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

Primary Sources - Databases

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.
American West This link opens in a new window
Contains primary sources on the history of the American West, from 1722 to 1939, from the Newberry Library's Graff Collection of Western Americana. Includes manuscripts, broadsides, ephemeral materials, maps, and rare printed works.
American West provides extensive coverage on the history of the American West, including Texas history, from 1722 to 1939, with the heaviest concentration from 1830 to 1939. The database contains materials from the Newberry Library's Graff Collection of Western Americana on topics related to Native Americans, pioneers and homesteaders, mining, the Mormon Exodus, agriculture, transportation, outlaws, the environment, and border issues. Materials, most unique to this collection, include original manuscripts, ephemeral material (e.g., trade cards, wanted posters, photos, claim certificates, news-sheets, etc.), maps, and rare printed works. All textual materials are full-text searchable and can be viewed as transcripts or facsimiles (i.e., original format). Most maps are in color and have zooming functionality.

NOTE: Users can register for a personal account to store searches, create image slideshows, and build a library of documents.
Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples in North America This link opens in a new window
Citation database covering all aspects of Indigenous culture, history, and life in North America. This resource covers a wide range of topics including archaeology, education, the gaming industry, religion, folklore, economic development, acculturation, mythology, missions, tribal governments, and ethnohistory.
Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples in North America (BIPNA) is a bibliographic database covering all aspects of Indigenous culture, history, and life in North America. BIPNA contains more than 350,000 citations for newspapers, magazines, academic journals, books, reviews, and trade publications from the United States and Canada with expanded content from Great Britain and Australia. Dates of coverage for content range from the sixteenth century to the present. The database is an essential research tool for anthropologists, educators, historians, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, linguists, theologians, and policy makers. BIPNA will appeal to anyone interested in exploring the contributions and lived experiences of North America's Indigenous peoples. Updated regularly.
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window
Compilation of nearly 400 Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. This collection offers a diversity of unabridged voices, ranging from intellectuals and literary notables to politicians, union organizers and grassroots figures.
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.
Texas Digital Sanborn Maps This link opens in a new window
A collection of digitized maps that provide detailed property and land-use records that depict the architecture of Texas towns and cities throughout the past one hundred years
Collection features large-scale maps of 436 Texas towns and cities. These maps are valuable historical tools for urban specialists, social historians, architects, geographers, genealogists, planners, and environmentalists. The scale for these maps is 50 feet to an inch.
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade This link opens in a new window
Contains records of 27,233 trans-Atlantic slave ship voyages made between 1595 and 1866
Contains records of 27,233 trans-Atlantic slave ship voyages made between 1595 and 1866. Format allows users to track information by time period and geographic region, and includes interactive maps that allow viewers to chart the trans-Atlantic connections. The accompanying data contains materials about people on board, owners and captains, ships' characteristics, and the geographic trajectory of each voyage.
Women & Social Movements in the United States: 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window
Brings together books, images, primary sources, biographical information and statistics for in-depth access to research on women's studies.
This database is a repository of primary and secondary documents in the field of U.S. Women's History. Included are a dictionary of social movements and organizations, a chronology of U.S. Women's History, advertisements, book chapters, diaries, images, legal documents, letters, organizational notes, transcripts of speeches, along with scholarly interpretations.

Online Resources

American History: From Revolution to Reconstruction and Beyond
A hypertext on the history of the United States from the colonial period until modern times.
A Century of Lawmaking for A New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1875
Beginning with the Continental Congress in 1774, America's national legislative bodies have kept records of their proceedings. The records of the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the United States Congress make up a rich documentary history of the construction of the nation and the development of the federal government and its role in the national life. These documents record American history in the words of those who built our government.
Early Americas Digital Archive
The Early Americas Digital Archive (EADA) is a collection of electronic texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820.
Federalist Papers: Primary Documents in History
The Federalist, commonly referred to as the Federalist Papers, is a series of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison between October 1787 and May 1788. The essays were published anonymously, under the pen name "Publius," in various New York state newspapers of the time.
Letters of Delegates to Congress
The twenty-six volumes of the Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 aims to make available all the documents written by delegates that bear directly upon their work during their years of actual service in the First and Second Continental Congresses, 1774-1789.
Library of Congress - Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789
Contains 277 documents relating to the work of Congress and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Items include extracts of the journals of Congress, resolutions, proclamations, committee reports, treaties, and early printed versions of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
National Archives - Research by Topic
Primary sources related to American History