Cite as: 575 U. S. ____ (2015) 15 THOMAS, J., dissenting state statute creating the offense of obtaining property through false pretenses). In short, there is good reason to believe that States bound by their own Constitutions to protect freedom of speech long ago enacted general-intent threat statutes. Elonis disputes this historical analysis on two grounds, but neither is persuasive. He first points to a treatise stating that the 1754 English statute was “levelled against such whose intention it was, (by writing such letters, either without names or in fictitious names,) to conceal themselves from the knowledge of the party threatened, that they might obtain their object by creating terror in [the victim’s] mind.” 2 W. Russell & D. Davis, A Treatise on Crimes & Misdemeanors 1845 (1st Am. ed. 1824). But the fact that the ordinary prosecution under this provision involved a defendant who intended to cause fear does not mean that such a mental state was required as a matter of law. After all, §875(c) is frequently deployed against people who wanted to cause their victims fear, but that fact does not answer the legal question presented in this case. See, e.g., United States v. Sutcliffe, 505 F. 3d 944, 952 (CA9 2007); see also Tr. of Oral Arg. 53 (counsel for the Government noting that “I think Congress would well have understood that the majority of these cases probably [involved] people who intended to threaten”). Elonis also cobbles together an assortment of older American authorities to prove his point, but they fail to stand up to close scrutiny. Two of his cases address the offense of breaching the peace, Ware v. Loveridge, 75 Mich. 488, 490–493, 42 N. W. 997, 998 (1889); State v. Benedict, 11 Vt. 236, 239 (1839), which is insufficiently similar to the offense criminalized in §875(c) to be of much use. Another involves a prosecution under a blackmailing statute similar to §875(b) and §875(c) in that it expressly required an “intent to extort.” Norris v. State, 95 Ind. 73, 74 (1884). And his treatises do not clearly distinguish