BQ. QK IK. AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1787 COLLECTED AND EDITED BY WILLIS MASON WEST SOMETIME PROFESSOR Ojr HISTORY AND HBAJD Off THE DBFA. KTMBNT AT THB - OKIVBReiTY OF MINNESOTA ALLYN AND BACON FOREWORD EARLY American history is especially suited for source work m secondary schools and undeigraduate college classes After the year 1800 3 there are too many documents and many of them are too long. The student can get no systematic sur vey nor any sense of continuity , and source work is therefore merely illustrative of particular incidents But, for the early period, it is possible, by careful selection and exclusion, to lay a basis for a fairly connected study To do this, it is necessary to combine m one volume selec tions which are usually grouped separately, as Documents and as Readings, such, for instance, as the Massachusetts charter, on the one hand, and Wmthrops letters to his wife, on the other. Kigid scholarship may object to the inclusion of suoh different sorts of sources between the same covers But students cannot be expected to own or use more than one volume of sources in American history , and the practical edu cational advantages of the combination seem to me to outweigh, all possible objections besides which, something might be said for the arrangement in itself, for young students, on the side of interest and convenience A number of admirable collections of sources for schools are already m use And yet, in preparing my Amencan History and Government, 1 I found no single volume which contained the different kinds of source material desirable for illustration, while much of the most valuable material was still inaccessible in. any collection Some two-thirds of the selections m the present volume, I believe, have not previously appeared in aad Bacon, 1913, lii 1V FOREWORD Source Books, and, for many of the customary documents, I have found it desirable to print parts nob usually given Thus, for Gorges Patent foi Maine, instead of reproducing the ter ritorial granfc which is all that is given in the only Source Book which touches on that document, I have chosen rather to give the portion authorizing a degree of popular self-govern ment the refeience to the parliament in New England . In a few cases, documents which might have been expected are not given, because extracts from them are used freely in the American History and Government, to which this is a com panion volume The most important cases of this character are noted at appropriate points. In general, in the selection and arrangement of documents, special emphasis has been given to the following topics 1 the idealistic motives back of American colonization in Virginia as well as in Puritan New England, 2 the evolution of political institutions in Virginia and in typical Northern colonies, especially of rep resentative government and of the town meeting, and of such details as the use of the ballot, 3 the very imperfect na ture of democracy, political and social, in colonial America, so that the student may better appreciate our later growth, 4 social conditions, necessarily a rather fragmentary treat ment , 6 the evolution of commonwealths out of colonies in the Revolution , and 6 the breakdown, of the Confederation and the making of the Constitution Many typical documents are given entire. Other selections are excerpted carefully In such cases, omissions are indi cated, of course, and the substance of the omitted matter is usually indicated in brackets In the case of a few selections, like those fromWiaithrQp T s jSwtory, the original document has already been published in standard editions with modernized spelling Buch editions have been followed The text of all other documents has been reproduced faithfully, except for such depaitutfes as are authorized in the American Historical j, ss, ociatipj3. 8 Suggestions for the Printing of Documents i... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.