Featured Primary Sources

Sortable List of All Featured Primary Sources

Gilder Lehrman’s Featured Primary Sources draw from the wealth of letters, diaries, maps, pamphlets, printed books, newspapers, and photographs in the Gilder Lehrman Collection, a unique archive of more than 60,000 American historical documents. Each Featured Primary Resource has an introduction, transcript, image, and questions for discussion. You can access them within each Sub-era in the History by Era section of the website, or see the entire list below, filtering the results by Era, Theme, or Creator.

Title Yearsort icon
George Washington from Valley Forge on the urgent need for men and supplies, 1777 1777
Lucy Knox on the home front during the Revolutionary War, 1777 1777
Loyalists and the British evacuation of Philadelphia, 1778 1778
A patriot’s letter to his loyalist father, 1778 1778
An African American soldier’s pay warrant, 1780 1780
The Brotherton Indians of New Jersey, 1780 1780
Alexander Hamilton’s “gloomy” view of the American Revolution, 1780 1780
Surrender of the British General Cornwallis to the Americans, October 19, 1781 1781
George Washington and the Newburgh Conspiracy, 1783 1783
Martha Washington on life after the Revolution, 1784 1784
George Washington on the abolition of slavery, 1786 1786
George Washington discusses Shays’ Rebellion and the upcoming Constitutional Convention, 1787 1787
Two versions of the Preamble to the Constitution, 1787 1787
Ratification of the US Constitution in New York, 1788 1788
George Washington’s First Inaugural Address, 1789 1789
Olaudah Equiano 1789
George Washington’s reluctance to become president, 1789 1789
Hamilton’s Report on the Subject of Manufactures, 1791 1791
Jefferson on the French and Haitian Revolutions, 1792 1792
Reports on the yellow fever epidemic, 1793 1793
The Whiskey Rebellion, 1794 1794
Washington on a proposed third term and political parties, 1799 1799
“Jefferson is in every view less dangerous than Burr”: Hamilton on the election of 1800 1800
Slavery in the New York State census, 1800 1800
John Adams on the abolition of slavery, 1801 1801