Primary Sources

About this Collection

The Online Library of Liberty contains a number of collections of primary sources dealing with history and political thought.

Key People

Titles & Essays

The American Nation: Primary Sources

Bruce Frohnen (editor)

This volume is a continuation of Frohnen’s earlier collection of primary sources The American Republic. It contains material from the Civil War to the outbreak of World War Two in the Pacific.

American Political Writing During the Founding Era: 1760-1805, vol. 1

Charles S. Hyneman (editor)

These volumes provide a selection of seventy-six essays, pamphlets, speeches, and letters to newspapers written between 1760 and 1805 by American political and religious leaders. Many are obscure pieces, but all illuminate the…

American Political Writing During the Founding Era: 1760-1805, vol. 2

Charles S. Hyneman (editor)

These volumes provide a selection of seventy-six essays, pamphlets, speeches, and letters to newspapers written between 1760 and 1805 by American political and religious leaders. Many are obscure pieces , but all illuminate the…

The American Republic: Primary Sources

Bruce Frohnen (editor)

The American Republic is an excellent textbook for classroom use which provides, in a single volume, critical, original documents revealing the character of American discourse on the nature and importance of local government, the…

Colonial Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History

Donald S. Lutz (editor)

A collection of eighty documents which demonstrate how local government in colonial America was the seedbed of American constitutionalism. Most of these documents, commencing with the Agreement of the Settlers at Exeter in New…

Commerce, Culture, and Liberty: Readings on Capitalism Before Adam Smith

Henry C. Clark (editor)

In this Liberty Fund book the editor has compiled some of the more important writings on economics before the appearance of Smith’s Wealth of Nations in 1776. It is particularly strong on the French contribution. Not all the pieces…

The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660

Samuel Rawson Gardiner (editor)

A collection of constitutional documents from the English Revolution of the mid-17th century. They include parliamentary speeches, letters and declarations by the monarch, legal proceedings, and other documents. They are preceded by…

The Hague Peace Conferences concerning the Laws and Usages of War

A Pearce Higgins (editor)

This volume contains the text (often in both French and English) of the major conventions concerning peace and the laws of warfare from the Declaration of Paris (1856), the Geneva Convention of 1864, of the two Peace Conferences in…

Liberty and Order: The First American Party Struggle

Lance Banning (editor)

An anthology of primary sources which documents the first great party struggle in American history between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists over the proper construction of the new Constitution, political economy, the…

Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States 1787-1788

Tench Coxe (author)

A collection of anti-federalist pamphlets written between 1787-88 by Elbridge Gerry, Noah Webster, John Jay, Melancthon Smith, Pelatiah Werster, Tench Coxe, James Wilson, John Dickinson, Alexander Contee Hanson, Edmund Randolph,…

Political Sermons of the American Founding Era. Vol. 1 (1730-1788)

Ellis Sandoz (editor)

Volume I of a large two volume collection of sermons written between 1730-1805 by people such as Jonathan Mayhew, John Wesley, Moses Mather, John Witherspoon, Richard Price, Jonathan Edwards, and Noah Webster.

Political Sermons of the American Founding Era. Vol. 2 (1789-1805)

Ellis Sandoz (editor)

Volume 2 of a large two volume collection of sermons written between 1730-1805 by people such as Jonathan Mayhew, John Wesley, Moses Mather, John Witherspoon, Richard Price, Jonathan Edwards, and Noah Webster.

Selections from the Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense

George Alexander Johnston (editor)

Johnston introduces his selection of some representative works of the Scottish School of Common Sense by Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson, James Beattie, and Dugald Stewart.

A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents

Edgar Holmes McNeal (editor)

A 600 page collection of primary sources on such topics as the Germans and the Empire, the Papacy, the struggle between the Empire and the Papacy, the Church, Feudalism, the Courts, Monasticism, the Crusades, and Social Classess and…

State Papers and Speeches on the Tariff

Frank William Taussig (editor)

Taussig has collected speeches and reports by Alexander Hamilton, Albert Gallatin, R.J. Walker, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster on the issue of free trade and tariffs. He used these documents in his course at Harvard University on the…

The Struggle for Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century English Political Tracts, vol. 1

Joyce Lee Malcolm (editor)

The political tracts of the English peoples in the seventeenth century established principles of governance and of liberty that benefited not only themselves but the founders of the American republic. These writings, by the renowned…

The Struggle for Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century English Political Tracts, vol. 2

Joyce Lee Malcolm (editor)

The political tracts of the English peoples in the seventeenth century established principles of governance and of liberty that benefited not only themselves but the founders of the American republic. These writings, by the renowned…

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