Table of Contents:
  • The making of the republic
  • Introduction
  • Letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania, Letter XII / John Dickinson
  • The Declaration of Independence / Thomas Jefferson
  • The crisis, number I ; From The rights of man, Part II ; From The age of reason: "Credo" / Thomas Paine
  • History of the ... American revolution, Chapter XXX / Mercy Warren
  • Circular to the States / George Washington
  • The federalist, I, X, XXXIII / Alexander Hamilton and James Madison
  • Letters on various ... subjects: Introduction, XIX, XX
  • The dangers of American liberty / Fisher Ames
  • From The Jeffersoniad, Canto IV ; From Pills, poetical, political, and philosophical, "Parody," "Epitaph" / Thomas Green Fessenden
  • Correspondence, 1813-1826 / John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
  • Patterns of life and thought in America
  • Introduction
  • From Notes on the state of Virginia / Thomas Jefferson
  • From An essay on the causes of the variety of complexion and figure in the human species / Samuel Stanhope Smith
  • From The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano / Olaudah Equiano
  • The life of George Washington, Chapters II and III / Mason Locke Weems
  • Two French views of America
  • From Letters from an American farmer / Hector St. John De Crevecoeur
  • Moreau de St. Méry's American journey / Mason De St. Méry's
  • From Travels / William Bartram
  • From A journal of a voyage up the Missouri river in 1811 / Henry Marie Brackenridge
  • "The last of the boatmen" / Morgan Neville
  • Arator, Nos. 59 and 60. / John Taylor of Caroline
  • From Exemplified experience / Lorenzo Dow
  • A national literary culture
  • Introduction
  • Articles of belief and acts of religion ; "My plain country Joan" ; "The antediluvians were all very sober" ; "Old mistresses apologue" ; To Peter Collinson, October 19 1752 ; To Elizabeth Hubbard, February 22, 1756 ; Father Abraham's speech ; To Mary Stevenson, June 11, 1760 ; To Jane Mecom, March 2, 1767 ; "An edict by the king of Prussia" ; To Jonathan Shipley, July 7, 1775 ; "The sale of the Hessians" ; The ephemera" ; "The whistle" ; To Joseph Priestley, February 8, 1780 ; To George Washington, March 5, 1780 / Benjamin Franklin
  • "A rebus, by I.B." ; "An answer to the rebus" ; "To the University of Cambridge, in New England' ; "On being brought from Africa to America" ; "An hymn to the evening" ; "To his excellency General Washington" / Phillis Wheatley
  • From The progress of dulness / John Trumbull
  • From Modern chivalry / Hugh Henry Brackenridge
  • "The critics. A fable" ; "A song" ; "Columbia" ; From Greenfield Hill ; "Psalm CXXXVII" / Timothy Dwight
  • "To an author" ; Pictures of Columbus, XIV-XVIII ; The house of night ; The beauties of Santa Cruz ; "The hurricane" ; "To the memory of the brave Americans" ; "The wild honey suckle" ; "The Indian burying ground" ; "The vanity of existence" ; From Political biography ; "A political litany" ; "Epigram" ; "Lines [on Rivington]" ; "To a noisy politician" ; "Stanzas [on Thomas Paine]" ; "Ode [God save the rights of man]" ; "Belief and unbelief" ; "Reflections" ; "On the universality and other attributes of the God of nature" ; "On the uniformity and perfection of nature" ; "On the religion of nature" / Philip Freneau
  • A garland of early spring poets
  • "The ballad of Nathan Hale" / Anonymous
  • "The epilogue" / Anonymous
  • "The present age" / Anonymous
  • "What Is happiness?" / Joseph Brown Ladd
  • "The family blood" / Aaron Cleveland
  • "The African chief" / Sarah Wentworth Morton
  • "On General Ethan Allen" / Lemuel Hopkins
  • "Lines spoken by a boy of seven years" / David Everett
  • "Advice to a raven in Russia" / Joel Barlow
  • "Defence of Fort M'Henry" / Francis Scott Key
  • The contrast / Royall Tyler
  • A history of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker, Book III, Chapters VI-VIII; Book VI, Chapters II, VII-VIII / Washington Irving.