jefferson’s letter to Dr. Samuel Brown, July 14, 1813, though there are other considerations.

All I would add to Bradford Short’s piece is that everything John Randolph of Roanoke said has to be understood in light of the fact that he was, to put no finer point on it, nuts. Brilliant and eloquent, but… (Murray Rothbard was his ideal acolyte.) He also started taking opium in 1810, after a horse crushed his foot.