History Primary Resources

An Annotated Guide to Their Papers and Publications.

A hypertext on the history of the United States from the colonial period until modern times

American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.

Primary source materials in the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government

The Boston Massacre Historical Society website, a digital gateway to the famous event.

Founded in 1841 by Isaac Van Anden and Henry Cruse Murphy, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was published as a daily newspaper for 114 consecutive years without missing a single edition.This site provides digitized newspaper and is a project from the Brooklyn Public Library's Brooklyn Collection.

This website offers a wide variety of political cartoons by Thomas Nast. The site contains primary source cartoons from Thomas Nast which deal with historical events and topics such as the Civil War, politics, race, suffrage and much more. The site also gives a brief description of each cartoon and the historical contexts in which they were created.

Presents records and acts of Congress from the Journals of the Continental Congress through The Congressional Globe, which ceased publication with the Forty-second Congress in 1873. Provides a documentary history of the construction of the nation, development of the federal government, and its role in the national life. Offered as part of the American Memory online resource compiled by the National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress.

Search America's historic newspapers pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.

The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC) is Cornell's principal repository of rare books, manuscripts and archival materials in history, literature, music, the arts, science, natural history, and technology.

Documenting the American South (DocSouth), a digital publishing initiative sponsored by the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture. It supplies teachers, students, and researchers at every educational level with a wide array of titles they can use for reference, studying, teaching, and research.

Freedom's Journal, the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States was published weekly in New York City from 1827 to 1829. Freedom's Journal provided international, national, and regional information on current events and contained editorials declaiming slavery, lynching, and other injustices.

Friend of Man is one of the most significant and little studied newspapers documenting early anti-slavery and other reform movements. From Cornell University Library.

Designed for high school and college teachers and students, History Matters serves as a gateway to web resources and offers other useful materials for teaching U.S. history. Created by the American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning (Graduate Center, CUNY) and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (George Mason University).

Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, is a web-based collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression.

The Cornell University Library Making of America Collection is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.

Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology.

from New York Historical Society.

Mary Paul was one of thousands of Lowell mill "girls." She grew up in northern Vermont, one of four children born to Bela and Marry Briggs Paul. She worked in the mills from 1845 through 1848. Twenty-five of her letters, covering the years 1845 through 1862 .

100 milestone documents, is compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings. The documents chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965.

The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum honors antislavery abolitionists, their work to end slavery,and the legacy of that struggle, and strives to complete the second and ongoing abolition – the moral conviction to end racism.

The Cornell University Library New York State Historical Literature is a collection of selected monographs, pamphlets and other materials with expired copyrights chosen from from the Cornell Library's extensive collection of New York State Literature. These were materials that were brittle and decaying and in need of rescue.

The Papers of Jefferson Davis, a documentary editing project based at Rice University in Houston, Texas, is publishing a multi-volume edition of his letters and speeches, several of which can be found on this web site. The site also provides extensive information on Davis and his family and numerous images.

Sources on the history of the 19th-century United States.

The Library of Congress is home to many of the most important documents in American history. This Web site provides links to materials digitized from the collections of the Library of Congress that supplement and enhance the study of these crucial documents.

"Sermons, position papers, offprints, local Anti-Slavery Society newsletters, poetry anthologies, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes all document the social and political implications of the abolitionist movement."

(Not everything here is a primary source.)

An exhibition of the Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library.

This guide combines links to the major online collections of Jefferson's writings that have been made accessible by University of Virginia, as well as by other institutions.

A multi-media archive hosted by the University of Virginia. The site contains primary documents dealing with the era from 1830 to 1930, as well as the novel's complete text, critical responses to the book.

Includes Civil War manuscripts, diaries, oral history interviews with Oklahoma Native Americans, and photographs. From the University of Oklahoma.

Includes local newspapers from 1917-1920, church records, student newspapers.

includes 18,000 primary sources

Includes digitized items on the Shakers.

digitized publications dating back to 1850

Student newspapers and more

Includes collections entitled "Documents Relating to Indian Affairs," "Nineteenth-Century European-American Views on Life in and the Peoples of the American West," "Playing House: Homemaking for Children"

diaries, letters, images, etc.