This excellent site features a large collection of documents from colonial Plymouth, Mass. (including laws, court records, wills, and chronicles), along with research papers by students in James Deetz' graduate seminar at the University of Virginia that use these documents. Among the topics of the papers are "Women in the Plymouth Colony, 1633-1685," "Sexual Misconduct," and "Servants and masters."
A good companion to the Plymouth Colony Archive. It contains some brief, well researched accounts of various topics in Plymouth's history, but is best for its collection of the full text of letters, journals, and books written by the Pilgrims.
Court records and other contemporary documents, not only from the Salem witchcraft trials, but also Amistad, Andrew Johnson's impeachment, the Scopes evolution trial, Scottsboro, the Rosenberg atomic spy trial, the Chicago Seven, My Lai, and several others. Introductions to the cases by Doug Linder, a law professor, help put the documents in perspective.
Includes 1700 documents written by Jefferson and a complete annotated bibliography by Frank Shuffleton, University of Rochester, of all writings about Jefferson published between 1826-1999.
Not the actual film, but a site designed to accompany it. Its best feature is its full text of interviews with 24 prominent historians and authors, which were only briefly excerpted in the film itself.
Accompanies the PBS film and the book by historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich that are based on the 27 year diary of a New England midwife, Martha Ballard (1785-1827). The site includes the entire Ballard diary, related documents, and presents primary research exercises that students might undertake.
Online exhibit from the Library of Congress. Provides a good, brief overview of the relationship of religious belief to public life in the colonial and revolutionary periods. Could serve as a take off point for a more thorough inquiry into this subject.
Created by the American Studies program at the University of Virginia, this site provides an extremely rich historical context for analyzing Alexis de Tocqueville's classic account of the United States in the 1830s, Democracy in America. The site includes Tocqueville's itinerary, letters, journals, and other artifacts and images from the period, as well as a full edition of Democracy in America withlinks to the other materials at appropriate points throughout the text.
Directed by Professors Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin at SUNY Binghamton, this site presents 17 documentary projects, mostly done by graduate and advanced undergraduate students. Each project addresses a research question about a quite specialized topic through analysis of a set of 15-20 pertinent documents. Some projects raise additional questions for the reader's independent exploration. The projects vary in their degree of intellectual sophistication, but generally provide very good models of primary research, as well as revealing treatments of their particular topics.
Organized by the Mystic Seaport Museum, this site includes a brief history of the Amistad slaveship revolt and court case, 10 short essays by scholars, brief profiles of major figures, bibliographies, and over 300 documents (newspaper articles, pamphlets, personal papers, court records, other government documents, images from popular media of the time). Although it should certainly not replace reading the major books about Amistad, this site is an excellent example of how to extend access to important primary materials and to provide context and guidance for their use.
Authored by Professor Stephen Railton, University of Virginia, this outstanding site uses many textual and visual source materials to aid interpretation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel and to explore its meanings within American culture during the Civil War era and later. (See also Railton's brilliant site on Mark Twain described below.)
Includes 36 editorials from Northern and Southern newspapers and magazines responding to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 21 on the caning of Senator Charles Sumner, 15 on the Dred Scott case, and 24 on John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry. A fine way to get a sense of how popular opinion was formed and led on these points of sectional conflict.
A vast archive of primary sources that provides a basis for comparative research on a northern, unionist community (Franklin County, Pennsylvania) and a southern, confederate community (Augusta County, Virginia) during the Civil War and the immediately preceding years. This is one of the most highly praised sites on the Internet. However, it can probably be used most effectively by students who already have fairly extensive knowledge of the.Civil War.
Created by Candace Scott, a Grant "buff," this site draws on many primary sources, contains a pretty good bibliography, and offers Scott's own commentary on many aspects of Grant's life, character, military career, and presidency. Basically, Scott is seeking to celebrate Grant, but she is intelligent, well informed, and doesn't ignore Grant's failings or limitations.
This one of the approximately 70 online collections from the Library of Congress's "American memory Project." The conservation movement collection includes full texts of books pamphlets, federal statutes, excerpts from the Congressional Record, and other related documents, prints, and photographs, all from the 1850-1920 period. The collection is searchable by subject, keywords, or author.
