Cite as: 575 U. S. ____ (2015) 13 THOMAS, J., dissenting ries enacted laws making it a crime to “knowingly send or deliver any letter or writing, with or without a name subscribed thereto, or signed with a fictitious name, . . . threatening to maim, wound, kill or murder any person, or to burn his or her [property], though no money, goods or chattels, or other valuable thing shall be demanded,” e.g., 1795 N. J. Laws §57, at 108; see also, e.g., 1816 Ga. Laws p. 178; 1816 Mich. Territory Laws p. 128; 1827 Ill. Crim. Code §108; 1832 Fla. Laws, at 68–69. These laws appear to be the closest early analogue to §875(c), as they penalize transmitting a communication containing a threat without proof of a demand to extort something from the victim. Threat provisions explicitly requiring proof of a specific “intent to extort” appeared alongside these laws, see, e.g., 1795 N. J. Laws §57, at 108, but those provisions are simply the predecessors to §875(b) and §875(d), which likewise expressly contain an intent-to-extort requirement. The laws without that extortion requirement were copies of a 1754 English threat statute subject to only a general-intent requirement. The statute made it a capital offense to “knowingly send any Letter without any Name subscribed thereto, or signed with a fictitious Name . . . threatening to kill or murder any of his Majesty’s Subject or Subjects, or to burn their [property], though no Money or Venison or other valuable Thing shall be demanded.” 27 Geo. II, ch. 15, in 7 Eng. Stat. at Large 61 (1754); see also 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of Eng­ land 144 (1768) (describing this statute). Early English decisions applying this threat statute indicated that the appropriate mental state was general intent. In King v. Girdwood, 1 Leach 142, 168 Eng. Rep. 173 (K. B. 1776), for example, the trial court instructed the jurors that, “if they were of opinion that” the “terms of the letter con­ veyed an actual threat to kill or murder,” “and that the prisoner knew the contents of it, they ought to find him