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EIN 20-8611120

Hartwell, GA

History & educational focus

The founding era, and how to read it

Free reference material published by the foundation: a chronology of the founding period, a working method for reading sources, notes on preservation, and where the documents actually live.

ChronologyReading a sourcePreservationCollections

About this reference material

Everything on this page is general historical and methodological reference, drawn from the documentary record held by public institutions. It describes the period and the practice the foundation is concerned with. It does not describe research conducted by the foundation, and no item here is presented as a discovery, holding, or programme of ours.

Chronology

From the Stamp Act to the Bill of Rights

Six moments that show the founding not as a single act but as a sustained argument about who may govern, on what authority, and within what limits.

Chronology as an instrument

A timeline is a research tool before it is a display: it fixes what happened when, so that claims about cause can be tested against sequence.

Original illustration for Affirm1776

  1. 1765

    The Stamp Act and the question of consent

    Parliament imposed the first direct tax on the American colonies. The protests that followed were argued less about the sum owed than about who held the authority to levy it. The Act was repealed in 1766, but the constitutional question it raised was not settled.

  2. July 1776

    Independence declared

    The Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, voted in favour of independence on 2 July and adopted the Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776. The engrossed copy now held by the National Archives was signed principally on 2 August.

  3. 1777 – 1781

    The Articles of Confederation

    Congress adopted the Articles in November 1777 as the first written frame of government for the united states. Ratification by all thirteen states was completed in March 1781. The Articles held the union together through the war and revealed, in doing so, the limits of a government without independent revenue.

  4. September 1787

    The Constitution signed

    Delegates to the Philadelphia Convention signed the Constitution on 17 September 1787. What followed was a year of public argument — the Federalist and Anti-Federalist essays among the most closely read political writing ever produced in America.

  5. 1788

    Ratification

    New Hampshire's ratification on 21 June 1788 supplied the ninth state required for the Constitution to take effect. The state ratifying conventions, and the objections raised in them, are among the richest sources for understanding what the text was taken to mean at the time.

  6. December 1791

    The Bill of Rights ratified

    Ten of the twelve amendments proposed by the First Congress were ratified on 15 December 1791. They answered the most persistent Anti-Federalist objection: that a government of enumerated powers still required express limits.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Preamble to the Constitution of the United StatesSigned in Convention, 17 September 1787. Original held by the U.S. National Archives; text in the public domain.

Reading a source

Four steps that do most of the work

This is the ordinary practice of historical research, written for people who have never been taught it. It applies equally to a 1776 broadside and a deed recorded last year.

Step one

Establish what the document is

Before reading for meaning, read for form. Is it a letter, a petition, a legal instrument, a printed broadside, a later copy? A transcription made in 1830 of a 1776 letter is evidence of two moments, not one.

Form determines what a source can be asked to prove.

Step two

Ask who was speaking, and to whom

Founding-era writing is almost always addressed to a particular audience — a legislature, a subscriber list, a rival, a spouse. Purpose shapes emphasis. A pamphlet written to persuade is not less useful than a private letter, but it is useful in a different way.

Audience is context, not a reason for suspicion.

Step three

Corroborate before concluding

A single source establishes that something was said. Two independent sources begin to establish that it happened. Where the record is thin, the honest finding is often that the evidence does not settle the question.

The strongest historical claim is the one that survives checking.

Step four

Separate chronology from causation

That one event followed another is a matter of record. That it was caused by it is an argument, and must be made as one. Much popular history quietly converts the first into the second.

Sequence is evidence; explanation is interpretation.

Educational pathway

A suggested order of study

If you have an hour a week and no particular starting point, this is the sequence we would suggest. It costs nothing and requires no institution.
  1. 01

    Begin

    Read one document end to end

    Not a summary of it. The Declaration takes eight minutes; the Constitution about half an hour. Almost everyone who thinks they have read them has read a paraphrase.

  2. 02

    Widen

    Find what was said against it

    The Federalist essays are famous because they were answered. Reading the Anti-Federalist objections alongside them turns a settled text back into the argument it was.

  3. 03

    Descend

    Go to the manuscript

    Digitised originals show corrections, insertions, and hands. A crossed-out clause tells you something a clean printed transcript cannot.

  4. 04

    Localise

    Follow it into your own county

    State and county records show how national decisions were received, resisted, and administered where people actually lived. This is where most original work is still available to be done.

Preservation

Why the physical record still matters

Digitisation makes documents reachable; it does not make the originals expendable. Every digital surrogate depends on an object that someone is still keeping.

Custody is part of the evidence

Where an item has been kept, and by whom, bears directly on how it should be read. Provenance is not paperwork — it is testimony.

Original illustration for Affirm1776

Environment

Cool, dry, and above all stable

Paper and photographic materials are damaged less by any single condition than by change. Conservation guidance consistently favours a cool, dry, and stable environment over an ideal one that fluctuates.

General guidance; consult a conservator for specific holdings.

Light

Light damage is cumulative and permanent

Fading and embrittlement from ultraviolet and visible light cannot be reversed. This is why archives display facsimiles, keep originals in the dark, and light exhibitions so carefully.

General guidance; consult a conservator for specific holdings.

Handling

Most damage happens in the hands

Supporting a volume properly, avoiding adhesive tape and metal fasteners, and storing items flat in inert enclosures prevent far more loss than any later intervention can repair.

General guidance; consult a conservator for specific holdings.

Provenance

A record of custody is part of the record

Where an item has been, and who has held it, bears directly on how it should be read. Documentation of provenance is not administrative overhead — it is evidence.

General guidance; consult a conservator for specific holdings.

Where to look

Public reference collections

Six starting points, all free to use. Each is maintained by the institution that holds the material; listing a collection here is not a claim of partnership with it.

America's Founding Documents

High-resolution images and full transcriptions of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, with the National Archives' own explanatory notes.

U.S. National Archives (opens in a new tab)

Founders Online

More than 180,000 searchable, annotated documents from the papers of six founding figures — correspondence, drafts, and accounts, published in full.

National Archives · University of Virginia Press (opens in a new tab)

Library of Congress Digital Collections

Maps, manuscripts, newspapers, prints, and recordings across American history, free to search and, in most cases, free to reuse.

Library of Congress (opens in a new tab)

Digital Public Library of America

A single search across the digitised holdings of thousands of American libraries, archives, and museums, including many small local repositories.

DPLA (opens in a new tab)

Digital Library of Georgia

Georgia newspapers, county records, photographs, and government documents — the state-level record in which local history is usually found.

University System of Georgia (opens in a new tab)

National Museum of American History

Object records, exhibition material, and educational resources on American political, cultural, and everyday life.

Smithsonian Institution (opens in a new tab)

External links are provided for reference only. The foundation does not control these sites and is not responsible for their content or availability.

Take it further

Working on something in this ground?

Teachers, students, genealogists, and local historians are all welcome to write to us — whether you want a starting point or have material of your own.
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