More than 235 years after Thomas Paine challenged the American colonists to free themselves from British rule in his treatise “Common Sense,” history buffs around the world can study Paine’s rousing words and other Revolutionary-era texts through the Princeton University Digital Library.
Nearly 150 books, pamphlets and prints from the Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution were recently digitized in their original form and are available online for free. Readers may virtually flip through the frayed-edge pages of “Common Sense,” which helped inspire the Declaration of Independence after it was published in 1776, or enlarge detailed text and images featured in the works of Founding Fathers John Hancock, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and many others. (More)
