This question is asked in the context of 40 years of conflict (1750 to 1790) in North America. People from France, England, and Spain had settled permanently in North America, the homeland of the Native Americans. These groups of people all struggled to secure rights to what are now the United States, Canada, and parts of Mexico.

What Primary Sources Can Tell Us about the Struggle for North America

A variety of historical documents and artifacts shed light on the events of this era, about 250 years ago.

• Written forms – Diaries of Spanish explorers, letters from British soldiers in Boston, colonial pamphlets ridiculing the royal government, and official documents from the Continental Congress all preserve eyewitness descriptions of 18th century life.
• Physical artifacts – Bronze cannon found on La Belle, LaSalle’s ship, pottery formed by California Indians, and silver engravings etched by Paul Revere give us access to objects used during the 1600s and 1700s.
• Images – Maps and paintings of the 18th century illustrate these great events and the places and people involved in them. Full-color maps of Boston provide a picture of the surrounded seaport during the British siege of the city. Portraits of generals and representatives to the Continental Congress are our only records of how the leaders of the day appeared.

 Primary Sources 

Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence

Declaration of Independence draft

See also the Library of Congress exhibition on Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents

Perhaps the most famous primary source of the Revolutionary Era is the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence

The Library of Congress gives online access to a document that reveals Jefferson’s thought process as he composed the document. This document, which Jefferson called the “Independance [sic] Declaration of original Rough draught,” includes the phrases Jefferson crossed out and the words he inserted as he carefully crafted one of the most important political documents ever written.

Statue of Jefferson

You can read what Jefferson wrote in June of 1776 and how he changed the work with the help of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. See also the time line of events that led to the signing of the Declaration – on August 2, 1776, not July 4, 1776!

 

 Background Information 

Drafting the Declaration

The Continental Congress appointed Robert Livingston, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Thomas Jefferson to a committee to write a Declaration of Independence. The members were carefully chosen – two from the New England colonies (Adams from Massachusetts and Sherman from Rhode Island), two from the Middle Atlantic (Livingston from New York and Franklin from Pennsylvania), and one from the South (Jefferson).

 

 Classroom Activity 

Writing for a Purpose: How Editing Helps Writers Achieve Their Goals 

1. Review the reasons why the Continental Congress created the Declaration of Independence: to list the colonists’ complaints against the British and to formally declare that the colonies had decided to become a new and separate nation free from British rule.

2. Discuss how all writers, even those as talented as Thomas Jefferson, have to edit their work for correctness and clarity in order to achieve the purposes of their writing.

3. Copy or write portions of the text version of Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration, as reconstructed by Professor Julian P. Boyd. Boyd was editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 1, 1760-1776 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950, pp 243-247).

4. Copy or write the same portions from the “final draft” of the Declaration.

5. Have your students list (in writing or orally) five words or phrases that were in Jefferson’s rough draft, but that were removed from the final document. Have them analyze the changes by asking these questions:

• What words or phrases replaced the ones that were taken out?
• Did the changes improve the document? How?
• What phrases would you have kept that Jefferson took out? Why?
• Did Jefferson achieve the purposes of the Continental Congress in writing the Declaration? How?