Primary Sources

Britannica online
This Resource includes coverage of the Britannica Encyclopedia, Webster's Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Dictionary of Quotations, as well as headlines from the New York Times and BBC.

Environmental Studies Gale in Context
Gale In Context: Environmental Studies provides news, overview information, video, unique commentaries, primary source documents, and statistics in research areas, such as energy systems, healthcare, food, climate change, population, and economic development.

HeinOnline Military and Government
With this new database, users can explore thousands of diverse publications related to the history, glory, and nitty-gritty of the U.S. Military.

World History-Gale in Context
This resource combines outstanding primary and secondary historical sources with great multimedia. It reaches back nearly 5,000 years to chronicle the rise and fall of cultures and societies across all continents and eras. A Web-like interface and intuitive functionality lead to a comprehensive selection of multimedia results.

Address to Congress on the Yalta Conference (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
This detailed speech from March 1, 1945, provided Congress with an update post-Yalta Conference hearing.

American Archive of Public Broadcasting
American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) is a hub for publicly funded television and radio programs. More than 120 local broadcast stations and archives contribute metadata records and digitized media. By serving as a portal for public radio and television stations across the country, this resource supports “researching how national or even international topics have been covered in divergent localities over the past 60+ years.”

Antietam on the Web
This site looks at the crucial Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam), highlighting generals and other officers, battle maps, and important background information. This site also includes the transcriptions of reports from the officers from both sides of the war, as well as excerpts from diaries and letters of some of the soldiers who survived. 

Art Institute of Chicago: Collection
52,000 art images in the public domain making them freely available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.

Artvee
Artvee is a collection of high-resolution downloads of classical paintings, vintage posters, and book and magazine covers from some of the world’s well known museums.  Browse and download thousands of public domain works of art from over 40 institutions including The Met, New York Public Library, Art Institute of Chicago, Smithsonian, J. Paul Getty Museum, Library of Congress and Paris Musées.  You can browse by category or by topic.

Avalon Project Document Collections (Yale University)
The Avalon Project at Yale University provides a list of Document Collections which include the American Revolution, the Cold War, Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, Mexican and Cuban American Diplomacy and other collections related to US History and Politics.

Berlin Airlift (Harry S. Truman Presidential Library)
This specific collection on the Berlin Airlift is broken down monthly and covers the years 1948 to 1952. The website provides a mixture of supporting materials, including audio recordings and oral histories.

Berlin Blockade 1948-1949
This specialized section of the National Archives website supplies a copy of the Berlin Blockade map from the Office of Foreign Affairs, providing the outworkings of the Blockade.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1841–1955)
An important daily newspaper, the Eagle was unusual for its time since it covered national as well as regional news. The archive is searchable, can be browsed by date, and includes zooming capabilities to see the tiny text up close.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (Library of Congress)
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.

Civil War Archive: Letters Home from the Civil War.
A collection of letters from both Union and Confederate soldiers, organized by name and regiment.

Civil War Diaries and Letters Collections (Auburn University)
A collection of diaries and letters from Auburn University, covering both sides of the war; each item is scanned and transcribed.

Civil War Diaries and Letters.(University of Iowa)
Browse a list of scanned diaries and letters from the University of Iowa Libraries, some of which currently have transcriptions, but not all. You can also browse by year to get the materials for a particular time. 

Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints
Approximately 7,000 portraits and battleground images are available. The collection is from the glass negatives of Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner, as well as from photographic collections that were purchased by the Library of Congress in 1943. Browse by broad subjects or search by keyword.

Civil War Maps
This presentation contains approximately 2,240 Civil War maps and charts and 76 atlases and sketchbooks that are held within the Geography and Map Division, 200 maps from the Library of Virginia, and 400 maps from the Virginia Historical Society.

Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1855–1865
A collection of letters, photographs, and diary entries that document a lesser-known conflict of the time. The resources are scanned and transcribed. When possible, the letters also show connections to other related people and events. This site is a result of collaboration with Kansas City-area libraries, historical societies, and museums.

Clara Barton Papers
Philanthropist, nurse, educator, and lecturer. Correspondence, diaries, reports, legal and financial papers, organizational records, lectures, writings, scrapbooks, printed matter, memorabilia, and other papers relating to Barton's work to provide relief services during the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, the work of the American National Red Cross which she founded, and the National First Aid Association of America.

Cold War Intelligence
This collection of “2,360 formally classified United States government documents” provides both open and closed access focusing on the United States Intelligence Assembly.

Cold War International History Project
This website provides full access to historical materials from all government-related agencies. The page entitled “Primary Sources on Cold War History” allows users to browse based on subject-related historiographical material, including the Sino Soviet agreements. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars provides the Cold War International History Project.

Cold War Museum
This preservation website provides a vast timeline from the 1940s to 1990s concerning the Cold War. The 1940s-era section provides primary documents from the Czechoslovakia Cop, Marshall Plan, and additional related topics.

Community Video Education Trust (CVET)
This resource is a digital archive of videos taken in South Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The raw footage available on this website documents anti-apartheid demonstrations, speeches, mass funerals, celebrations, and interviews with activists.

