Across the series · 29 records
Statutes, petitions, images, letters, proceedings, and recollections do different evidentiary work. Short excerpts orient; links and provenance carry the burden.
June–July 1744 · printed diplomatic proceedings
Colonial commissioners, Six Nations delegates, interpreter, scribes, and printer
You have your Laws and Customs, and so have we.
A printed English record of negotiations over alliance, land, jurisdiction, and memory, mediated through Conrad Weiser and colonial record-making.
Why read it: The document preserves Native argument while making its chain of transmission impossible to ignore.
May 9, 1754 · newspaper image
Benjamin Franklin and the Pennsylvania Gazette
JOIN, or DIE.
A severed snake labeled with colonies accompanied news of the Ohio crisis and an appeal for union.
Why read it: It shows argument compressed into a reusable image whose later meanings differed from its original wartime setting.
October 7, 1763 · royal proclamation
George III and the Privy Council
No private Person do presume to make any purchase from the said Indians.
The Crown organized new governments, regulated western settlement, and reserved land purchases to imperial authority.
Why read it: Its clauses combine protection, possession, sovereignty, settlement, and administration rather than drawing one simple frontier line.
March 22, 1765 · act of Parliament
Parliament of Great Britain
The statute required stamped paper for legal, commercial, and printed materials in British America.
Why read it: The long schedule of taxed transactions reveals how visibly the act entered ordinary legal and commercial life.
May 1765 · legislative resolutions and newspaper variants
Patrick Henry and the Virginia House of Burgesses
Adopted, rejected, rescinded, and printed resolutions asserted colonial consent in versions that did not perfectly match.
Why read it: Comparing versions demonstrates that circulation could be as politically consequential as formal adoption.
October 19, 1765 · congressional declaration
Stamp Act Congress
No taxes ever have been, or can be constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective legislatures.
Delegates asserted inherited rights and petitioned within the empire against parliamentary taxation.
Why read it: The declaration joins constitutional resistance to continued allegiance rather than assuming independence.
March 18, 1766 · act of Parliament
Parliament of Great Britain
In all cases whatsoever.
Parliament paired repeal of the Stamp Act with an assertion of full legislative authority over the colonies.
Why read it: Its compact supremacy claim explains why repeal did not resolve the constitutional dispute.
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June 29, 1767 · act of Parliament
Parliament of Great Britain
It is expedient that a revenue should be raised in your Majesty's dominions in America.
The act imposed duties and directed revenue toward imperial civil government and defense.
Why read it: The preamble makes explicit that control of salaries and administration—not merely taxed goods—was at stake.
1767–1768 · newspaper essays and pamphlet
John Dickinson
We cannot be happy, without being free.
Dickinson argued that duties imposed to raise revenue could violate colonial rights even when collected on imports.
Why read it: The essays show a widely circulated effort to oppose Parliament without abandoning the empire.
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February 11, 1768 · legislative circular letter
Massachusetts House of Representatives
The House circulated its constitutional objections to other colonial assemblies; imperial demands that it rescind the letter escalated the dispute.
Why read it: The document demonstrates an assembly using correspondence as intercolonial organization before standing committees.
March 1770 · political engraving
Engraved by Paul Revere after Henry Pelham
The image imposed order, command, and innocence on a confused street confrontation and became one of the crisis's most durable visual arguments.
Why read it: Comparing image and testimony shows how quickly representation became part of the event itself.
1773 · poetry collection
Phillis Wheatley
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, / May be refin'd.
Published in London with an attestation signed by prominent Bostonians who certified Wheatley's authorship.
Why read it: The volume reveals Black authorship operating through—and against—the racial and commercial structures of Atlantic print.
February 11, 1774 · letter later printed in a newspaper
Phillis Wheatley
God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom.
Wheatley linked spiritual equality, civil liberty, and the desire for freedom in a letter to the Mohegan minister Samson Occom.
Why read it: The letter is an argument by a Black author to a Native intellectual, not merely a commentary on white revolutionary rhetoric.
May 25, 1774 · petition
A group of enslaved Massachusetts petitioners
The petitioners asserted that they shared a common natural right to freedom with other people.
Why read it: Their petition places enslaved political thought inside the 1774 crisis and addresses Patriot and imperial institutions together.
October 14, 1774 · congressional declaration
First Continental Congress
Delegates defined colonial rights, identified violations, and announced a program of petition and economic resistance.
Why read it: The declaration shows a continental body denying Parliament's authority while still seeking repair under the king.
October 20, 1774 · economic agreement and enforcement plan
First Continental Congress
A committee be chosen in every county, city, and town… to attentively observe the conduct of all persons.
