American History

Library Databases -- 39 databases of reliable, in-depth, and current information, including ABC-CLIO databases:  American History, American Government, State Geography, Issues, United States at War, and History Reference Online e-Book Collection, and much more. Always the best place to start for quality resources. You will need to log in with your regular user name and password.  Add " @qsbyin " to your user name.

General Sites

Primary Sources

Constitution and Law

American Presidents

Industrial Revolution

Civil War

African-Americans and Minorities

Native Americans

Local History
       
Spartacus Educational-- "Bringing history to life with original sources."  A wealth of historical resources on both World and American from a British perspective.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook-- From Fordham University.
ThisNation -- A "guide to American government and politics on the net."  Includes an online textbook, primary documents, a glossary, news and issues, and images.
United States History -- Arranged by era.  From the European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
Digital History-- "U.S. history textbook; ... primary sources on slavery, Mexican American, Asian American, and Native American history, and U.S. political, social, and legal history; succinct essays on the history of film, ethnicity, private life, and technology; multimedia exhibitions; ... , an audio archive including speeches and book talks by historians, and a visual archive with hundreds of historical maps and images."  Lots of stuff.  From the University of Houston.
Voice of the Shuttle-- "A structured and briefly annotated guide to online resources that at once respects the established humanities disciplines in their professional organization and points toward the transformation of those disciplines as they interact with the sciences and social sciences and with new digital media."
The American Experience -- Companion web site to the PBS series.
Year by Year 1901-2001-- A year by year summary of important events of the twentieth century.  Also timelines for world history, American music, fashion, and more.
America in the 1890s:  A Chronology-- From Bowling Green State University.
New Deal Network -- "An educational guide to the Great Depression of the 1930s."

 

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Primary Sources
American Memory-- Historical collections for the National Digital Library.
American Memory Timeline -- From American Memory.  Easy to use.
History Matters:  The U.S. Survey Course on the Web -- "A gateway to Web resources"  From CUNY and George Mason University.
Our Documents-- "100 milestone documents of American history."
Primary Sources Research-- From the Yale University Library.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook -- From Fordham University.
AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History --  A timeline with links to documents.  From the European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
ThisNation-- Includes an online textbook, primary documents, a glossary, news and issues, and images.
Founders' Constitution-- "Documents included range from the early seventeenth century to the 1830s, from the reflections of philosophers to popular pamphlets, from public debates in ratifying conventions to the private correspondence of the leading political actors of the day."  From the University of Chicago and the Liberty Fund.
American Rhetoric  -- "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."  
Making of America-- "Primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction." From Cornell University.
Repositories of Primary Sources-- "Over 5300 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar." From the University of Idaho.
THOMAS-- "Legislative information on the Internet." Current and historical documentation of the U.S. Congress at work.  From the Library of Congress.
Avalon Project-- Documents in law, history, and diplomacy. From Yale Law School.
NARA -- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Digital History-- "U.S. history textbook; ... primary sources on slavery, Mexican American, Asian American, and Native American history, and U.S. political, social, and legal history; succinct essays on the history of film, ethnicity, private life, and technology; multimedia exhibitions; ... , an audio archive including speeches and book talks by historians, and a visual archive with hundreds of historical maps and images."  Lots of stuff.  From the University of Houston.
The Living Room Candidate-- Campaign commercials from the American Museum of the Moving Image.
Archiving Early America -- " A unique array of primary source material from 18th Century America. Scenes and portraits from original newspapers, maps and writings."
American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920-- "253 published 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. Also included is the thirty-two-volume set of manuscript sources entitled Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, published between 1904 and 1907 after diligent compilation by the distinguished historian and secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society Reuben Gold Thwaites."  Part of the American Memory collections from the Library of Congress.
Images of African-Americans From the 19th Century -- From the New York Public Library.
New York State Historical Literature -- From Cornell University.
Authentic History Center -- Primary Sources from American Popular Culture. "Images of artifacts and historic sounds from American popular culture."  From the Colonial period through the 2000's.
America in Caricature 1765-1865 -- Political cartoons from American history.  From Indiana University.
Documenting the American South -- "Digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture."  From the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Assassination Archives and Research Center-- Information on political assassinations.
Slavery and the Making of America -- Companion to the PBS series.
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection -- "One of the richest collections of anti-slavery and Civil War materials in the world."  From Cornell University.
Geography of Slavery in Virginia -- "A digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers." From the University of Virginia.
Slavery and the Courts -- "Over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the difficult and troubling experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States." Part of the American Memory Collection.
Voices from the Days of Slavery -- Recordings of 23 former slaves telling their stories. Part of the American Memory Collection.
LibriVox -- "Provides free audiobooks from the public domain. There are several options for listening." mp3 or ogg files.
WorldImages -- "Access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains over 65,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery."
Women Working, 1800 - 1930 -- "Focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections ... approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images." Huge, easy-to-use, and fascinating.
Awesome Stories -- "Thousands of hand-selected and relevant links to pictures, slide-shows, videos, audio-clips, artifacts, manuscripts, documents and other primary sources linked, in context, within each story." Tons of stuff, easy to use.
World Digital Library -- "Manuscripts, maps, rare books, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other types of primary sources." From libraries, museums, and archives around the world.
Performing Arts Encyclopedia -- Access to the Library of Congress's "unsurpassed collections of scores, sheet music, audio recordings, films, photographs, and other materials."
HRVH Historical Newspapers -- "Access to digitized copies of historical newspapers from the Hudson River Valley region of New York State. As a first step toward this vision, The Kingston Daily Freeman has been completely digitized for the years 1903 to 1912. The entire contents of the newspaper issues can be searched and browsed in HRVH Historical newspapers."

