Black Studies
  Accessible Archives
A site devoted to primary source material in American history. Information archived is from leading historical periodicals and books, and includes eyewitness accounts of historical events, vivid descriptions of daily life, editorial observations, commerce as seen through advertisements, and genealogical records. Databases are encyclopedic in scope and allow full Boolean, group, name, string, and truncated searches. Transcribed individual entries are complete with full bibliographic citations and are organized chronologically.

  African American Communities
Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this resource presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.

  African American Newspapers, 1827-1998
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998, provides online access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. This unique collection, which includes papers from more than 35 states, features many rare and historically significant 19th-century titles.

 African American Periodicals, 1825-1995
Features more than 170 wide-ranging periodicals by and about African Americans andcan be cross-searched with African American Newspapers, Afro-Americana Imprints and other Archive of Americana collections. Publications include academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations bulletins, annual reports and other genres.

 African-American Newspapers (The 19th Century, Accessible Archives)
This enormous collection of African American newspapers contains a wealth of information about cultural life and history during the 1800s and is rich with first-hand reports of the major events and issues of the day, including the Mexican War, Presidential and Congressional addresses, Congressional abstracts, business and commodity markets, the humanities, world travel and religion. The collection also provides a great number of early biographies, vital statistics, essays and editorials, poetry and prose, and advertisements all of which embody the African-American experience.

 Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922
Searchable collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides, including many lesser-known imprints, presenting a record of African American history, literature and culture from the Library Company of Philadelphia.

 American Slavery Collection
The American Slavery Collection addresses every facet of American slavery by providing access to the American Antiquarian Societys holdings of slavery and abolition materials published over the course of more than 100 years. The digitized materials include books, pamphlets, graphic materials, and ephemera.

 ProQuest History Vault - Slavery and the Law (1775-1867)
Slavery and the Law features petitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867, documenting the realities of slavery at the most immediate local level and with amazing candor.

 ProQuest History Vault: Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantation Records, Parts 1-4
Southern Plantation Records document the far-reaching impact of plantations on both the American South and the nation. Plantation records are both business records and personal papers because the plantation was both the business and the home for plantation owners.

 Black Abolitionist Papers
Presents the international impact of African American activism against slavery, in the writings and publications of the activists themselves. Covering1830-1865, the 15,000 articles, documents, correspondence, proceedings, manuscripts, and literary works of almost 300 Black abolitionists show their activities in the U.S., Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Germany. The collection reproduces in full the 17 reels of microfilmed content.

 Black Freedom Struggle in the United States
This website contains approximately 1,600 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom: 1. Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860) -- 2. The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877) -- 3. Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932) -- 4. The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945) -- 5. The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975) -- 6. The Contemporary Era (1976-2000). The documents presented here represent a selection of primary sources available in several ProQuest databases. The databases represented in this website include American Periodicals, Black Abolitionist Papers, ProQuest History Vault, ProQuest Congressional, Supreme Court Insight and Alexander Street's Black Thought and Culture.

 African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection)
African American Perspectives" gives a panoramic and eclectic review of African American history and culture and is primarily comprised of two collections in the Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division: the African American Pamphlet Collection and the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection with a date range of 1822 through 1909. Most were written by African-American authors, though some were written by others on topics of particular importance in African-American history. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, Emanuel Love, Lydia Maria Child, Kelly Miller, Charles Sumner, Mary Church Terrell, and Booker T. Washington, among other

 Frederick Douglass Collection
Frederick Douglass (c. 1817-1895) was an abolitionist, orator, and writer. In 1838, Douglass escaped from his Maryland enslaver, and over time became one of the most celebrated abolitionists and social reformers of the 19th century. This collection of 11 original documents and 6 copies contains Frederick Douglass’ bill of sale, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and additional copies of correspondence.

 Digital Records of the Colored Conventions Project
This site features the hundreds of collected documents of the Colored Conventions movement, spanning from the 1830s through the 1890s.

Civil War
    Accessible Archives
A site devoted to primary source material in American history. Information archived is from leading historical periodicals and books, and includes eyewitness accounts of historical events, vivid descriptions of daily life, editorial observations, commerce as seen through advertisements, and genealogical records. Databases are encyclopedic in scope and allow full Boolean, group, name, string, and truncated searches. Transcribed individual entries are complete with full bibliographic citations and are organized chronologically.

