Subject and Course Guides: U.S. History Up To 1865: Primary Sources

Primary Sources - Databases

Age of Exploration This link opens in a new window
Explore five centuries of journeys across the globe, scientific discoveries, the expansion of European colonialism, conflict over territories and trade routes, and decades-long search and rescue attempts in this multi-archive collection dedicated to the history of exploration.
American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collections This link opens in a new window
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collections include digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals from the American Antiquarian Society, the premier library documenting the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction. This content is not available for acquisition in digital form from any source other than EBSCO Publishing, and keyword searching is available on all titles.
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collections exists as a series of five databases created from a comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1691 and 1876. These databases include 6,500 titles featuring more than 10 million pages of content from the seventeenth century through the late nineteenth century. The collection also contains titles in more than
two dozen languages including French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and more.
Indigenous Newspapers in North America This link opens in a new window
From historic pressings to contemporary periodicals, explore nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the US and Canada. With newspapers representing a huge variety in publisher, audience and era, discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.
American Periodicals (1740 - 1940) This link opens in a new window
Provides access to full-text periodicals covering the American experience from the colonial era to the beginning of World War II.
American Periodical Series Online (APS Online) contains over 1,000 full-text periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals. Titles in this database include: Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine; the first American professional journals; America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository; popular consumer magazines still in publication, such as Vanity Fair, Harper's Magazine, and Ladies' Home Journal; regional and niche publications; and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure's. Users are able to search the complete text, including tables of contents, by boolean and keyword operators. Articles are linked to the corresponding page images, downloadable in PDF format. Updated daily.
Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures and the Environment This link opens in a new window
This full-text work in progress documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850
This full-text work in progress documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. It focuses on personal accounts of traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials. Source materials include narratives, diaries, journals, and letters.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
An online collection of English-language titles and editions published in the U.K. and the Americas between 1701 and 1800
An online collection of English and foreign language books, pamphlets, broadsides and other ephemera published in the U.K. and the Americas. Content is presented as full text page images which can be viewed online or downloaded as PDF documents. When completed there will be more than 33 million pages of material. The collection is an ongoing project based on The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), a machine-readable union list of the holdings of the British Library, in addition to those from more than 1,500 university, private, and public libraries worldwide. The seven subject-specific areas of study are History and Geography; Social Sciences and Fine Arts; Medicine, Science, and Technology; Literature and Language; Religion and Philosophy; Law; and Reference.
JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive This link opens in a new window
JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
JSTOR (Journal Storage) is an archive collection of over 620 full-text scholarly journals primarily from university presses and professional society publishers. Additional titles are added to the collection as back files are digitized. Subject areas include: African American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Botany, Ecology, Economics, Education, Finance, Folklore, History, History of Science Technology, Language Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Public Policy Administration, Science, Slavic Studies, Sociology, Statistics.
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window
This collection includes 2,162 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, so providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950.
Composed of contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives, the series provides a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines. In selected cases, users will be able to hear the actual audio voices of the immigrants. The collection will be particularly useful to researchers, because much of the original material is difficult to find, poorly indexed, and unpublished; most bibliographies of the immigrant focus on secondary research; and few oral histories have been published.
This work in progress is composed of the personal narratives of immigrants to North America, including Canada
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
This database includes diaries, journals, and letters written by women visiting or living in North America between the years 1700 and 1950.
This work in progress, when completed, will be the largest collection of women's diaries and correspondence ever assembled and include the personal experiences of 1,500 women from all social classes.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture and Law - HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
This collection brings together a multitude of legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. It includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.

Online Resources

Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America
. The images and transcripts provided here are documents from the New-York Historical Society and the Gilder Lehrman Collection. We would be happy to learn of unpublished documents in other collections, and would hope to include them in this database.
Digital Public Library of America - American Revolution
Library of Congress - Primary Documents in American History
Primary Documents in American History
National Archives - Pictures of the Revolutionary War
The selected pictures listed below are among the audiovisual holdings of the Still Picture Branch of the National Archives that relate to the American Revolution.
National Archives - Research by Topic
Primary resources related to various topics of American History
National Archives - The American Revolution
The National Archives holds records relating to military service during the Revolutionary War, including both Continental troops and state troops that served as Continental troops. You may want to start by searching for a person's Military Service Records and Pension and Bounty Land records.
New York Public Library - Alexander Hamilton Papers
Papers related to Alexander Hamilton
Perspectives on the Boston Massacre