Author:   Thomas Paine Date:1776 Annotation: Thomas Paine wrote this collection of articles to represent his support for the independence of America and also to describe the crises people would face during the time of the Revolutionary War. Document: THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this…

Author:   John Jay Date:1776 Annotation: Toward the end of 1776, when John Jay (1745-1829) made this appeal to the inhabitants of New York, a pall of despair lay upon the American cause. The New York Assembly had fled to Fish Kill, New York, to escape the British army. Jay, who himself came from a…

Date:1776 Annotation: Town Meeting Resolution, Concord, Massachusetts, 1776 Document: At a meeting of the Inhabitents of the Town of Concord being free and twenty one years of age and upward, met by adjournment on the twenty first Day of October 1776 to take into Consideration a Resolve of the Honorable House of Representatives of this State on…

Date:1776 Annotation: “How is it,” the English essayist Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) asked at the start of the Revolution, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” Many British Tories taunted colonists with the jarring contradiction between their complaints about political oppression and the reality of chattel slavery. The American Revolution…

Date:1776 Annotation: During the Spring of 1776, as the historian Pauline Maier has shown, colonies, localities, and groups of ordinary Americans–including New York mechanics, Pennsylvania militiamen, and South Carolina grand juries–adopted resolutions endorsing independence. These resolutions encouraged the Continental Congress to appoint a five-member committee to draft a formal declaration of independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote…

Date:1776 Annotation: Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted unanimously June 12, 1776 at the Virginia Convention of Delegates. Drafted by Mr. George Mason. Document: I That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest…

Author:   George Mason Date:1776 Annotation: The Virginia Constitution, written by George Mason, is significant in that it was the first constitutions dividing the government into three branches. It provided an outline to the U. S. Constitution. Document: CONSTITUTION OF VIRGINIA – 1776.* WE, the Delegates and Representatives of the good people of Virginia, do declare the…

Author:   Richard H. Lee Date:1776 Annotation: The Lee Resolution prompted by Richard Henry Lee was put forth June 7, 1776. Three parts of the resolution included a declaration of independence, an outline for the organization of a confederacy, and the formation of foreign alliances. Document: Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to…

Author:   John Hancock Date:1776 Annotation: In a message to patriots in Maryland, John Hancock (1737-1793), the President of the Continental Congress, recounts British hostilities against the colonists, including the recruitment of Hessian mercenaries from Germany, and stresses the need for unity among the colonies. Document: Our affairs are hastening fast to a Crisis; and…

Author:   Richard H. Lee Date:1776 Annotation: Richard Lee (1732-1794), writing to a fellow Virginian, calls for American independence, a goal suddenly and effectively popularized in January 1776 by Thomas Paine’s anonymous pamphlet, Common Sense. Lee subsequently introduced the resolution in Congress “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and…