Library Resources: Primary Sources: U.S. History

Includes documents that chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965.

Collection of primary documents and speeches essential for the study of US History. Arranged chronologically from 837 A.D. to 2009.

Collection from the National Archives.

A large collection of historical works that contributed to the formation of American politics, culture, and ideals. Arranged chronologically, the resources include material from classical times through the 18th century. (Although several links are no longer active, the site is useful in identifying specific works.)

Text of 47 treaties, speeches, historical accounts and governmental documents that trace U.S. history from the settling of the continent to the founding of the country to the Civil War and early twentieth-century international relations. (This is the Harvard Classics, vol. 43)

Eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in 1000 A.D. to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.

Consists of 59 sound recordings of speeches by American leaders from 1918-1920. The speeches focus on issues and events surrounding WWI and the subsequent presidential election of 1920. Speakers include: Warren G. Harding, James Cox, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel Gompers, Henry Cabot Lodge and John J. Pershing. Speeches range from one to five minutes.

Recorded histories describe the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations.

"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." Older material at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

Presents 253 narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920.

Primary (and secondary) sources from 18th Century America. Includes material from newspapers, maps and writings.

Critical texts from the Mayflower Compact (1620) to the late 20th century.

The video library records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses. Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987, now totaling over 170,000 hours, is contained in the C-SPAN Archives.

The Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection features 14,500 color images of life in America between 1938 and 1969.

Search and read newspaper pages from several states, including California; search a directory (including library holdings) for U.S. newspapers published from 1690-present.

There are nearly 300,000 digitized pages provided by the Harvard Library. Not only documenting life in New England, the collection also extends well beyond those boundaries to Canada, other areas of North America, and South America; to Atlantic islands and across the Atlantic Ocean to Great Britain, continental Europe, and parts of Africa.

Nearly 1400 photographs (and a few illustrations). They offer representations of urban poverty, unsafe tenement housing, inadequate hygiene in public areas, and other pressing social issues in late-19th- and early-20th-century New York. The images range from the 1880s through the 1950s.

Browse more than 600 annotated documents written by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and many others dealing with American politics, diplomacy and social history.

Provides materials covering important themes and issues from the colonial era to the present. Click on the "evidence" link within each module to view primary source material.

Collection of 3000+ documents, images and audio/video clips from the National Archives. Material is grouped into eight broad eras of U.S. history.

Search or browse full text sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the early 20th century: slave narratives, other first person narratives, literature, life during the Civil War, and African American churches.

Presents some of the most significant voices captured during the first fifty years of sound recording, 1877-1927: William Jennings Bryan, Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, Samuel Gompers, William McKinley, William Taft, and Booker T. Washington.

Created by a group of U.S. government photographers, these images show Americans in every part of the nation. Early years emphasize rural life and the negative impact of the Great Depression, farm mechanization, and the Dust Bowl. Later years focus on the mobilization effort for World War II.

Scanned -- and redacted -- images of FBI files of (in)famous individuals and groups.

Series of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison between October 1787 and May 1788 to encourage support for ratification of the proposed United States Constitution.

Correspondence and other writings of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. Includes more than 119,000 searchable and annotated documents.

A gateway to web resources and other useful materials for teaching U.S. history, including first-person primary documents, and guides to analyzing historical evidence.

Digital objects including images, podcasts, videos and blog postings of personal accounts from those affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Materials primarily from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, which was the center of American eugenics research from 1910-1940.

Collection of selected historical materials that document voluntary immigration to the US from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression.

Presents "a diversity of source material in modern European, American and Latin American history, as well as a significant amount of materal pertinent to world cultures and global studies." Rather than emphasizing legal and political documents, efforts are made to include contemporary narrative accounts, personal memoirs, songs, newspaper reports, as well as cultural, philosophical, religious and scientific documents.

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. (Collaborative effort with the University of Michigan; see below.)

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. (Collaborative effort with Cornell University; see above.)

700,000 images digitized from the the New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.

Serves as a gateway to digital collections at participating institutions. Content is in the field of American studies, focusing on a hemispheric view of the Americas. Date coverage is 1500-1927.

Offers access to 55,000 documents of the early War Department, many long thought irretrievable but now reconstructed through a multi-year research effort. Covers the history of the Early Republic, from the handling of Indian affairs, pensions and procurement to the nature of the first American citizens’ relationship with their new Federal government.

Presidential promotional and commemorative items dating from 1789 to 1980, with elections from 1832 to 1960 particularly well represented.

The collection includes proclamations, advertisements, blank forms, programs, election tickets, catalogs, clippings, timetables and menus. They capture the everyday activities of ordinary people who participated in the events of nation-building and experienced the growth of the nation from the American Revolution through the Industrial Revolution up to present day.

Collects, preserves, and presents the history of 9/11/01 and its aftermath. The Archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, including emails and other electronic communications; first-hand stories; and digital images.

Transcripts of phone calls and radio transmissions, and copies of police reports released by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, under a federal order resulting from a lawsuit brought by the New York Times.

An accumulation of coverage by the Times from 2001 to the present, including retrospectives and resources.

Books, pamphlets and prints representing 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 "library of news coverage of the events of 9/11/2001 and their aftermath as presented by U.S. and international broadcasters. A resource for scholars, journalists, and the public, it presents one week of news broadcasts for study, research and analysis."

Monographs and government documents published in the United States, Spain, and the Philippines between 1870 and 1925. The primary focus of the material is the Spanish-American war and subsequent American governance (approximately 1898-1910).

A compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies.

Collection of print and visual resources. Use limiters in left column to focus search on specific geography, date range, topic or type of resource.