It is this kind of material in convenient form that Translations and Reprints contain. The pamphlet form commends them especially for classroom use. In the bound form the six volumes are very well adapted for reference work in the school library.
Besides these extracts from the original sources, there are published by the Department of History of the University of Pennsylvania the “Source Book of the Renaissance,” by Professor Merrick Whitcomb, “Documents on Federal Relations,” by Professor H. V. Ames, and various Syllabuses, those of special interest to teachers being Munro and Sellery’s Syllabus of the History of the Middle Ages, 1909, and Ames’s Syllabus of American Colonial History, revised edition, 1908.
Published by
Department of History
University of Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA
[A Source-Book of American History]
Ten years ago had a high school teacher received a copy of such a work as Professor MacDonald’s “Documentary Source-Book of American History” he would have read it with wonder that so many really significant historical documents could be bound together between the covers of one small volume. To-day, thanks to the efforts of Professor MacDonald himself, of Professor Hart, and of many others, we are well supplied with source-books for several periods of American history. Consequently, the latest volume of Professor MacDonald has been accepted as a matter of course; and frequently reviewers have contented themselves with saying that it contained some of the materials already printed in the author’s earlier volumes—“Select Charters,” “Select Documents,” and “Select Statutes.” Such passing notice fails to do the new work justice, and it is the purpose of this short review to tell the reader the classes of material which are contained within the six hundred pages of the Documentary Source-Book.
The extracts contained in the volume consist, in the main, of constitutional or statutory documents, and in this respect differ from the material which has been printed by Professor Hart in his “Source-Readers,” and his “History by Contemporaries,” where the emphasis is placed upon narratives, descriptions, and personal contemporary opinions.
Colonial and Revolutionary Documents.
Out of 187 documents, 32 are devoted to the colonial period down to 1764; about 22 deal with the revolutionary period from 1765 to 1789; and the remaining 133 numbers are concerned with the national period. For the colonial period, there are charters of eleven of the thirteen colonies; there are documents illustrative of popular government, such as the Mayflower Compact, the ordinance establishing representative government in Virginia, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, and of New Haven. The relation of the colonies to England is shown by the Navigation Acts, the Molasses Act, the Sugar Act, and the royal proclamation of 1763. The relation to other countries is shown by extracts from the treaty of Utrecht and the treaty of Paris in 1763. No person who is teaching the colonial period even to elementary students should be without the fresh contact with the documents which these extracts make possible.