This subcategory contains 97 links

1796: The First Real Election(478 clicks)
"BY JOHN FERLING WHEN GEORGE WASHINGTON ANNOUNCED THAT HE WOULD RETIRE FROM OFFICE, HE SET THE STAGE FOR THE NATION'S FIRST TWO-PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN."

1820 Hile v. Webb divorce decree(470 clicks)
Divorce has always been with us. Here's a Rhode Island decree.

A Contemporaneous Account of Hanson's Mob(465 clicks)
AN EXACT AND AUTHENTIC NARRATIVE, OF THE EVENTS WHICH TOOK PLACE IN BALTIMORE, ON THE 27th AND 28th OF JULY LAST. CAREFULLY COLLECTED FROM SOME OF THE SUFFERERS AND EYE-WITNESSES. TO WHICH IS ADDED A NARRATIVE OF MR. JOHN THOMSON, ONE OF THE UNFORTUNATE SUFFERERS, &c.

A Salute to the Ingenious Spelling and Grammar of William Clark(517 clicks)
By Robert B. Betts

Aaron Burr and Territorial Mississippi(439 clicks)
Burr's plot to take Mississippi out of the US

Alexander Hamilton(441 clicks)

Alexander Hamilton and the Creation of the United States(421 clicks)
This exhibition was created by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in support of the American Experience film Alexander Hamilton.

Alexander Hamilton's Financial Program(459 clicks)

American Founders and Their World(1238 clicks)
audio lectures

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson(458 clicks)
By Joseph Ellis. A Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History podcast

An Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse With the Indian Tribes, (466 clicks)
and to Preserve Peace on the Frontier

Aspects of the Antebellum Christmas(440 clicks)
Before Christmas was Christmas

Battle of Fallen Timbers (Ohio)(494 clicks)
General "Mad" Anthony Wayne's decisive victory in the Northwest Territory

Battle of Fallen Timbers Battlefield(485 clicks)

Birth of the Nation(515 clicks)
First Federal Congress, 1789-1791

Burr as Vice President(471 clicks)

Coming to America(511 clicks)

Creating the Unitd States(467 clicks)

Duel At Dawn, 1804(513 clicks)
Duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Burr won.

Early America's Bloodiest Battle(451 clicks)
By Richard Battin, Managing Editor, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana. About General St. Clair.

Early National Period(428 clicks)
Links to other sites

Early Postal System(442 clicks)
It's in the mail

Erie Canal(475 clicks)

Experience the Enchantment: Historic New Harmony Indiana(473 clicks)

Exploring the West from Monticello(444 clicks)
Lewis & Clark. Maps

Founder Online, The(495 clicks)
Correspondence and Other Writings of Six Major Shapers of the United States: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Over 149,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the authoritative Founding Fathers Papers projects. Quick links About Founders Online Major Funders Search Help How to Use This Site Frequently Asked Questions Contact Us

Founder's Constitution(488 clicks)
Hailed as "the Oxford English Dictionary of American constitutional history," the print edition of The Founders' Constitution has proved since its publication in 1986 to be an invaluable aid to all those seeking a deeper understanding of one of our nation's most important legal documents.

H-SHEAR(448 clicks)
The site "provides an interactive network/forum for scholars of the History of the Early American Republic."

Hamilton, Alexander(448 clicks)

Hamiltov, Alexander(455 clicks)
Short bio by Ralph Ketcham

History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark(508 clicks)
"This account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, published in 1814, is based on the detailed journals kept by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the leaders of expedition. The book begins with “Life of Captain Lewis,” written by Thomas Jefferson, which reproduces Jefferson’s detailed instructions to Lewis regarding the goals of the expedition. “The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River, and such principal streams of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregan [sic], Colorado, or any other river, may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across the continent, for purposes of commerce.” The 29-man Corps of Discovery set out from St. Louis on May 14, 1804. In the next 28 months, Lewis and Clark traveled more than 12,000 kilometers through unfamiliar terrain inhabited by Indian tribes. By the end of 1804, they had made it to the Great Bend of the Missouri River. In 1805, they journeyed up the Missouri, across the Rocky Mountains, and down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. After suffering through a dismal winter, the members of the expedition began their long return journey, finally reaching Saint Louis on September 23, 1806."

Indian Wars in the Northwest Territory(452 clicks)
Links to: Early Amerca's Bloodiest Battle (St. Clair's Defeat); Fallen Timbers Battlefield; Soldiers of the Legion; "Mad" Anthony Wayne at Fallen Timbers; Picture of the Battle of Fallen Timbers; Greenville Treaty Flag Article; Anakapia: "Our Protector" of the Treaty of Greenville; The Greenville Treaty; Fort Recovery; Battle of Tippecanoe; Information about Anthony Shane; Simon Kenton; Simon Girty

James Madison Museum(438 clicks)
Father of the US constitution and fourth president of the US. Museum contains memorabilia.