A truly excellent, very thorough site that makes outstanding use of textual and visual primary sources to examine Twain's career, writings, public image, and his relation to the literary and social history of nineteenth and early twentieth century America. Created by Professor Stephen Railton, University of Virginia. Also includes some student projects that make use of the primary materials, which help to showcase the research possibilities of the site.
Created by two Canadian historians, this site holds lots of well categorized documents and provides guidance for investigating an actual murder case that is tied to issues of race, politics, and settlement in the far West.
Online version of an exhibit at the Chicago Historical Society. It includes curatorial essays, many illustrations and photos, and a large number of primary source documents from eyewitnesses, newspapers, memoirs, and so on, that focus both upon the study of the fire and its impact on Chicago and also upon the process by which "historical memory" of this event was formed and altered over time. This is one of the most creatively conceived sites that I have found on the Internet. Its attention to the "web of memory" would make it well worth using in studies of historiography, historical methodology, and historical consciousness, as well as in studies of urban history or history of firefighting.
A very large, interesting collection of documents related to "the first organizations formed to oppose U. S. territorial and economic imperialism." Also contains several essays by the site's creator, historian Jim Zwick.
This collection from the Library of Congress includes 167 books, pamphlets, and other material produced by the National American Women's Suffrage Association. It is searchable by subject, keywords, or author. There s a related exhibition of photos, cartoons of and other pictorial material at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vfwhtml/vfwhome.html
Among the features at this site is a collection of 145 first person accounts by "ordinary" Americans of living through major historical events and conflicts from the late 1800s through World War II, especially experiences as workers and during the Depression and the two World Wars. A good place to research everyday life history, as well as major events from the perspective of the "common" man or woman.
A good selection of contemporary articles and other documentary sources, with a good, brief introduction to the collection. This would be good material for a research paper on early twentieth century urban conditions, social attitudes toward immigrants and the poor, and the beginnings of Progressivism.
Contains many fascinating documents, including photos, newspaper accounts, oral history interviews, and testimony from the New York state investigation of the fire. A good introduction establishes a context for perusing the documents. This site was created by the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University.
Created by Professor K. Austin Kerr, Ohio State University, this site offers a good brief analysis of prohibitionism, a variety of pro and anti-prohibition documents, and a set of links to other documentary sources.
An interesting selection of rare, contemporary pamphlets on the Sacco-Vanzetti case, the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920-1940s Japanese internment in World War II, the Hollywood Ten, and the Rosenberg atom spy case.
America in the 1930s xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/front.html
Introduces the culture of the period through examples from film, radio, art, literature, and other forms of expression. Could serve as an entry point for a more thorough examination using other materials.
Includes over 500 documents, some governmental, but also magazine articles, advertisements, and other materials that reflect the period; also includes 4000 photographic images and a set of featured exhibitions on New Deal topics, such as letters from the public to Eleanor Roosevelt. There are also links to other related sites. A good place for a student who already has done some reading about the history of the 1930s to go for primary research sources.
An online exhibit about the arts projects funded by the federal government in the 1930s that provided work for unemployed writers, artists, musicians, and theater professionals. The text provides a good, brief description of the goals and values of the projects and the controversies that erupted about them, but the best aspect of the exhibit is its illustrations from New Deal visual art (murals, paintings, photos, posters).
This site is best used as an accompaniment to the 12 part CNN series on the history of the Cold War. Scripts of all episodes are here along with a selection of several important documents concerning events treated in each episode.
King's papers are being published in book form by Stanford University. However, a few important items are online here. They include 22 of King's most important speeches and sermons and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail."
The purpose of this exhibit is to show how the holdings of the Library of Congress reveal major themes in African-American history. The exhibit itself does not go deeply into any of these areas, but it could serve as a nice visual and documentary accompaniment to a basic college text on African-American history.
This site contains some interesting documents from the social protest movements of the 1960s and many recent articles from a scholarly periodical, The Vietnam Generation Journal.
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