 Civil War Primary Source Documents
Drawn from the holdings of the New-York Historical Society, this database is comprised of over 110,000 pages from over 400 individual collections, and focuses on the War as it was fought from both Northern and Southern perspectives.

 Civil War, Part IV, A Midwestern Perspective
The Civil War : A Midwestern Perspective consists of newspapers published in Indiana between the years of 1855 and 1869. These newspapers cover events before and after the War as well as the Civil War itself. The newspapers were published by individuals from across the political spectrum including Democrats, Republicans and Know-Nothings.

 Valley of the Shadow
An historical record of the people of a northern community and a southern community, one in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. Presents historical documents including letters, diaries, church and census records, newspapers, and speeches.

Newspapers
  Accessible Archives
A site devoted to primary source material in American history. Information archived is from leading historical periodicals and books, and includes eyewitness accounts of historical events, vivid descriptions of daily life, editorial observations, commerce as seen through advertisements, and genealogical records. Databases are encyclopedic in scope and allow full Boolean, group, name, string, and truncated searches. Transcribed individual entries are complete with full bibliographic citations and are organized chronologically.

  African American Experience
The African American experience contains primary documents, including slave narratives, speeches, court cases, quotations, advertisements, statistics, and other documentation, as well as peer-reviewed scholarly essays plus photographs, maps, and other images covering history, biographies, literature, arts, music, popular culture, folklore, business, slavery, the struggle for civil rights, politics, sports, education, science, and other themes.

  African American Historical Serials Collection
This unique resource documents the history of African American life and religious organizations from materials published between 1829 and 1922.

  African American Newspapers, 1827-1998
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998, provides online access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. This unique collection, which includes papers from more than 35 states, features many rare and historically significant 19th-century titles.

 African-American Newspapers (The 19th Century, Accessible Archives)
This enormous collection of African American newspapers contains a wealth of information about cultural life and history during the 1800s and is rich with first-hand reports of the major events and issues of the day, including the Mexican War, Presidential and Congressional addresses, Congressional abstracts, business and commodity markets, the humanities, world travel and religion. The collection also provides a great number of early biographies, vital statistics, essays and editorials, poetry and prose, and advertisements all of which embody the African-American experience.

 Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922
Searchable collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides, including many lesser-known imprints, presenting a record of African American history, literature and culture from the Library Company of Philadelphia.

 American Underworld: The Flash Press
From crime and scandal to brothels and blackmail, the Flash Press covered the seamier aspects of urban life in the mid-19th century. Though stopping well short of pornography the editors played a delicate game with the authorities, often moralizing against the very topics they covered, which included prostitution, gambling, urban gangs, illicit sporting activities, and sensational crimes. To many of their readers, the Flash Press also conveyed an implicit threat of blackmail, which often led to very ephemeral print runs. The publication dates of the papers run from 1826 to 1876.

 HarpWeek
HarpWeek enables you to directly experience the richness and historical significance of Harpers Weekly, America's leading 19th century illustrated newspaper. Covers 1857-1908.

Magazines
 Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922
Searchable collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides, including many lesser-known imprints, presenting a record of African American history, literature and culture from the Library Company of Philadelphia.

 America's Historical Imprints
Searchable monographs, pamphlets, broadsides, government documents and ephemera enable researchers to explore America's distant and not so distant past.

 African American Periodicals, 1825-1995
Features more than 170 wide-ranging periodicals by and about African Americans andcan be cross-searched with African American Newspapers, Afro-Americana Imprints and other Archive of Americana collections. Publications include academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations bulletins, annual reports and other genres.

  African American Historical Serials Collection
This unique resource documents the history of African American life and religious organizations from materials published between 1829 and 1922.

Books
 Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922
Searchable collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides, including many lesser-known imprints, presenting a record of African American history, literature and culture from the Library Company of Philadelphia.

 America's Historical Imprints
Searchable monographs, pamphlets, broadsides, government documents and ephemera enable researchers to explore America's distant and not so distant past

 Sabin Americana, 1500-1926
This resource includes works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's including books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more. Included are 29,000 works based Joseph Sabin's Bibliotheca Americana: A Dictionary of Books Relating to America from Its Discovery to the Present Time.

Pamphlets
 America's Historical Imprints
Searchable monographs, pamphlets, broadsides, government documents and ephemera enable researchers to explore America's distant and not so distant past.

 Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922
Searchable collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides, including many lesser-known imprints, presenting a record of African American history, literature and culture from the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Broadsides
 America's Historical Imprints
Searchable monographs, pamphlets, broadsides, government documents and ephemera enable researchers to explore America's distant and not so distant past

 Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922
Searchable collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides, including many lesser-known imprints, presenting a record of African American history, literature and culture from the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Ephemera
 American Underworld: The Flash Press
From crime and scandal to brothels and blackmail, the Flash Press covered the seamier aspects of urban life in the mid-19th century. Though stopping well short of pornography the editors played a delicate game with the authorities, often moralizing against the very topics they covered, which included prostitution, gambling, urban gangs, illicit sporting activities, and sensational crimes. To many of their readers, the Flash Press also conveyed an implicit threat of blackmail, which often led to very ephemeral print runs. The publication dates of the papers run from 1826 to 1876.

Women's Studies
 Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
Brings together primary documents, books, images, scholarly essays, book reviews, Web site reviews, and teaching tools, all documenting the multiplicity of women's activism in public life.

   Gerritsen Collection: Women's History Online, 1543-1945
The collection, compiled beginning in the late 19th century by Dutch physician and feminist Aletta Jacobs Gerritsen and completed by her successors in 1945, consists of over 4,700 periodicals, monographs, and pamphlets on topics in women's history. The publications were gathered from continental Europe, the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and New Zealand.

  Accessible Archives
A site devoted to primary source material in American history. Information archived is from leading historical periodicals and books, and includes eyewitness accounts of historical events, vivid descriptions of daily life, editorial observations, commerce as seen through advertisements, and genealogical records. Databases are encyclopedic in scope and allow full Boolean, group, name, string, and truncated searches. Transcribed individual entries are complete with full bibliographic citations and are organized chronologically.

 Women Working, 1800-1930
This collection of digitized materials focuses on the economic impact of women in the United States between the 1880s and 1930s. Collection is from the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

 North American Women's Letters and Diaries
Collection includes 150,000 pages of letters and diaries from Colonial times to 1950. The material is drawn from more than 1,000 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, and much of it is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, a wide range of ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous, and the not so famous. More than 1,500 biographies enhance the use of the database.

Slave narratives

 American Slavery Collection
The American Slavery Collection addresses every facet of American slavery by providing access to the American Antiquarian Society's holdings of slavery and abolition materials published over the course of more than 100 years. The digitized materials include books, pamphlets, graphic materials, and ephemera.

 North American Slave Narratives
"North American Slave Narratives" collects books and articles that document the individual and collective story of Black people struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of self-emancipated and formerly enslaved people published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. Also included are many of the biographies of self-emancipated and formerly enslaved people and some significant fictionalized first-person accounts of enslavement published in English before 1920.

 Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA).

 Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice
International in scope, this archive includes testimonies of enslaved persons in United States.

 Slavery & Anti-slavery: A Transnational Archive
In addition to newspaper collections and books published in the antebellum era, Slavery and Anti-Slavery contains documents from several archives originally available only on microfilm.

Theatre

 American Stage to 1819
The most comprehensive collection about the American theatre from 1702 to 1819, The American Stage to 1819 features more than 2,000 primary sources representing the era’s range of genres. Historical plays, melodramas, comedies, satires, musicals, operas, dramatic adaptations, and more reveal the American theater’s importance as a cultural institution. And, the inclusion of foreign works printed in America during this time enables scholarly analysis of their influence on the American theater and its creators.

 Nineteenth Century American Drama: Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1820-1900
Comprehensive collection of 4700 American plays published between 1820 and 1900. Includes comedies, tragedies, satires, pantomimes, melodramas, extravaganzas, and much more. Nineteenth-Century American Drama represents a goldmine for Drama and Theater programs around the world. Broad geographic coverage—the stages of New York, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, for example—offers opportunities for many layers of analysis. Critical multi-disciplinary support is provided not only for American history and literature but also for economics, political science, religious studies, ethnic studies and sociology. In addition, a helpful “Suggested Searches” feature makes it easy for users to pinpoint the exact plays of interest—by type, subject matter, setting, character ethnicity and other criteria.