CDLC Digital Collections -- "Access to digitized materials from libraries, archives, historical societies, museums and cultural organizations in the Capital District Library Council's region. This region encompasses the following ten New York State counties: Albany, Fulton, Hamilton, Montgomery, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, Warren and Washington." From the Capitol District Library Council.

New York Heritage Digital Collections -- "Freely accessible digital collections from libraries, museums and archives from all over the state. See New York State's rich and unique history told through images, artifacts and documents--just a click away!"
Social Explorer -- "Easy access to demographic information about the United States, from 1790 to present." Full of U.S. Census data.
   

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Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention Home Page -- From the Library of Congress.  Part of the American Memory project.
U.S. Constitution Online -- The text of the U.S. Constitution with explanations, notes, and links to further information.
LII - Constitutional Law -- From Cornell Law School.
Law Engine -- "The best online legal sources in a fast 'single-view' format."

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American Presidents
The American President -- Companion web site to the PBS series.
American Presidency -- From Grolier.
American Presidents: Life Portraits -- Companion web site to the C-span series.
White House History Page -- Official White House site.
Presidents -- "An index on the presidents of the United States and contains information and documents of their speeches, writings, biographies and anything else related to their person or the office they are holding."
The Living Room Candidate-- Campaign commercials from the American Museum of the Moving Image.
History of Televised Presidential Debates -- From the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

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Lewis and Clark -- Companion web site to the Ken Burns documentary.
In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark -- From the Sierra Club.
Lewis and Clark Journey of Discovery -- From the National Park Service.
Journals of Lewis and Clark -- From the University of Virginia.
WestWeb -- "A topically -organized website about the study of the American West created and maintained by Catherine Lavender, of the Department of History, College of Staten Island, The City University of New York."

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Industrial Revolution
Rise of Industrial America, 1876 - 1900 -- Information and documents on the American West, immigration, urban and rural life, railroads, and work in the late 19th century. From the American Memory project of the Library of Congress.
Wake Up, America -- Section on the Industrual Revolution from the PBS series Freedom: A History of US.
Women Working, 1800 - 1930 -- "Focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections ... approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images." Huge, easy-to-use, and fascinating.
Eli Whitney Museum -- Information and documents on the inventor.
Trancontinental Railroad-- From the American Experience from PBS.

