Early Republic

One of the outstanding documentary editions in American scholarship, The Adams Papers collects the correspondence and other significant papers of our nation's first great political family. At the center, of course, is John Adams. Beginning with his early diaries and three volumes selected from... More

Convening first in New York and later in Philadelphia from March 1789 to March 1791, these earliest iterations of the Senate and the House of Representatives worked with a new president to establish a government subject to the vision of a constitution less than a year in existence. Containing all... More

Containing over 2,400 letters, with another thousand letters to follow in periodic updates, this XML-based archive allows users to perform simple or advanced searches by period, correspondent, or topic. The letters may also be accessed directly through a sortable list or read in chronological order... More

All 59 volumes of the celebrated print edition published through 2009, encompassing five series and the complete diaries, are now available in one XML-based publication. Users may search on full text and by date, author, and recipient. The exceptional indexing of the print volumes is combined here... More

The Papers of James Madison documents the life and work of one of the most important political and constitutional thinkers in our nation’s history. A vital project that continues to add new volumes, this publication has been consulted for decades by scholars and students for primary-source... More

 John Marshall was the longest-serving chief justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, with a tenure lasting more than three decades. He was also arguably the most influential. Under his leadership the court defined itself in ways that persist to this day.Available for the first time online, Marshall... More

Crucial to our nation’s history as author of the Declaration of Independence and third president, Thomas Jefferson was also a major figure in the Enlightenment, representing for Europeans the embodiment of the early nineteenth-century American mind. Since 1950, his writings have been compiled... More

 People of the Founding Era is a powerful new online resource that provides biographical information for thousands of individuals active during a crucial period in our history. Beginning with 12,000 but eventually expanding to over 60,000 people born between 1713 and 1815, the subjects include... More

The careers of few figures in American history have encompassed as much as did John Jay’s. His accomplishments span pre- and post-Revolutionary history and extend into all three branches of government. Best known as the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, Jay entered public service as a... More

Now with links to Library of Congress manuscript facsimilesAndrew Jackson was born near the border of the colonial Carolinas and would take part in many of the early republic’s signal events, but he came to define a new era in American history and left the presidency forever changed.Orphaned... More

Born in the final days of the American Revolution, Daniel Webster would leave his mark on the following century, of which he was one of its mightiest statesmen. His remarkable life and career illustrate like few others the central issues of that century, especially the growing rift that would... More

Mostly hidden from public view, like an embarrassing family secret, scores of putative locks of George Washington’s hair are held, more than two centuries after his death, in the collections of America’s historical societies, public and academic archives, and museums. Excavating the origins of... More

The fifth and final volume of this series encompasses Robert Treat Paine’s time as a justice on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and covers the final years of his life. Best known as a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Paine spent the remainder of his public career in state... More

Volume 7 of The Selected Papers of John Jay opens in 1799 with John Jay well into his second term as governor of New York. After overseeing the passage of the law for gradually abolishing slavery in March 1799, Jay’s administration faltered in its final months due to an ascendant Republican Party... More

Navigating Neutrality explores the unexpected role George Washington’s 1793 Neutrality Proclamation played in energizing the U.S. government’s constitutional responsibilities to support and promote America’s commercial and sovereign interests. Designed to avoid warfare as Great Britain and France... More

Washington’s Government shows how George Washington’s administration—the subject of remarkably little previous study—was both more dynamic and more uncertain than previously thought. Rather than simply following a blueprint laid out by the Constitution, Washington and his advisors constructed over... More

Volume 12 of the Secretary of State Series covers June through October 1806, during which Madison waited in vain for his diplomatic initiatives with Great Britain, Spain, and France to yield results, and received mounting evidence of Aaron Burr’s suspicious activities in the West. Tensions with... More

The America of the early republic was built on an experiment, a hopeful prophecy that would only be fulfilled if an enlightened people could find its way through its past and into a future. Americans recognized that its promises would only be fully redeemed at a future date. In Revolutionary... More

The emergence of the early American republic as a new nation on the world stage conjured rival visions in the eyes of leading statesmen at home and attentive observers abroad. Thomas Jefferson envisioned the newly independent states as a federation of republics united by common experience, mutual... More

In late August 1780, Gen. George Washington was buoyed by expectations that French reinforcements would participate in an attack on New York City and that a southern army was poised to advance through South Carolina and possibly regain Charleston. News soon reached him that a key division was... More

Although commonly regarded as a prejudice against Roman Catholics and their religion, anti-popery is both more complex and far more historically significant than this common conception would suggest. As the essays collected in this volume demonstrate, anti-popery is a powerful lens through which to... More

Most treatments of slavery, politics, and expansion in the early American republic focus narrowly on congressional debates and the inaction of elite "founding fathers" such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West, John Craig Hammond looks... More

Volume 6 opens with John Jay aboard the Ohio, bound for London in May 1794, to begin what will prove to be the most controversial mission of his career: the negotiation of the treaty that now bears his name. The volume documents the series of proposals and drafts that culminated in the treaty, as... More

George Washington may be the most famous American who ever lived, and certainly is one of the most admired. While surrounded by myths, it is no myth that the man who led Americans’ fight for independence and whose two terms in office largely defined the presidency was the most highly respected... More

How did enslaved African Americans in the Old South really experience Christmas? Did Christmastime provide slaves with a lengthy and jubilant respite from labor and the whip, as is generally assumed, or is the story far more complex and troubling? In this provocative, revisionist, and sometimes... More