Literature

 Literature of Early America, 1645-1819
The Literature of Early America contains nearly every literary work printed in America up to 1819. It contains works by celebrated authors like Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Paine, Phyllis Wheatley, and Benjamin Franklin as well as hundreds of lesser-known works—many of them by women and African Americans--exploring relations between settlers; family life; the American political and social scene; slavery and antislavery; Native American tribes; and countless other subjects. Importantly, this database also includes the foreign literary works that were published in America during this era—providing researchers with a unique tool for tracing the influence of those works on the American authors of the period and on the entire American literary scene. This database covers many topical categories such as educational and historical literature, musical works and poetry, mortality and death, non-fiction and prose, religious literature, and others. It provides researchers with the ability to research more than 80 forms of literature.

Religion

 American Sermons, 1652-1819
The most comprehensive digital collection of early American sermons. More than 8,000 sermons, 1652-1819, offer extraordinary insight into politics, society, religion, and family life. Features text and data analysis tools, author biographies, and suggested search paths for easy browsing and discovery..

U.S. Presidential Sources

 Papers of Andrew Jackson
A fully annotated and searchable XML-based archive collects Jackson’s papers in one powerful online resource.

 Correspondence of James K. Polk
This digital edition of Polk’s correspondence includes the complete contents of the print edition’s fourteen volumes, plus an expanded supplementary calendar of documents found only here.

  The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant
Digital edition of Grant's papers, based on the original letterpress edition edited by John Y. Simon. Searchable access to the content of the original thirty-one print volumes, including all editorial annotations, introductory essays, and appendices, as well as a separate volume of supplementary documents completed by John F. Marszalek. These materials contain thousands of letters written by Ulysses S. Grant (1837-1885), and to him; his military and presidential documents; and a small number of photographs.

Government Documents

 American History, 1493-1945
This unique collection of documents brings to life American History from the times of the earliest settlers until the end of World War II. It is sourced from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the finest archives available for the study of American history. Its quantity and quality offers a wonderful overview of American history alongside some deep research strands. It is divided into two modules: Module 1 Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859 and Module 2 Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945

 Congressional Publications, Executive Branch Document, 1789-1952
To limit search to Executive Branch Documents, click on Advanced Search and only check the box for Executive Branch Documents, 1789-1952. Provides a complete annotated and full text access to all executive branch documents listed in the Checklist of Public Documents 1789-1909. The Checklist was produced in 1911 to provide a complete listing of all documents published by the U.S. Government in its first 120 years and has been expanded include documents from 1910-1952.

 Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Explore America’s transformative age of industrialization, expanding wealth, inequality and social change. This resource aims to showcase the transformation of America into a modern, urban, industrial global power through business, legal and personal papers. Technological progress and extreme wealth for the few, contrasted with stark inequality and endemic poverty for much of America's population.

 Territorial Papers of the United States, 1764-1953
Territorial Papers of the United States is a collection of Native American negotiations and treaties, official correspondence with the federal government, military records, judicial proceedings, population data, financial statistics, land records, and more. Readex’s Territorial Papers contains the entire corpus of the official papers held by the Departments of State and Interior, the two largest such collections in Washington, D.C. Instead of transcripts, it features high-resolution images of the original sources—many of which are hand-written documents—ensuring that scholars don’t miss a single detail from this vital period in American history.

Transportation

 Late 19th - Early 20th Century Bicycle and Bicycle Parts Catalogs
This collection contains lavishly illustrated early U.S. bicycle and bicycle parts manufacturers’ catalogs covering the period from 1890 through 1932, with the great majority published between 1890 and 1902. The 71 items in this collection represent over 40 manufacturers, roughly geographically distributed in equal parts between the Chicago area, the East Coast, and the Midwest.

 Evolution of Flight, 1784-1991
The collections of photographs, manuscripts, and periodicals that were selected for Evolution of Flight, 1784-1991 illuminate the narrative of aviation through the records "visual and textual" of its inventors, engineers, designers, aviators, commanders, promoters, regulators, and politicians, as well as those who were inspired by it to create music or thrill the crowds.

Native American Studies

 ProQuest History Vault - American Indians and the American West (1809-1971)
American Indians and the American West, 1809-1971 features a number of excellent collections on American Indians in the 19th and 20thCentury, with a focus on the interaction among white settlers, the U.S. federal government, and Indian tribes.Included are Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Major Council Meetings of American Indian Tribes.

 Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment
Includes letters, diaries, memoirs, and accounts of early encounters.

 Territorial Papers of the United States, 1764-1953
Territorial Papers of the United States is a collection of Native American negotiations and treaties, official correspondence with the federal government, military records, judicial proceedings, population data, financial statistics, land records, and more. Readex’s Territorial Papers contains the entire corpus of the official papers held by the Departments of State and Interior, the two largest such collections in Washington, D.C. Instead of transcripts, it features high-resolution images of the original sources—many of which are hand-written documents—ensuring that scholars don’t miss a single detail from this vital period in American history.