 

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Civil War
War of the Rebellion -- A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies from the War Department.  An important primary source for the Civil War.
Civil War Battle Summaries -- From the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the Nation’s Civil War Battlefields.
Civil War Women -- Primary sources on the Internet.  From Duke University.
Crisis at Fort Sumter -- "An interactive historical simulation and decision making program." From Tulane University.
Civil War -- From the Ken Burns PBS series.
Civil War@Smithsonian -- From the Smithsonian.
Selected Civil War Photographs -- From American Memory.
American Civil War Home Page -- "Links to the most useful identified electronic files about the American Civil War (1861-1865)." From the University of Tennessee.
United States Civil War Center -- From Louisiana State University.
American Civil War -- From Dakota State University. 
Gettysburg National Military Park -- "Showcases some of the belongings made or used by soldiers in Union or Confederate camps."

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Black History Month  -- Biographies, literature, a timeline, other links.  From Gale.
African-American Woman Writers of the 19th Century -- From the New York Public Library.
Images of African-Americans From the 19th Century -- From the New York Public Library.
African-American Mosaic -- From the Library of Congress.
In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience -- From The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Slavery and the Making of America -- Companion to the PBS series.
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection -- "One of the richest collections of anti-slavery and Civil War materials in the world."  From Cornell University.
Geography of Slavery in Virginia -- "A digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers." From the University of Virginia.
Slavery and the Courts -- "Over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the difficult and troubling experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States." Part of the American Memory Collection.
Voices from the Days of Slavery -- Recordings of 23 former slaves telling their stories. Part of the American Memory Collection.
Without Sancturary -- Souvenir photographs and postcards (yes, postcards) of lynchings. Some of these images are disturbing.
Recovered Histories -- "Captures the narratives of the enslaved, enslavers, slave ship surgeons, abolitionists, parliamentarians, clergy, planters and rebels."

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Native Americans Internet Resources 
First Nations Histories -- Brief histories of Native American tribes.
American Indians and the Natural World -- From the Carnegie Museums.
Wounded Knee Massacre -- Including information on the Ghost Dance Religion.  From Bowling Green State University.

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New York State Archives
NYGenWeb -- "Your Gateway to New York Genealogy and History."
Adirondack History Network -- From the Adirondack Museum.
From the Ramparts -- The Ninth Dispatch -- From Fort William Henry.
The Erie Canal: A Brief History -- From the State of New York.
HRVH Historical Newspapers -- "Access to digitized copies of historical newspapers from the Hudson River Valley region of New York State. As a first step toward this vision, The Kingston Daily Freeman has been completely digitized for the years 1903 to 1912. The entire contents of the newspaper issues can be searched and browsed in HRVH Historical newspapers."
CDLC Digital Collections -- "Access to digitized materials from libraries, archives, historical societies, museums and cultural organizations in the Capital District Library Council's region. This region encompasses the following ten New York State counties: Albany, Fulton, Hamilton, Montgomery, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, Warren and Washington." From the Capitol District Library Council.
New York Heritage Digital Collections -- "Freely accessible digital collections from libraries, museums and archives from all over the state. See New York State's rich and unique history told through images, artifacts and documents--just a click away!"
Hunting adventures in the northern wilds; or, A tramp in the Chateaugay woods, over hills, lakes and forest streams by S. H. Hammond -- An 1890 book from the Making of America collection digitized by the Cornell University Library.
The Adirondack: or, Life in the woods by J. T. Headle-- An 1853 book from the Making of America collection digitized by the University of Michigan.
Adventures in the wilderness: or, camp-life in the Adirondacks byWilliam H. H. Murray -- An 1869 book from the Making of America collection digitized by the University of Michigan.
Woods and waters: or, The Saranacs and Racket by Alfred Billings Street -- An 1860 book from the Making of America collection digitized by the University of Michigan.

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First World War.com -- "Intended at a general rather than academic readership."  There's a lot here, however -- including primary documents and photographs."

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Social Studies Resources

 

 

 

 

 
 
   
 
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