Author:   George Washington Date:1777 Annotation: In May 1777, Washington had an army of only about 10,000 men, of whom fewer than 7,400 were present and fit for duty. Many were unfree, either indentured servants or slaves who were serving as substitutes for their masters in exchange for a promise of freedom at the war’s…

Author:   George Washington Date:1777 Annotation: At first glance, George Washington (1732-1799) might seem to be an unlikely choice to lead the Continental Army. His only previous military experience, during the Seven Years’ War, had not been particularly successful. He and his men had been ambushed at Pennsylvania and then been forced to surrender Fort…

Author: Lucy Knox Date: 1777 Annotation: Wartime conditions thrust new responsibilities upon American women. With many husbands absent, women assumed heightened responsibilities for managing family finances and operating family farms and shops. The correspondence between Lucy Knox and her husband Henry, one of Washington’s leading generals, an artillery expert, and his future Secretary of War,…

Author:   Josiah Bartlett Date:1777 Annotation: The Continental Congress faced serious problems financing the Revolution. Lacking the power to tax, Congress made assessments of the states, but they provided only limited funds. To pay for the war, the Continental Congress began to issue a national currency known as the Continental dollar. Without gold or silver…

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…