 Indigenous Peoples of North America
This database allows users to trace the history of Native Peoples in North America from colonial relations in the 1600s to twentieth-century issues such as civil rights. Includes manuscript collections, rare books and monographs, newspapers, periodicals, census records, legal documents, maps, drawings and sketches, oral histories, and photos, as well as video content from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

 Indian Claims Insight
TThis resource provides researchers with the opportunity to understand and analyze Native American migration and resettlement throughout U.S. history, as well as U.S. Government Indian removal policies and subsequent actions to address Native American claims. Content includes decisions, transcripts, docket books, journals of the Indian Claims Commission, a judicial panel for relations between the U.S. Government and Native American tribes; and related statutes and congressional publications.

Labor History

 ProQuest History Vault. Labor Unions in the U.S., 1862-1974: Knights of Labor, AFL, CIO, and AFL-CIO
Labor Unions in the U.S., 1862-1974: Knights of Labor, AFL, CIO, and AFL-CIO, consists of records sourced from the Wisconsin Historical Society, Catholic University of America, and the AFL-CIO. American Federation of Labor Records: The Samuel Gompers Era, 1877-1937, focuses on the career of one of the most influential labor leaders in American History. The Socialist Party of America Papers document the party's revolutionary efforts, as well as their involvement in several major reform movements of the 20th century. The most recent module in this category is the papers of the Labor Priest, John A. Ryan, sourced by ProQuest from the holdings of the Catholic University of America.

 Haymarket Affair Digital Collection
Digitized materials from the Chicago History Museum describing the Haymarket Affair (1886-1887).

Politics

 The Rise of American Politics
The Shaping of America: The Rise of American Politics Nearly every printed work about politics in America from 1655 to 1819 The Rise of American Politics 1655-1796, Series 1 The Rise of American Politics 1797-1819, Series 2 More than 7,000 works about the rise of American politics from 1655-1819, featuring text and data analysis tools, author biographies, and suggested search paths for easy browsing and discovery. Available here: The Shaping of America: The Rise of American Politics, Series 1, 1655-1796; The Shaping of America: The Rise of American Politics, Series 2, 1797-1819.

Court records/cases

 U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978
Provides access to legal briefs brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in the period 1832-1978.

 Hein Online
Over 60 million pages of legal history available in an online, fully-searchable, image-based format. Provides coverage from inception of more than 1,400 law and law-related periodicals, and also contains the Congressional Record Bound volumes in their entirety, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, famous world trials dating back to the early 1700s, legal classics from the 16th to the 20th centuries, the United Nations and League of Nations Treaty Series, all United States Treaties, the Federal Register from inception in 1936, the CFR from inception in 1938, and much more.

 Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926
This resource encompasses Legal Treatises, 1800-1926 providing online access to casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters and speeches for American and British law from the aforementioned period.

Jewish Studies
 Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954: Sources from the American Jewish Historical Society, New York
Contains full-color, full-text searchable digitized primary source materials on the history of Jewish communities in America from their first arrival in New York in 1654 to today. Includes access to the entirety of six major organisational collections and twenty-four collections of personal papers from the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. Themes covered include: Business, industry and enterprise; Civil rights and liberties; Culture, literature and the arts; Early Jewish experience; Everyday life: personal and family narratives; Immigration and settlement; Politics and the law; Reflections on the Jewish experience; Religion, tradition and community; War, conflict and persecution; and Welfare, health and education.

Illinois

 Illinois During the Gilded Age
Presents primary source materials which shed light on major themes in Illinois society, politics, and culture during this period

 Alexander Hesler Photograph Collection
Over 150 photographic prints (mostly 4x6 cabinet size, mounted on cardstock) taken by noted Evanston photographer Alexander Hesler, dating circa 1870-1887 and depicting Northwestern University faculty, students, and buildings. Includes 2 copies of published volume "Photographic Views of Picturesque Evanston" (1887).

 George Silas Duntley Photographs
The photographs of George S. Duntley fill 8 boxes and cover the years from approximately 1899-1918. The collection consists of dry plate negatives and record Duntley’s years in Chicago and Evanston while he was attending Northwestern University Medical School. Also included are photographs taken in Bushnell, Illinois, his home town and surrounding areas.