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At the Institute’s core is the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the great archives in American history. More than 85,000 items cover five hundred years of American history, from Columbus’s 1493 letter describing the New World through the end of the twentieth century.

United States. Continental Congress. Letter from the General Congress at Philadelphia, September the 5th, 1774, to the People of Great Britain.

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC04774 Author/Creator: United States. Continental Congress. Place Written: Bristol, England Type: Broadside Date: 1774/09/05 Pagination: 1 broadside Height: 45.9 cm, Width: 30.5 cm Order a Copy

This document is a long broadside, printed in four columns and addressed to the people of Great Britain. The broadside says: "Know then, that we consider, and do insist that we are, and ought to be, free as our fellow subjects in Britain, and that no power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent." Mentions numerous rights, including trial by jury. Someone has circled misspellings (or variations?) in pencil. (Sothebys suggested that this broadside was printed in Bristol, England. Apparently unrecorded.)

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