American Revolution Primary Sources

Primary sources are the main place where historians find their evidence: they are the documents, artifacts and other material that was made at the time you are studying, or by people who had first-hand knowledge of the event. For this project, you will most likely want to find a primary source created at or near the time of the Revolution in the 1770s-1780s.

• American Laws & Legal Documents - 18th Century
  ​The "Avalon Project" from the Yale University Law Library reproduces transcribed copies of dozens of legal documents from 1700s America, including Proclamations and Addresses of George Washington, Statutes of the United States Concerning Native Americans, and a vast number of other diplomatic, political and legal papers related to the Revolutionary War period.
   
• The News Media and the Making of America, 1730-1865 : News in the Age of Revolution 
  Includes some great selected examples of newspaper articles, broadsheets and related handwritten material about how news of the Revolution spread. This would be a great place to find out how newspaper publishers portrayed the Revolution. Digitized by the American Antiquarian Society, one of the best archives of early American printings and manuscripts. 
   

• Founders Online
  Search the correspondence and other writings of six major shapers of the United States: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Also includes letters from others (like Abigail Adams) who are part of the founders' archival collections. Over 181,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the authoritative Founding Fathers Papers projects.

• America's Historical Newspapers
  This database (requires a subscription, but FREE for Pacific students) includes dozens of American newspapers from 1784 and later. 

• Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Selected Documents 
  Nearly all of the papers that Jefferson wrote have been edited and published into a huge multi-volume collected edition. The editing project has also put online a more tightly curated selection of documents, including these: "letters highlighting Jefferson’s many roles as statesman, politician, and president, as well as friend, family member, and plantation owner."
   
• Benjamin Franklin Papers
  This is a decades-long project to collect, edit and publish all the papers by Benjamin Franklin. A digitial version of the papers is online here. (But note... it is down as of the day I am writing this guide; it should be up again soon. -Eva)
   
• The Federalist Papers
  This is a transcribed version of all the "Federalist Papers" by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. 
   
• Congressional Records
  Letters of Delegates to Congress: https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwdglink.html
  Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789: https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwjclink.html​
  House Committee Records (post-Revolution): https://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/browse/house.html
  Senate Committee Records (post-Revolution): https://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/browse/senate.html
  Many more Congressional Records exist online - please ask if you are looking for more!
   
• Want more ideas? Ask Pacific's archivist Eva Guggemos for suggestions! guggemos@pacificu.edu

TIPS: 

The sources above provide many possibilities. But if you want to search for your own documents outside of these links, you can. You will have much greater luck if you pick a particular aspect of the Revolution to research. If you can't think of keywords or dates to start out with, scan through the Wikipedia Article on the Revolution to get ideas. For example, you might try searching for:

• proper names of people (such as politicians)
• names of laws, amendments, etc. 
• particular cities, battles, or events, e.g. Bunker Hill
• particular year, e.g. 1778
• particular keyword for a subject area, such as: Loyalists, women, African Americans, etc. (However, you may have better luck looking for specific people's names.)