Diaries and letters • Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
Approximately 20,000 documents, which include correspondence with enclosures of newspaper clippings, drafts of speeches, notes, pamphlets, and other printed material by Lincoln, are available. Most of the material dates from the presidential years. Lincoln had a lively correspondence with many people in his day, so this is a rich resource. Each piece is scanned, with accompanying transcription. Searchable by keyword or just browse the collection.

Digital Public Library of America

DPLA (Digital Public Library of America)
34,090,282 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States.

Dred Scott Case Files
St. Louis Circuit Court legal documents stored in the MSA relating to the Dred Scott freedom suit that led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision.

EDGAR-SEC Filings
The SEC requires public companies to file registration statements, periodic reports, and other forms electronically through EDGAR. Now you can access and download this information for free.

First Person Narratives of the American South
Everyday people’s voices speak through their diaries, autobiographies, ex-slave accounts, and memoirs on this site, which is organized alphabetically or by subject.

Foreign Relations of the United States
This digital repository features the Foreign Relation of the United States.

Frederick Douglass Papers
A former slave and devout abolitionist, Douglass’s papers were digitized by the Library of Congress. They are searchable, and also can be browsed by date, and then narrowed by type, such as speeches or correspondence.

Harper’s Weekly
The archive of this popular weekly newspaper highlights only the Civil War years. The site is searchable and is arranged chronologically w i t h t h u m b - nails of the front pages. All pages from the 1861- 1865 Civil War period have been scanned including the engravings and illustrations.

Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System Online
The Social Systems Online program provides access to digital materials from the Harvard Soviet Social System. The repository contains more than “705 transcripts conducted from refugees from the USSR during the early years of the Cold War.”

History Matters: Making Sense of Evidence
Helps students and teachers make effective use of primary sources. “Making Sense of Documents” provide strategies for analyzing online primary materials, with interactive exercises and a guide to traditional and online sources. “Scholars in Action” segments show how scholars puzzle out the meaning of different kinds of primary sources, allowing you to try to make sense of a document yourself then providing audio clips in which leading scholars interpret the document and discuss strategies for overall analysis.

Hoover's Online
Hoover's Online provides company capsules and profiles that give comprehensive company, industry, and market intelligence to investors and business professionals.

Human Computers: The Early Women of NASA
These ground-breaking female mathematicians, engineers and scientists produced calculations crucial to the success of NASA's early space missions.

Ideological Foundations of the Cold War–Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum.
The focal point of the collection provides ideology based on U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union. The Ideological Foundation of the Cold War section provides imagery and oral histories to help inform users. The documentation spans from the years 1945 to 1952.

Jackson Davis Collection of African American Educational Photographser
Jackson Davis, an educational reformer and amateur photographer, took nearly 6,000 photographs of African American schools, teachers and students throughout the Southeastern United States. His photographs — most intended to demonstrate the wretched conditions of African American schools in the south and to show how they could be improved — provide a unique view of southern education during the first half of the twentieth century.

Making of America (MoA)
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.

Making of America: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies
The Making of America site is an excellent source of primary documents, and this one features the orders, reports, and correspondence from the Union and Confederate navies. The scanned pages of the 30-volume set from the Government Printing Office are annotated and arranged chronologically. The collection is searchable. This is an essential resource for any study of naval operations in the war.

Manuscripts of the American Civil War (University of Notre Dame)
This special collection from the University of Notre Dame's Rare Books and Special Collections contains soldier’s diaries, which have been carefully scanned and transcribed. The soldiers represented are from both sides of the war. The diaries highlight their day-to-day experiences—from the mundane to the terrifying..

National Security Achieve–Debriefing Books
This collection encapsulates national security, foreign policy, military proceedings, and provides additional topics. The highlighted material includes The SOLO File: Declassified Documents Detailing the FBI’S Most Valued Secret Agents of the Cold War.

National Security Archive
The National Security Archive supplies a large quantity of Cold War primary source material accessible by country listing, including topics of the Soviet Estimate U.S. Analysis of the Soviet Union (1947–91).

North American Slave Narratives (University of North Carolina)
The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill has a special collection dedicated to slave narratives. Not every manuscript is a primary document, but many are. Included on the site are narratives of fugitive and former slaves in published form from before 1920. For scholars interested in further study, a bibliography of slave and former-slave narratives by William L. Andrews is also included.

Origins of the Cold War
The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum allows users full access to original digital documentation, including the Containment and Marshall Plan with additional topographic information from the Truman Administration

Papers of Jefferson Davis
A selection of documents from the published papers of the same name that includes speeches, reports, and correspondence. The documents are organized by volume with brief annotations.

Pictures of the Civil War
The new era of photography brought the battles home during the American Civil War. The National Archives has organized the Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner photographs into broad categories for easy browsing.

Poetry of Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou was an author, actor, dancer, poet, producer, director, playwright, professor, and civil rights activist considered one of the most influential voices of her time. She is widely known for her autobiographical works and poetry. (DPLA)

Prelude to McCarthyism: The Making of a Blacklist
The National Archives provides original newspaper sources on the Attorney General’s List of Supervise Organization in connection with McCarthyism.

