Papers, 1758-1885. Opening the volume is a brief section containing assorted materials of widely scattered dates concerning persons and events prior to 1776. These include Draper's rough draft of an article (1851) on the Sandy Creek expedition against the Shawnee in 1756, a few letters to him on this topic, contemporary copies of two 1758 letters by Henry Bouquet and John Hazlett on the destruction of Fort Duquesne by the French, newspaper clippings about Chief Kishkalwa of the Shawnee and Chief Blackbird of the Omaha, and a short excerpt from Abraham Hite's journal in Kentucky in 1775.

Interesting and significant original correspondence, 1776-1777, composes the bulk of this volume. More than two dozen letters written in 1776 from Williamsburg, Virginia, and from frontier outposts concern the origin and mounting of the expedition against the Cherokee. Approximately ninety letters in 1777 pertain to events on the Virginia and Pennsylvania frontiers: Indian raids with losses of lives, Negroes, and crops; the ravages of measles and smallpox among the garrison at Fort Pitt; the difficulties of raising and provisioning militia; problems of communication; and relations between Congress and colonial governments. Numerous letters by trader George Morgan (written under his Indian name of Taimenend), Moravian missionary David Zeisberger, Chief White Eyes of the Delaware, and other government and military officials concern the desire of the Christianized Delaware to remain at peace.

Correspondents in 1776 included Matthew Arbuckle, John Bowyer, William Christian, Andrew Donnally, William Fleming, Patrick Lockhart, William McClenechan, William McKee, Arthur Matthews, John Page, Edmund, Pendleton, William Preston, Alexander Purdie, and John Sevier. The great majority of the 1777 letters were addressed to Edward Hand, with a few sent to William Fleming. In addition to Arbuckle, Bowyer, Hand, McKee, and Page, other writers in this year were Arthur Campbell, James Chew, William Cross, John Dickinson, Thomas Gaddis, John Gibson, Patrick Henry, Abraham Hite, Morgan Jones, William Linn, Archibald Lochry, James McIlhany, Samuel Mason, Samuel Miller, James Milligan, John Minor, Samuel Moorhead, Zackwell Morgan, Joseph Ogle, Dorsey Pentecost, John Proctor, Andrew Robinson, William Russell, Philip Schuyler, David Shepherd, George Skillem, David McClure Smith, Thomas Smith, Archibald Steel, Henry Taylor, Stephen Trigg, George Woods, and William Zane. Slightly fewer than half of these letters were published by Reuben G. Thwaites and Louise Phelps Kellogg in The Revolution on the Upper Ohio, 1775-1777 (1908) and Frontier Defense on the Upper Ohio, 1777-1778 (1912).