The Reader
The whole text, not a link to it.
Every entry in the Founders’ Library used to end at somebody else’s website. 17 of 20 are now here in full — 126,975 words — each one carrying where this copy came from and exactly what was taken from it. No account, nothing recorded, and once a page is open it needs no network.
- The Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson, with the Committee of Five and the Second Continental Congress · 1776 · 1,477 words
- Common Sense
Thomas Paine · 1776 · 21,706 words
- The Constitution — Preamble
The Constitutional Convention; drafted by the Committee of Style (Gouverneur Morris) · 1787 · 4,601 words
- Federalist No. 10
James Madison (as Publius) · 1787 · 3,031 words
- Federalist No. 51
James Madison (as Publius) · 1788 · 1,947 words
- Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport
George Washington · 1790 · 357 words
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin · 1791 · 66,243 words
- Benjamin Banneker's letter to Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Banneker · 1791 · 1,487 words
- Washington's Farewell Address
George Washington (with drafting by Hamilton and Madison) · 1796 · 6,090 words
- Democracy in America — on associations
Alexis de Tocqueville (trans. Henry Reeve) · 1840 · 1,783 words
- Declaration of Sentiments (Seneca Falls)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Seneca Falls Convention · 1848 · 1,247 words
- Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau · 1849 · 9,354 words
- "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
Frederick Douglass · 1852 · 1,955 words
- I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman · 1860 · 157 words
- Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
Abraham Lincoln · 1865 · 698 words
- The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus · 1883 · 110 words
- The Atlanta Exposition Address
Booker T. Washington · 1895 · 4,732 words
3 texts are not here yet, and why
- "Remember the Ladies" — letter to John Adams (1776): founders.archives.gov sits behind an AWS WAF JavaScript challenge; a plain HTTP client receives an empty 202. Needs a browser session or the Massachusetts Historical Society edition.
- The Gettysburg Address (1863): loc.gov's transcript pages render the text with JavaScript, and no allowlisted .gov mirror served it to a plain fetch. The text is unambiguously public domain (1863); what is missing is a provable-provenance source, not permission.
- "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?" (1873): No allowlisted transcript located by direct fetch; the 1873 speech needs a sourced .gov or PD-proven text before it can ship.
None of these are missing for copyright reasons — every one is public domain. What is missing is a source whose provenance this project can prove, and a text we cannot vouch for is worse than a link.
The Founders’ Library holds the context, the disputes, and the kids’ retelling for each of these — this room is only for reading them.