Collecting Americana: the Founding Texts of American History.

One of the most fascinating genres to collect, Americana encompasses a broad range of titles, the most rare and desirable being the earliest texts printed in America. Containing resounding messages that played a significant role in the foundation and political history of the United States, among the most important books in American history are Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis, Alexander Hamilton’s The Federalist, Benjamin Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity, and Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language.

Exceptionally rare 1776 printing of Paine’s famous call to arms The American Crisis

“These are the times that try men’s souls” – Thomas Paine.

First published in the Philadelphia Journal on 19 December 1776, Paine’s American Crisis constituted a vitally important rallying cry to the dispirited American soldiers of the Revolutionary War, opening with the stirring words: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” It was read, in fact, at General Washington’s orders, to the American troops on Christmas Day 1776, before the crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton.

Paine’s famous call to arms appeared in pamphlet form four days after its initial appearance in the Philadelphia Journal, soon circulating through the major cities. In January, Paine wrote the second Crisis as an open letter to Lord Richard Viscount Howe, the head of the British fleet Paine watched sail up New York Bay, endeavoring “to show the impossibility of the enemy making any conquest of America.”

First edition of The Federalist, one of the rarest and most significant books in American political history

“Accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny” – James Madison.

One of the rarest and most significant works in American political history, The Federalist Papers exerted a powerful influence in procuring the adoption of the Federal Constitution. “When Alexander Hamilton invited his fellow New Yorker John Jay and James Madison, a Virginian, to join him in writing the series of essays published as The Federalist, it was to meet the immediate need of convincing the reluctant New York State electorate of the necessity of ratifying the newly proposed Constitution of the United States. The 85 essays, under the pseudonym ‘Publius,’ were designed as political propaganda, not as a treatise of political philosophy. In spite of this, The Federalist survives as one of the new nation’s most important contributions to the theory of government” (PMM, 234).

“There is probably no work in so small a compass that contains so much valuable political information. The true principles of a republican form of government are here unfolded with great clearness and simplicity” (Church 1230).

First complete edition of Benjamin Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity

“The most important scientific book of 18th-century America” – Printing and the Mind of Man.

“Franklin’s most important scientific publication,” Experiments and Observations contains detailed accounts of the founding father’s crucial kite and key experiment, his work with Leiden jars, lightning rods and charged clouds” (Norman 830).

This, the fourth, first complete, and most desirable edition of Franklin’s important work contains for the first time complete notes on all of the experiments as well as correspondence between Peter Collinson, Franklin, and several other collaborators. The earlier editions, each issued in three parts as separately published pamphlets usually bound together, were carelessly published. Franklin edited this new one-volume edition himself, significantly revising the text, adding for the first time a number of his own philosophical letters and papers, introducing footnotes, correcting errors, and adding an index.

First edition of Benjamin Franklin’s Philosophical and Miscellaneous Papers; exquisitely bound in full contemporary tree calf

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” – Benjamin Franklin.

Intended by the publisher as a companion volume to the Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1769) and his Political, Miscellaneous and Philosophical Pieces (1779), Franklin’s Philosophical and Miscellaneous Papers contains a selection of important political essays including his Remarks concerning the Savages in North America (1784), The letter from Dr. B. Franklin to Benjamin Vaughan… of Privateering (1785), and Information to those who would remove to America (1784), which is “one of the clearest expressions of his belief that American society should be based on the virtues of the middle… classes” (Isaacson, 423).

First editions of the scarce Folwell and Ross printings of the Laws of the United States as passed by the first five Congresses

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” – The Declaration of Independence.

Printed in three volumes, the scarce first Richard Folwell printings of the Laws of the United States as passed by the first five Congresses contain the texts of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Treaty of Paris, and all the Congressional acts passed by the first through fourth Congresses with an extensive index in the third volume containing in itself a complete Digest of all the Laws of the United States. An additional fourth volume contains important early official printings of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Also notable throughout this four-volume set are United States treaties establishing foreign and Native American relations, laws governing copyright, slavery, crime, duties, fisheries, banking, judicial powers, the office of the President, the establishment of the Treasury and War departments, the Post Office, and the census.

Rare first edition of Webster’s monumental American Dictionary, one of only 2500 copies; bound in full contemporary calf

“If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted” – Noah Webster.

In 1807 Webster began compiling a fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language; it took twenty-eight years to complete. “As a whole, Webster’s American Dictionary was a scholarly achievement of the first order, richly deserving of its great reputation at home and abroad” (DAB). With definitions for “some 70,000 words—15,000 more than any previous English lexicon… Although only 2500 copies of the first edition were printed, the work established Webster as a lexicographer of international repute” (Lathem, 76 United Statesiana 9).