American History

Before the list of resources, if you need a little boost for your imagination:
History Reimagined: The Declaration of Independence

“If only Word was around when our forefathers wrote the Declaration of Independence…it might’ve gone down like this.”

American History Resources

Comprehensive Sites
Presidents and Their Wives
1500’s – 1600’s
1700’s
1800’s
1900’s
2000’s
African-American Resources
Native American Resources
Women’s History

Comprehensive Sites

• HISTORY MATTERS:  From HISTORY MATTERS

• AMERICAN MEMORY:  “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. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.”

• HISTORIC NEWSPAPERS 1836-1922:  From the Library of Congress. “Chronicling America is a Website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is a long term effort to develop an internet-based, searchable database of U. S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages.”

• WORDS AND DEEDS IN AMERICAN HISTORY: SELECTED DOCUMENTS CELEBRATING THE MANUSCRIPT DIVISION’S FIRST 100 YEARS:      From the Library of Congress,  “provides 92 documents spanning the fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. These documents were chosen by the Library of Congress Manuscript Division in honor of its centennial. Highlights include George Washington’s first inaugural address, the telegram announcing the first flight of the Wright Brothers, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible.”

• HISTORICAL SOURCES ONLINE FROM HISTORYTOOLS.ORG:  Documents from 1600 to the present in chronological order (in PDF format)

• U.S. HISTORY RESOURCES includes a great inflation calculator:                   “One of the real challenges facing both students and teachers in a survey course is the overwhelming amount of material that must be covered. For some, the understanding of the “big picture” gets lost in the sheer volume of facts, dates, people, and movements. When this happens, history can become more of a memorization exercise than a thoughtful analysis of how and why things occurred. This site attempts to simplify American history without making it simplistic.”

• TEACHER RESOURCES: From the Library of Congress including lesson plans and how to use primary sources.

• MAP COLLECTIONS: FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

• MAPPING HISTORY – AMERICAN HISTORY: “The Mapping History Project has been designed to provide interactive and animated representations of fundamental historical problems and/or illustrations of events developments, and dynamics.”

• EDSITEMENT: “EDSITEment offers a treasure trove for teachers, students, and parents searching for high-quality material on the Internet in the subject areas of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies.”

• Introduction to Advanced Placement US History Lessons

• THE HISTORY ENGINE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF VA: “The History Engine is an educational tool that gives students the opportunity to learn history by doing the work—researching, writing, and publishing—of an historian. The result is an ever-growing collection of historical articles or “episodes” that paint a wide-ranging portrait of life in the United States throughout its history, available in our online database to scholars, teachers, and the general public.”

• PICTURING U.S. HISTORY: “The Picturing U.S. History site will also serve as a clearing house for teachers interested in incorporating visual documents into their U.S. history, American studies, American literature, or other humanities courses.”

• INTERNET ARCHIVE: “The Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities.”

• LEON’S POLITICAL ALMANAC – this day in American History calendar

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Presidents and Their Wives

• AMERICAN PRESIDENTS’ DOCUMENTS: Information and documents of their speeches, writings, biographies

• THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY : From the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Includes information on important elections, political parties, memorabilia, biographies, videos and images.

• GEORGE WASHINGTON

• THOMAS JEFFERSON:  “This guide combines links to the major online collections of Jefferson’s writings that have been made accessible by U.Va., as well as by other institutions. It also provides links to online collections of Jefferson’s quotations and other information resources about Jefferson like bibliographies. The guide also provides information about U.Va’s Jefferson collections that are not available online, but are held in our Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.”

• DOLLEY MADISON PROJECT

• JAMES MADISON WRITINGS

• ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND THE FEDERALIST PAPERS

• ABRAHAM LINCOLN HISTORICAL DIGITIZATION PROJECT

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1500’s – 1600’s

• THE AMERICAS TO 1620

• THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION – A DOCUMENTARY RECORD- Yale Law School’s The Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

• COLONIAL AMERICAN RESOURCES

• COLONIAL CHARTERS, GRANTS AND RELATED DOCUMENTS:  From Yale Law School’s The Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

• COLONIZATION AND SETTLEMENT, 1585-1763

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1700’s

• 18TH CENTURY DOCUMENTS : 1700 – 1799 – From Yale Law School’s The Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

• AMERICAN REVOLUTION – Resources including a virtual tour

• AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1763-1783

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1800’s

• 19TH CENTURY DOCUMENTS: 1800-1899- From Yale Law School’s The Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

• LOUIS AND CLARK – ORIGINAL JOURNALS:  digitized by the University of Virginia

• LOUIS AND CLARK – FROM PBS:  includes interactive map and classroom resources

• CIVIL WAR RESOURCES  – Comprehensive  Resources

• The Valley of the Shadow
  “Details life in two American communities, one Northern and one Southern, from the time of John Brown’s Raid through the era of Reconstruction.”

• Confederate States of America: Documents:   From Yale Law School’s The Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

• Documents on Slavery:  From Yale Law School’s The Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

• Civil War and Reconstruction 1861-1877

• MAKING OF AMERICA from the University of Michigan.
  “Making of America (MoA) is 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. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.”

• DOCUMENTING THE AMERICAN SOUTH:  “Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes fifteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.”

• THE COUNTRYSIDE TRANSFORMED – The Railroad and the Eastern Shore of VA 1870-1935

• NATIONAL EXPANSION AND REFORM – 1815-1860

• THE AMERICAN WEST:   From PBS includes lesson plans and resources

• EXPLORING THE WEST:  From the University of Stanford

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1900’s

• 20TH CENTURY DOCUMENTS: 1900-1999: Yale Law School’s The Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

• WWI RESOURCES

• ROARING TWENTIES RESOURCES

• 1930’S RESOURCES – film, text, radio

• GREAT DEPRESSION/NEW DEAL RESOURCES

• NEW DEAL NETWORK

• WW II RESOURCES

• WW II Database:  Primary sources,  images

• COLD WAR RESOURCES- Comprehensive

• The Cold War: Documents:  From Yale Law School’s The Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

• CIVIL RIGHTS RESOURCES

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2000’s

• TEACHING 9/11:  From The Clarke Forum, Dickinson College

• 21ST CENTURY DOCUMENTS: 2000-Present :  Yale Law School’s The Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

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African-American Resources

• AFRO-AMERICAN SOURCES IN VIRGINIA:  A Guide to Manuscripts by Michael Plunkett

• AFRICAN AMERICAN RESOURCES:   From the University of Virginia’s special collections of their Electronic Text Center

• MORE AFRICAN AMERICAN RESOURCES:  From the University of Virginia’s special collections

• THE JACKSON DAVIS COLLECTION of African-American Educational Photographs

• FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS:  From the Library of Congress’ American Memory

• BORN IN SLAVERY: SLAVE NARRATIVES:  FROM THE FEDERAL WRITERS’ PROJECT, 1936-1938 from the Library of Congress’ American Memory

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Native American Resources

• NATIVE AMERICA

• TREATIES BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND NATIVE AMERICANS: From Yale Law School’s The Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

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Women’s History

• SEVEN WOMEN’S HISTORY COLLECTIONS:   FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS’ AMERICAN MEMORY

• NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION COLLECTION 1848- 1921

• WOMENS’ SUFFRAGE

• ELIZABETH CADY STANTON AND SUSAN B. ANTHONY:  FROM PBS

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