HIST&147: United States History II - Spiegler: Primary Sources: 19th c.

What's a primary source?

Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. They may include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies such as Congress, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art. These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research. (From: Using primary sources on the Web. Site includes strategies for reading and evaluating primary sources).

Primary vs. Secondary Sources - Guide produced by the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) Library. Includes lots of useful examples of types of primary and secondary sources.

Topic: Slavery

Also see the section below on the Civil War for related resources.

African American Newspapers
Transcriptions of 7 antebellum papers
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project 1936-1938
Major collection: more than 2,300 first person accounts of slavery plus 500 photographs
African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts
117 documents including letters, warrants, bills of sale and antislavery material
Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy
Information on 100,000 slaves in Louisiana during the 18th and 19th centuries
Antislavery in New England
100 digitized pamphlets dating from 1775 to 1871
Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in America: A Visual Record
Hundreds of images depicting slavery and the slave trade, includes maps, illustrations and photographs
California Underground Railroad
Digital archive of newspapers, manuscripts and other material documenting the experiences of African American slaves in California
Digital Library on American Slavery
Database of detailed personal information about slaves, slaveholders, and free people of color
From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909
396 pamphlets written by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics
Geography of Slavery in Virginia
Digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers
Microfilm edition of the papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society
Microfilm collection; 31 reels; A4868
North American Slave Narratives
Major collection: Books, memoirs and articles providing autobiographical accounts of slavery
Records of ante-bellum southern plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War
Microfilm collection; 148 reels; A9699
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
Digitized collection of thousands of anti-slavery and abolitionist material
Slaves and the Courts
Over 100 pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) dealing with the legal status of slavery
Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database
Data on almost 35,000 slaving voyages supplemented with images, a names database and other material

Event: Civil War

Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project
Historical materials from Abraham Lincoln's Illinois years (1830-1861), including Lincoln's writings and speeches

For additional links to websites dealing with the war see The American Civil War Homepage.

Abraham Lincoln Papers
Major collection: Correspondence and other papers
Becker Collection: Drawings of the American Civil War Era
Collection of 650 unpublished drawings created by artists for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper
Civil War in America from the Illustrated London News
Selection of hundreds of articles from the magazine published between 1861 and 1863
Civil War Treasures from the New York Historical Society
Collection of photographs, drawings, posters and letters
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
Digitized version of the printed set of Lincoln's correspondence, speeches, and other writings
Confederate Broadsides
Digitized collection of 250 Confederate broadside poems
Crisis of the Union
Archive of documents about the causes, conduct and consequences of the war
Martyred President: Sermons Given on the Occasion of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Full text of 57 sermons published on the occasion of Abraham Lincoln's assassination
Pennsylvania Civil War Newspapers
Collection of digitized Pennsylvania papers from the Civil War era including the Erie Observer and Tioga County Agitator
Secession Era Editorials Project
Collection of editorials dealing with the Nebraska Bill (1854), the Charles Sumner incident (1856), Dred Scott (1857) and Harper's Ferry (1859)
Selected Civil War Photographs
More than 1,000 photographs by Mathew Brady and others
Southern Homefront, 1861-1865
Documents and images related to all aspects of Southern life during the Civil War
Valley of the Shadow Project
Major website: Military records, census data, diaries, photographs and newspapers illustrating the impact of the Civil War on two towns
War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
Major collection: Digitized version of the multi-volume official records of the war

All Centuries

American Memory
Major database: Historic photographs, film and other materials from the Library of Congress
American Social History Project
Ancestry
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Genealogical records such as census, immigration & military records
Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
Diverse collection of documents dealing with US, international and diplomatic history
Digital Public Library of America
DPLA is a major portal to digitized collections ranging "from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science" that illustrate America’s history & culture
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Includes a database of digitized material as well as exhibits
North American women's letters and diaries
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Full-text database of letters and diaries of women who lived in North America before 1950. Browsing and searching of both the bibliographic and full-text elements provided by PhiloLogic software
U.S. Immigration Laws
Short summaries, useful links, and the full text of relevant public laws
Women and Social Movements in the United States
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Primary sources dealing with women's history from 1600 to 2000

19th Century

African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907
Eclectic collection of pamphlets most of which were published after the Civil War
Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers
Correspondence, scientific notebooks, journals, blueprints, articles, and photographs documenting the life of Bell
Booker T. Washington Papers
Digitized version of the 14 volume collection of writings and correspondence dating from 1860 to 1915
Disability History Museum Library
Images, texts, and other artifacts related to disability history primarily in the 19th and 20th centuries
Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920
Over 9,000 images" of early advertising
Evolution of the Conservation Movement 1850-1920
Digitized collection of books, pamphlets, government documents, manuscripts, photographs and other material
Fenian Brotherhood Collection
Letters, pamphlets, newspapers and other material from the American branch of the nationalist Irish Republican Brotherhood
Haymarket Affair Digital Collection
Collection of manuscripts, artifacts, broadsides, photographs, and prints dealing with the 1886 strike
Immigration to the United States 1789-1930
Includes 1,800 books and pamphlets as well as 6,000 photographs, 200 maps, and 13,000 pages from manuscript and archival collections
James Madison Papers
Correspondence and other papers
Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Standard edition of the expedition journals supplemented by images and maps
Life and Times of Florence Kelley in Chicago, 1891-1899
Digitized collection includes correspondence, writings by Kelley and other material
Making of America
Digitized collection of almost 10,000 19th c. books and journals
Mexican-American War and the Media
Transcriptions of English language newspaper articles, images and documents dealing with the Mexican American War
New York Times 1851-2009
Major database: Digitized version from 1851-2009
Studies in Scarlet: Marriage & Sexuality in the US and UK, 1815-1914
Over 420 published trial narratives printed in the United States or the United Kingdom from 1815 to 1914
Thomas A. Edison Papers
Correspondence and other material dealing with the inventor from 1847 to 1897
Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection
Collection of 186 books and pamphlets dealing with women's suffrage
Women Working 1800-1930
Collection of manuscripts, books, and photographs