Quick Facts & General Reference » Political & Historical Documents: Primary Sources

• Abraham Lincoln: A Resource Guide
  The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with Abraham Lincoln, including the complete Abraham Lincoln Papers from the Manuscript Division. This resource guide compiles links to digital materials related to Lincoln such as manuscripts, letters, broadsides, government documents, and images that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web site. In addition, it provides links to external Web sites focusing on Lincoln and a bibliography containing selected works for both general and younger readers.
• American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement
  American Journeys 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.Produced by the Wisconsin Historical Society.
• American Memory
  American Memory is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections.
• American Presidency Project
  The American Presidency Project was established in 1999 as a collaboration between John Woolley and Gerhard Peters at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The archives contain 73,398 documents related to the study of the Presidency.
• American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States
  Index to and growing database of 5000+ full text, audio and video (streaming) versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events, and a declaration or two. Developed and maintained by U of Texas at Tyler.
• American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology
  From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. These former slaves, most born in the last years of the slave regime or during the Civil War, provided first-hand accounts of their experiences on plantations, in cities, and on small farms.
• Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History & Diplomacy
  The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. From the Yale Law Library.
• BBC-Schools Online: World War One
  Read and listen to stories of the War from the people who lived it. Explore diaries, letters, scrapbooks, newspaper cuttings, photos and keepsakes.
• BBC-WW2 People's War
  The BBC asked the public to contribute their memories of World War Two to a website between June 2003 and January 2006. This archive of 47,000 stories and 15,000 images is the result.
• Christian Classics Ethereal Library
  Classic Christian writings from authors including Augustine, Bunyan, Calvin, Luther, Milton, Teresa of Avila, etc.
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
  This site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and 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 as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).
• Civil Rights Digital Library
  The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale. CRDL is a partnership among librarians, technologists, archivists, educators, scholars, academic publishers, and public broadcasters.
• CRS Annotated Constitution
  Easily searchable text of the United States Constitution with links to court opinions, the United States Code, and the Code of Federal Regulations.
• Defining Documents in American History: Exploration & Colonial America (1492-1755)
  A collection of exploration and colonial documents, including important journals of exploration, reports of New World settlements, early political tracts on self-governing. Also included are narratives on colonial life and slavery and indentured servitude. Contains context, biographical info, and critical analysis for each document.
• Digital Public Library of America
  The DPLA offers a single point of access to millions of items—photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more—from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Users can browse and search the DPLA’s collections by timeline, map, format, and topic.
• Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History Online
  Provides access to typescripts of interviews (1967 -1972) conducted with hundreds of Indians in Oklahoma regarding the histories and cultures of their respective nations and tribes.
• EuroDocs
  A collection of European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. They shed light on key historical happenings within the respective countries and within the broadest sense of political, economic, social and cultural history.
• Eyewitness to History
  First hand accounts of events throughout the history of the world. Image rich.
• Historic Government Publications from World War II
  Contains 343 Informational pamphlets, government reports, instructions, regulations, declarations, speeches, and propaganda materials distributed by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) during the Second World War.
• Journals of Lewis and Clark
  Hosted by the University of Virginia
• King Center Archive
  The King Center Imaging Project brings the works and papers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to a digital generation.
• Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web
  A Project of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Features links to online exhibitions that have been created by libraries, archives, and historical societies, as well as to museum online exhibitions with a significant focus on library and archival materials.
• Making of America
  A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction... contains approximately 8,500 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.
• Milestone Documents in American History: Exploring the Primary Sources That Shaped America
  Each entry includes the full text of the document in question as well as an in-depth, analytical essay that places the document in its historical context.
• Museum of Broadcast Communications
  The MBC collects, preserves, and presents historic and contemporary radio and television content. View and/or listen to television, radio and advertising archives, including a history of televised presidential debates, featuring footage from these events.
• Papers of Abraham Lincoln
  The Papers of Abraham Lincoln is a long-term project dedicated to identifying, imaging, transcribing, annotating, and publishing all documents written by or to Abraham Lincoln during his entire lifetime (1809-1865).
• Papers of George Washington
  Read papers, letters and diaries of our first president at this very attractive site. From the University of Virginia Library.
• Papers of the War Department, 1784-1800
  Papers of the War Department 1784-1800, will make some 55,000 documents of the early War Department many long thought irretrievable but now reconstructed through a painstaking, multi-year research effort available online to scholars, students, and the general public.
• Primary Resources in U.S. History & Literature, National Humanities Center
  The National Humanities Center's Toolbox Library provides free access to historical documents, literary texts, works of art, discussion questions, and teaching strategies online. Teachers, collaborating with local college or university professors, can use these resources to create their own interdisciplinary summer seminars in American history and literature.
• Primary Sources on the Web
  Online sources divided into United States and World History.
• Repositories of Primary Sources
  A listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar.
• Salem Witchcraft Papers
  Contains complete court documents of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials.
• Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
  has information on almost 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The National Endowment for the Humanities is the principal sponsor of the project, and it is an Emory University Digital Library Research Initiative.
• Veterans History Project: Existing Oral History Sites
  A selective, annotated compilation of the many existing oral history projects, programs and collections dedicated to recording and preserving the experiences of veterans and civilians.
• War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
  Online version of the 70 volume print edition of primary source material from the U.S. Civil War. The print edition was originally published in 1880-1901. It contains reports and correspondence produced by the Union and Confederate armies and various governmental bodies of the period. This website is part of Cornell University's "Making of America" series.
• Women Working, 1870-1930
  Women Working, 1870 - 1930 provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard's library and museum collections. This collection explores women's roles in the US economy between the Civil War and the Great Depression.
• Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers
  Woodward and Bernstein's notes from source interviews, drafts of newspaper stories and books, memos, letters, tape recordings, research materials, and other Watergate papers.The Harry Ransom Center's online exhibit of the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers provides a small sample of the materials found in the collection at the U of Texas at Austin.