American History: Primary Sources by Time Period

This collaboration between the Wisconsin Historical Society and National History Day contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.

Sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Cultural Readings presents a range of primary source materials that convey the process of colonization, chiefly from the European colonizers' perspectives, but also from that of Native Americans; it also includes scholarly essays.

Part of American Memory, this resource consists of 15,000 pages of original historical material documenting the land, peoples, exploration, and transformation of the trans-Appalachian West from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century.

This University of Virginia project provides historical analyses and original source documents concerning the Colony's existence in the period of 1620-1691.

This "documentary archive and transcription project," a collaboration between several scholars and institutions, provides primary source material concerning these 1692 trials.

A collaborative project between Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the University of Virginia, Virtual Jamestown is a digital research, teaching, and learning project that explores the legacies of the Jamestown settlement and the "Virginia experiment."

You can browse the complete Franklin papers according to their chronological order in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, edited and published at Yale.

From the Massachusetts Historical Society. A list of resources and links to digital collections

Maintained by the Lewis and Clark Fort Mandan Foundation of Washburn, North Dakota, with the aim making this the most comprehensive and useful Lewis and Clark website on the Internet.

This collection, presented by American Memory, includes excerpts from Congressional journals, resolutions, proclamations, committee reports, treaties, and early printed versions of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

(1745-1829)
An online index and database of over 13,000 documents, including correspondence, memos, diaries, etc. written by or to the American statesman John Jay

This site provides searchable full text of the Nebraska edition of the Lewis and Clark journals as well as images, audio files, Native American perspectives, and other texts.

A large collection of electronic books from thinkers and politicians, including Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and others.

A Web guide developed by the Library of Congress listing and linking to various documents related to the American Revolution.

Donated to the Princeton Library, this collection includes more than 150 books, pamphlets and prints representing the following themes: the intellectual origins of the American Revolution; the Revolution itself; the early years of the republic; the resulting spread of democratic ideas in the Atlantic world; and the effort to abolish the slave trade in both Great Britain and the United States.

A project of the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University

The records displayed in this exhibit document the Scotts' early struggle to gain their freedom through litigation and are the only extant records of this significant case as it was heard in the St. Louis Circuit Court. This collection was expanded from 85 - 111 documents, over 400 pages of text.

This Northern Illinois University site presents primary source materials from Lincoln's Illinois years (1830-1861) and other resources for study of antebellum Illinois.

This Virginia Tech site provides links to transcriptions of newspaper articles, indexes, images, bibliographies, timelines, and official documents related to the 1846-1848 war.

Explores multigenerational black, white, and mixed family networks in early Washington, D.C., by collecting, digitizing, making accessible, and analyzing thousands of case files from the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Maryland state courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court

A project of the Furman University Department of History, this site provides editorials of the partisan press in antebellum America, currently including those concerning the Nebraska bill debates, Dred Scott, John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry, and the attack on Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner by South Carolina representative Preston Brooks.

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is taking part in the commemorations for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the presidency of Abraham Lincoln with a series of seven related exhibitions. Accompanying these exhibitions are weekly blog entries, podcasts and videos written and produced by experts on Civil War topics.

This site, created by George Mason University's Library, Special Collections, provides images of wood engravings, lithographs, chromolithographs, photolithographs, and more; many stem from the time of the Civil War, and most depict Civil War battles and military maps

This New York Public Library collection contains photographs from the United States Sanitary Commission Collection, 1861-1872

This Duke University Library site features primary source documents and links to other resources concerning women in the Civil War

Searchable full-text edition of the 1953 publication, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Includes speeches, correspondence, and more, compiled by the Abraham Lincoln Association.

This Wake Forest University collection consists of over 250 poems written by Southerners and Confederate sympathizers during the Civil War

This site, developed by Tulane University, uses text, images, and sound to reconstruct policy decision making during from the time of Lincoln's election to the battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861.

Dates covered: 1830-1880
Items are drawn primarily from the collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia, this site is published by the University of Pennsylvania. Includes pamphlets, books, broadsides, cartoons, clippings, paintings, and maps, about America

This Ohio State University project provides access to documents, images, and other primary source material, with special strengths in Civil War, including the Official Records; “the 128 volumes of the Official Records provide the most comprehensive, authoritative, and voluminous reference on Civil War operations.”

This site offers sample documents from the Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 project developed at the University of Maryland.

A nonprofit organization supporting the study and love of American history through a wide range of programs and resources for students, teachers, scholars, and history enthusiasts throughout the nation. Topics covered include Slavery and Abolition; Civil War Era; Abraham Lincoln.

A digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers.

This collaboration between the Chicago Historical Society (CHS) and the Gilder Lehrman Institute, with text by Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney, Director of Historical Documentation at the CHS, examines slavery; free and slave-based economies; and the legacy of the Civil War as destruction and as catalyst.

Dates covered: 1840-1900
A collaborative effort between Cornell and the University of Michigan makes available primary sources in American social history from each university's library.

From the University of North Carolina, this collection presents images from woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, and photographs--most of these were made by people accompanying Union forces, or were made from sketches and other information they provided.

This site, developed by Edward L. Ayres at the University of Virginia, provides a wealth of primary sources, including letters, diaries, church and census records, newspapers, and speeches, to document one Northern and one Southern community during the Civil War era.