The Association phased in nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation and directed local committees to enforce compliance.
Why read it: Its clauses show how a rights declaration became administrative power exercised among neighbors.
April 18, 1775 · military orders
Thomas Gage
You will seize and destroy all Artillery, Ammunition, Provisions, Tents, Small Arms, and all Military Stores whatever.
Gage ordered Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith to move secretly against stores gathered at Concord while avoiding plunder and damage to private property.
Why read it: The order states the expedition's material objective and the British diagnosis of organized rebellion.
1775 and later accounts · deposition, letter, and recollections
Paul Revere
Revere described the alarm in several texts produced for different purposes and at different distances from the event.
Why read it: Reading the accounts separately reveals what later memory adds, omits, and reorganizes.
April 1775 · collected depositions and printed narrative
Massachusetts witnesses and revolutionary authorities
The Lexington company… did not fire a gun before the regulars.
Near-contemporary testimony was collected and printed to establish a public account of British aggression.
Why read it: The depositions are early evidence and interested political documents at the same time.
July 6, 1775 · congressional declaration
Second Continental Congress; drafts by Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson
Our cause is just. Our union is perfect.
The Congress justified armed resistance but publicly denied that it sought separation from Britain.
Why read it: It captures the unstable political position of an institution waging war without yet claiming independence.
Agreed July 5; signed July 8, 1775 · congressional petition
Second Continental Congress; principal draft by John Dickinson
Congress agreed to the petition on July 5, ordered it engrossed, and compared and signed it on July 8 while simultaneously directing an army and defending armed resistance.
Why read it: Its language prevents war and independence from becoming automatic synonyms in the summer of 1775.
November 7, 1775 · martial-law and emancipation proclamation
John Murray, Lord Dunmore
All indented Servants, Negroes, or others… free, that are able and willing to bear Arms.
The offer applied to people enslaved by rebels who reached British lines and could serve; it was neither general abolition nor empty rhetoric.
Why read it: Its limits and its practical opening for self-emancipation must be held together.
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January 10, 1776 · pamphlet
Thomas Paine
The period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resource, decide the contest.
Paine combined an attack on monarchy with a practical argument that independence offered security, commerce, and political possibility.
Why read it: Its direct structure shows why Paine could make a radical position feel like plain sense without single-handedly creating the independence movement.
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March 31, 1776 · private political correspondence
Abigail Adams
In the new Code of Laws… I desire you would Remember the Ladies.
Writing during constitution-making, Adams linked independence from arbitrary rule to women’s legal subordination within households.
Why read it: The exchange tests whether revolutionary arguments about consent were meant to reorder power inside the family.
June 12, 1776 · state declaration of rights
Virginia Convention; principal draft by George Mason
All men are by nature equally free and independent.
Virginia declared inherent rights and popular sovereignty while building a government for a slaveholding state.
Why read it: It places rights language in an operating constitution and makes its universal form and bounded application visible together.
July 4, 1776 · congressional declaration
Second Continental Congress; committee draft principally by Thomas Jefferson
All men are created equal.
Congress revised and adopted a text joining natural rights, popular sovereignty, grievances against the king, separation, and international status.
Why read it: Read the final text beside Jefferson’s draft, congressional edits, state declarations, and the people excluded from its immediate political community.
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July 12, 1776 · congressional constitutional draft
Committee of one delegate from each state; principal draft associated with John Dickinson
Articles of confederation and perpetual union, between the colonies.
Congress ordered a confederation plan on June 11, appointed a one-member-per-colony committee on June 12, and received a printed draft on July 12 while the New York campaign was unfolding.
Why read it: The draft shows independence immediately generating disputes about representation, taxation, western land, state equality, and the authority of a continental union.
October 30, 1776 · congressional military resolutions
Continental Congress
Such non-commissioned officers and soldiers as shall enlist to serve during the war.
As Washington's army contracted, Congress defended land and cash bounties intended to secure longer service and treated those promises as obligations of the United States rather than optional state policy.
Why read it: The resolutions expose the material bargain beneath appeals to virtue: duration of service depended on pay, land, intergovernmental authority, and soldiers' power to refuse unacceptable terms.
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December 19, 1776 · newspaper essay and broadside
Thomas Paine
These are the times that try men's souls.
Written during the retreat across New Jersey and first published days before the Delaware crossing, Paine's essay converted military collapse into a test of endurance, sincerity, and political faith.
Why read it: It is battlefield writing as political intervention: a participant's account of the retreat, an attack on imperial supremacy, and an attempt to keep civilians and soldiers committed when enlistments were expiring.