Jefferson Looks Westward(888 clicks)
President Secretly Sought Funds from Congress to Explore Louisiana Territory, Develop Trade By James Worsham

John Marshall(444 clicks)
Besides a biography of Marshall, this site includes his famous cases: Marbury v. Madison (1803), McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), Cohens v. Virginia (1821), Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia (1831).

John Marshall (470 clicks)

John Taylor, Tyranny Unmasked(454 clicks)
Written in 1820, attacks what he saw as the Jeffersonian departures from republican orthodoxy.

Journal of William Maclay, United States Senator from Pennsylvania, 1789-1791(467 clicks)
"William Maclay served as one of the first two senators from Pennsylvania. He drew a two-year term in the allotment of term lengths for the 1st Congress and was not reelected. A man of strong, not to say acerbic, opinions, Maclay soon felt himself to be swimming against the stream. Within two months of the opening of the first session he had begun to keep a diary, which he continued for virtually every day of the three sessions of the 1st Congress. Because Senate sessions were closed to the public until 1795, his is one of the few accounts we have of Senate floor activity in the early congresses."

Journals of Lewis & Clark(473 clicks)

Kentucky Resolution (1799)(464 clicks)
Jefferson's response to the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Land Ordinance of 1785 (excerpts)(438 clicks)
The salient portions of this famous ordinance.

Letters from the Middle Kingdom(560 clicks)
The Origins of America's China Policy By David Gedalecia

Lewis & Clark(586 clicks)
From PBS

Lewis & Clark(472 clicks)
Interactive site from the National Gwographic

Lewis & Clark Trail(445 clicks)
The mission of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation is to honor the remarkable historic legacy of Lewis and Clark through research, education, preservation, promotion, and coordination.

Lewis and Clark Across Missouri(548 clicks)
This website serves geographical information and maps that are products of the LEWIS AND CLARK HISTORIC LANDSCAPE PROJECT that has been conducted at the Geographic Resources Center (GRC), Department of Geography, University of Missouri in partnership with the Missouri State Archives, Office of the Missouri Secretary of State. With the primary goals to geo-reference, digitize, and map all of the retrievable information from the Lewis and Clark journals and the 18th and 19th-century land survey notes along the Big River Corridors of the state of Missouri, this effort should serve as a significant educational contribution to the national commemoration of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial (2003-2006).

Lewis and Clark Among the Indians of the Pacific Northwest(466 clicks)
A Curriculum Project for the History of the Pacific Northwest in Washington State Schools Developed by: Dane Netherton

Lewis and Clark Expedition(495 clicks)
History of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, to the sources of Missouri, thence across the Rocky Mountains, and down the river Columbia to the Pacific Ocean : performed during the years 1804, 1805, 1806, by order of the government of the United States

Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery(490 clicks)
PBS special by Ken Burns.

Liars for Jesus(351 clicks)
Corrections to political but false views.

Louisiana Purchase(297 clicks)
National Archives Exhibition

Louisiana Purchase(339 clicks)
Three documents including the treaty itself.

Madison, James(307 clicks)

Marbury's Travail(500 clicks)
MARBURY'S TRAVAIL: FEDERALIST POLITICS AND WILLIAM MARBURY'S APPOINTMENT AS JUSTICE OF THE PEACE by David F. Forte. Copyright (c) 1996 The Catholic University Law Review .Catholic University Law Review, Winter, 1996, 45 Cath. U.L. Rev. 349

Memoir of Leonard Covington(347 clicks)
War of 1812

Notes on the State of Virginia(378 clicks)
The Massachusetts Historical Society owns a remarkable document in Thomas Jefferson's own handwriting, the text of his only full-length book, Notes on the State of Virginia. When Jefferson was in Paris in 1785 representing the United States as a diplomat, he paid to have 200 copies of Notes printed for private distribution. Prior to publication, Jefferson reworked an earlier version of his manuscript by using sealing wax to attach corrections and changes written on small additional pieces of paper to full handwritten pages. He also expanded the text by inserting additional full pages. These changes show the evolution of Jefferson's ideas on a number of topics, and the supplemental information he gathered as he wrote. This website allows the reader to interact directly with Jefferson's complex manuscript by reading the original manuscript and by following all the changes that he made to the text before it was first published—including the opportunity to see passages written by Jefferson that have been hidden by attachments for more than two centuries.

Now We Find It Necessary to Take Care of Ourselves"(340 clicks)

Noxious Weed(296 clicks)
Anti-Tobacco movement in early America

Order vs. Liberty(310 clicks)
"When Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, it opened a heated debate about the limits of freedom in a free society."

Papers of George Washington(426 clicks)

Papers of the War Department(461 clicks)
Fire destroyed the office of the War Department and all its files in 1800, and for decades historians believed that the collection, and the window it provided into the workings of the early federal government, was lost forever. Thanks to a decade-long effort to retrieve copies of the files scattered in archives across the country, the collection has been reconstituted and is offered here as a fully-searchable digital database.

Papers of Thomas Jefferson(309 clicks)
Avalon Project

Politics for the American Farmer(317 clicks)
1807 pamphlet

President Adams Proclaims America's Government Is Secular(474 clicks)
Some people today assert that the United States government came from Christian foundations but this site has a document signed by Adams which contradicts this belief.