Includes the Civil War Letters (Edward A. Fox Collection), containing original letters from Fox to his mother from August 1862 - February 1863, describing his experiences while serving with the Union Army in northern Virginia, and the June and Gilbert Krueger Civil War Letters Collection, containing letters from Iowa soldiers (Union Army) on the fighting front in Georgia, 1861-65.
***Search for these collections by name

Dates covered: 1818-1907 (The bulk were published between 1875-1900)
The Daniel A. P. Murray Pamphlet Collection presents a panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture, spanning almost one hundred years from the early 19th through the early 20th centuries. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love.

full text of the 1910 book
1863-1910
The book is a culmination of the findings of the Clifton Conference -- which took place from 1901 to 1908 to discuss educational and religious opportunities available to African Americans.It was compiled by W. N. Hartshorn of Clifton, Massachusetts, to celebrate the "religious, moral, and educational development of the American Negro since his emancipation."

This project of the University of Maryland draws on materials from the National Archives of the United States to document people's movement from slavery to emancipation.

This Harpweek site compiles over 200 excerpts from Harper's Weekly concerning the 1868 Johnson impeachment.

This Brown University collection presents broadsides, sheet music, pamphlets, and government publications gathered over three centuries to researchers interested in the history of alcoholism and how the media and arts spread ideas and information.

This collection consists of selected correspondence, financial records, contracts, and advertising materials from the Douglass Theatre's records in the Middle Georgia Archives' Charles Henry Douglass business records, and it documents the amusements available to Macon's African American population and the business dealings of this African American entrepreneur from 1912 to the 1930s.

This online exhibit by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History provides information and images on the 19th-Century feather trade; hunting and collecting; and the rise of the Audobon Movement in the 1890s.

This project presents primary source material from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, "the center of American eugenics research from 1910-1940."

This American Memory site assembles a wide array of Library of Congress source materials from the 1920s that document the widespread prosperity of the Coolidge years, the nation's transition to a mass consumer economy, and the role of government in this transition

This site, produced by the Baruch College Library, provides access to images of the post-World War I Red Scare.

This University of Maryland site provides access to the papers of this seminal figure in labor history, the U.S.'s leading trade unionist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and president of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 to 1924.

From February 8, 1918, to June 13, 1919, by order of General John J. Pershing, the United States Army published a newspaper for its forces in France, The Stars and Stripes. This online collection, presented by the Serial and Government Publications Division of the Library of Congress, includes the complete seventy-one-week run of the newspaper's World War I edition.

This online exhibit, produced by Cornell University and its School of Industrial and Labor Relations, provides primary and secondary materials concerning the 1911 fire.

Developed by the American Studies program at the University of Virginia, this site provides a timeline as well as film, print (from newspapers and books to cartoons), audio clips, and more.

This American Memory site provides access to life histories compiled and transcribed by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA)

Contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.

This George Mason University site contains images taken from original posters, set designs, and costume designs, as well as play scripts for twenty-two FTP productions; plays were performed in many different American cities from 1935-1939

This Michigan State University site contains audio, transcripts, a timeline, and more concerning this autoworkers' strike of 1936-1937

This institution, part of the National Archives and Records Administration, provides a gateway to many resources about FDR, the New Deal, and more.

This site, originally developed by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, provides a database of primary materials, including images and texts, gathered from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Library of Congress, and other sources.

Densho's mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy and promote equal justice for all.

This Southern Methodist University site provides access to documents from a wide range of government agencies, including the Office of Civilian Defense; the Department of Labor Children's Bureau; the War Production Board of the US Government Printing Office; and more

Complete archive of Life Magazine from 1936-1972.

Digitized images and narrative about men and women, military and civilian, who served during World War II.

from the Authentic History Center website

Established at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., in 1991.

This National Portrait Gallery exhibition focuses on presidential decision-making during the Cold War. The development of new armaments such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, which could reach targets halfway around the world in less than thirty minutes, meant that the president of the United States could be required to respond to crises in minutes—not days, weeks, or months.

This website contains thousands of pages of material on security-related issues of the Cold War.
The main issues of research interest are:
~The European Security Model, NATO Enlargement and Its Out-of-Area Problem,
~Regional Security in Asia, Latin America, and Africa,
~Threat Perceptions, Strategic Doctrines, Military Plans,
~Peacekeeping and Nongovernmental Organizations as New Security ~Factors during and after the Cold War

The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) has amassed a collection of archival documents on the Cold War era from the once secret archives of former communist countries.

This Pacifica Radio/UC-Berkeley collaboration seeks to gather, catalog, and make accessible primary source media resources related to social activism and activist movements in California in the 1960's and 1970's; it provides links to key resources and sites with primary sources on the Black Panther Party and more

This archive, developed by the University of Michigan Library, contains documents and images concerning Supreme Court cases; busing and school integration efforts in northern urban areas; school integration in the Ann Arbor Public School District; and recent resegregation trends in American schools

Developed by the University of Southern Mississippi Library and partners, this resource provides oral history transcripts and a civil rights timeline.

Thurgood Marshall Law Library, University of Maryland.
Since its inception in 1957, the United States Commission on Civil Rights has been at the forefront of efforts by the Federal Government and state governments to examine and resolve issues related to race, ethnicity, religion and, more recently, sexual orientation.

1910-1970
From the University of Washington. Civil rights movements in Seattle started well before the celebrated struggles in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, and they relied not just on African American activists but also on Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Jews, Latinos, and Native Americans. They also depended upon the support of some elements of the region's labor movement.

This University of Virginia archive contains films from the nightly news from two local television stations in Virginia--WDBJ (CBS) Roanoke and WSLS (NBC) Roanoke. In this initial installment we have digitized over 230 films.

This site, produced by the University of California-Berkeley's Bancroft Library, documents key moments and figures in the Free Speech Movement of the mid-1960s

Complete archives of Life Magazine from 1936-1972.