Primary Documents in American History from Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is home to many of the most important documents in American history. This Web site provides links to materials digitized from the collections of the Library of Congress that supplement and enhance the study of these crucial documents.

Primary Source Analysis tool

Primary sources for History
This is a topical list of high-quality U.S. History websites focused on primary source collections from government agencies, universities, museums, libraries, and historical organizations.

Richmond Daily Dispatch (1860– 1865)
This paper was published from the
Confederate capital and has a digitized and
searchable online archive of 1,384 issues.

Scowcroft Documentary Series on Military History
A series of short documentary films designed to address timely, complex, or controversial topics in open-ended ways.  This series relates to Military historical topics ex. Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

Secession-Era Editorials
This site from the Furman University history department in South Carolina contains transcribed editorials from contemporary newspapers, all from the 1850s. The specific issues discussed are the Nebraska Bill debates, the caning attack on Senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston Brooks, John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry, and the Dred Scott decision. These events all highlight the varied and inflexible opinions of their time from both sides of the conflict.

Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938.
Includes more than 2,300 first-person accounts, and more than 500 photographs. The narratives were collected in the 1930s by the Federal Writer’s Project and the Works Progress Administration, and put into a seventeen volume set.

Slavery and Abolition in the U.S.: Select Publications of the 1800s
Reflecting both sides of the slavery question, these publications from the 1800s include speeches, tracts, pamphlets, books, legal proceedings, religious sermons, and personal accounts. This collection from a cooperative project by Millersville University and Dickinson College includes more than 24,000 individual pages.

Slaves and the Courts 1740–1860
From the Library of Congress’s American Memory Project this site consists of trials and cases, arguments, proceedings, and other historical works of importance that relate to the prosecution and defense of slavery as an institution. The collection contains more than 100 pamphlets and books published between 1772 and 1889.

Smithsonian Magazine-African American History

Smithsonian Magazine-US History

South Carolina and the Civil War (University of South Carolina)
The site brings together primary sources by eyewitnesses from the holdings of the University of South Carolina. Included on the site are diaries, sheet music, maps, letters, and photographs. The collections are scanned and viewable, but with little transcription or description.

The Civil War Collection (Michigan State University)
A huge online collection of scanned letters, newspaper articles, images, photographs, diaries, and much more, filled with the stories of Michigan soldiers.

The Civil War Collection (Penn State)
Penn State has a rich digitized special collection. These include diaries, newspapers, and other ephemera. No transcriptions are available for the diaries, but the scanned pages are clean and easy to peruse.

The Civil War: Women and the Home-front. (Duke University)
Duke University has put together this study guide relating to women’s role during the war. Use the tab labeled “Primary Sources Online,” which includes digitized diaries and letters, as well as outside links to other institutions’ collections. The online papers include a collection from Rose O’Neal Greenhow, a famed Confederate spy. Other letters include those written by African American slaves, describing their living conditions in the South

The Williams Institute
This site is a think tank that conducts and provides research on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity related to public policy. The institute’s website provides access to rigorous research under 13 broad categories, topics include census data as it relates to the LGBT+ community, military and education issues, discrimination, and more. The research goes back nearly two decades up to the present.

The Wilson Center Digital Archives- Cold War Origins
This site dispenses a list of international relations documentation. A highlighted resource being the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (signed in 1939). The collection ranges from minute meetings to diary entries to military reports.

The World's Abortion Laws
The definitive record of the legal status of abortion in countries across the globe, updated in real time.

Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library (Mississippi State University)
This site from Mississippi State University contains the first 31 volumes of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant published by Southern Illinois University Press, and includes his military papers from the Civil War. Also included are photographs and prints from the life of Grant, including photographs from the war. The volumes are searchable as well as browsable.

UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL)
UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), is the only organizational unit in the UN family that holds a global mandate for lifelong learning.  UIL promotes and supports lifelong learning with a focus on adult learning, continuing education, literacy and non-formal basic education.

United States Treaties and Other International Agreements
United States Treaties and Other International Agreements

Valley of the Shadow (University of Virginia)
Thousands of documents are accessible that compare life in two towns during the war: one in Virginia and one in Pennsylvania. These documents include letters, diaries, maps, newspaper accounts, and other sources.

Virginia Military Institute Archives
The Virginia Military Institute has a proud history of training its students to serve in the military service of the United States. The archives provide access to the full-text of more than 75 letters, diaries, manuscripts, and other ephemera of soldiers from both armies.

Wisconsin Goes to War: Our Civil War Experience (University of Wisconsin)
The University of Wisconsin is in the process of digitizing letters, diaries, poetry, and other writings from Wisconsin’s soldiers; approximately 630 pages to date, with an expected completion number to be more than 2,600 pages.

World War II Photos

World War II Posters (Bucknell University)
Special Collections/University Archives' World War II poster collection to photograph, research, and describe individual posters that developed into an image collection.

Zack's Investment Research
Zack's Investment Research has tools that enable individuals to research, select and track their investments more effectively. Company news, profiles, stock prices and more.