Register of Debates, 1824-1837(414 clicks)
"The Register of Debates is a record of the congressional debates of the 18th Congress, 2nd session through the 25th Congress, 1st session (1824-37). It is the second of the four series of publications containing the debates of Congress. It was preceded by the Annals of Congress and succeeded by The Congressional Globe."

Religion and the Founding of the American Republic(316 clicks)
Library of Congress exhibit

Rise of an American Institution: The Stock Market, The(304 clicks)
by Brian Murphy

Road through the Wilderness: The Making of the National Road(294 clicks)
T1mothy Cumrin

Rough and Tumble World of 19th-Century Politics, The(312 clicks)
early 19th century

Sacagawea of the Lewis and Clark Expedition(313 clicks)
Short biography of the woman who helped Lewis and Clark.

Shays' Rebellion, 1787(310 clicks)
"Daniel Shays, outraged by the denial of paper money to prevent foreclosure on the lands of hardworking farmers, led a rebellion against the government to prove how serious the farmers of the time were. They had lost all of their land and property because of the postwar depression and Shays was fighting not only for himself but for his friends as well. Shays needed backup and Luke Day and his fleet were supposed to come and aid Shays during the attack, but because of a lack in communication, Shays was defeated and forced to flee."

Shays’s Rebellion: Letters(332 clicks)
Shays’s Rebellion: Letters of Generals William Shepard and Benjamin Lincoln to Governor James Bowdoin of Massachusetts (1787)

The Anti-Federalist Papers(329 clicks)
Forty-seven documents arguing against adoption of the Constitution of 1787.

The Bank that Hamilton Built(453 clicks)
At the dawn of the Republic, the First Bank of the United States created a model for American financial markets and monetary policy that endures to this day. By Phil Davies

The Beginning of a Revolution: Waltham and The Boston Manufacturing Company(308 clicks)
By Kenton Beerman in the Concord Review

The Disaster of the Whaling Ship Essex(340 clicks)

The Dominant Party(314 clicks)
With the decline of the Federalist Party, the Democratic Party became dominant.

The Early America Review(398 clicks)
A Journal of Fact and Opinion On the People, Issues and Events Of 18th Century America

The Federalist Papers(353 clicks)
From the Library of Congress

The Feuding Fathers (363 clicks)
Americans lament the partisan venom of today's politics, but for sheer verbal savagery, the country's founders were in a league of their own. Ron Chernow on the Revolutionary origins of divisive discourse.

The Founding Fathers(291 clicks)
From the National Archives. "In all, 55 delegates attended the Constitutional Convention sessions, but only 39 actually signed the Constitution. The delegates ranged in age from Jonathan Dayton, aged 26, to Benjamin Franklin, aged 81, who was so infirm that he had to be carried to sessions in a sedan chair. You can also read a general biographical overview of the delegates."

The Judiciary Act of 1789(491 clicks)
Created the federal judiciary.

The Madison Debates(330 clicks)
James Madison kept notes during the Constitutional Convention which are are only record of what transpired. The Avalon Project has digitized these notes and made them searchable.

The Real Treason of Aaron Burr(316 clicks)
"In 1807, Aaron Burr was tried and acquitted on charges of treason for his “adventures” in the American West, but he had fallen out of favor in American life long before, after he had run for president against Thomas Jefferson, served a single term as vice president, and shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel. A free spender, a womanizer, and the only Founding Father who was actually descended from the English aristocracy, Burr was famously secretive and conspiratorial. In this lecture, historian Gordon Wood argues that Burr’s true treason was not his actions in the West but his naked ambition, his lack of principals and character that made him a threat to the young republic."

The Thomas Jefferson Papers(374 clicks)
From the Library of Congress

The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources, 1745-1799(332 clicks)
prepared under the direction of the United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission and published by authority of Congress; John C. Fitzpatrick, editor ... Published 1931 by U.S. Govt. Print. Off. in Washington .

To the Western Ocean(336 clicks)
Palling the Lewis & Clark Expedition

Transportation in the Early Republic(427 clicks)

Travels in the Interior of America(298 clicks)
From 1808-1811 by John Bradbury

U.S. Banking System: Origin, Development, and Regulation, The(354 clicks)
by Richard Sylla

Virginia Resolution (1798)(341 clicks)
Madison's response to the Alien and Sedition Acts.

War of 1812(339 clicks)
Site dedicated to the War of 1812.

War of 1812(502 clicks)
Extracted from AMERICAN MILITARY HISTORY, ARMY HISTORICAL SERIES, OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF MILITARY HISTORY, UNITED STATES ARMY

War of 1812 Rosters for Ohio(323 clicks)
Search the full text of the roster from the Adjutant General records. Ohio furnished 1,759 Officers and 24,521 enlisted men for this war.

Washington's Farewell Address(298 clicks)
The address plus the history of it

Washington, George(348 clicks)

Women in the Early National U.S.(326 clicks)