Primary Sources

Primary Source Databases
HathiTrust

Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice
Primary source documents on key aspects of the history of slavery. The African Coast, the Middle Passage, the varieties of slave experience, religion, revolts, abolition, and legislation. Case studies from America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Cuba.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery
Books and pamphlets, US Supreme Court records, newspapers and periodicals, manuscripts, and reference materials for the scholarly study and understanding of slavery from a multinational perspective.
Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Records from slaving expeditions from archives and libraries throughout the Atlantic world. Information about vessels, enslaved peoples, slave traders and owners, and trading routes. Statistical tables, graphs, maps, and timelines.
Coverage: 1514-1866.
Archives Unbound
Archival collections covering the US and the world for the 19th and 20th centuries.
Colonial America
Manuscript material from the Colonial Office files at the UK National Archives that documents all aspects of life in colonial America. Includes original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies.
Coverage: 1606-1822.
Gale Primary Sources
Newspapers, books, manuscripts, maps, and photographs. Simultaneously search: 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, Sunday Times (London), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), Making of the Modern World, Times Literary Supplement, and Times Digital Archive, Financial Times (London).
Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange
Visual, manuscript, and printed materials explore the history of fifteen key commodities that have been transported and consumed around the world for hundreds of years, transforming societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption, and cultural practices.
Coverage: 18th - 20th century.
History Vault
Digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and other primary source materials.

• American Indians and the American West
• American Politics and Society
• Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle
• International Relations and Military Conflicts
• Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War
• Women's Studies
• Workers and Labor Unions
Making of the Modern World
Digital facsimile images of unique primary sources that track the development of the modern, western world through the lens of trade and wealth. History, political science, social conditions, technology and industry, economics, area studies, etc.
Coverage: 1450-1930.
Proquest Congressional Publications
U.S. Congressional materials (hearings, bills, Congressional Record and compiled legislative histories) and Executive Branch documents.

HathiTrust
Digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries, established in this repository to archive and share their digital content.
Access Note: VU is a partner institution. Login is required for downloading. Tutorial: https://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/HathiTrustAccess