Research Guides: History Resources: United States

United States & Canada: Primary Sources

US Sources: African American / Jewish American / Latinx / Native American

Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window
Many sources for African American and other US histories included.
African American Communities This link opens in a new window
Pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports, and in-depth oral histories reveal the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity. Focuses predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina.
African American Experience This link opens in a new window
Articles, audio clips, images, primary source documents, maps, monographs, and government documents covering all aspects of the African American experience from Greenwood Press, Negro University Press, etc.
African American Historical Serials Collection This link opens in a new window
Newspapers, magazines, reports, and annuals from various African American organizations including churches and educational and service institutions.
Coverage: 1816-1922.
African American Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Holdings of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Based upon James P. Danky's African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography (Harvard, 1998).
Coverage: 1825-1995.
Proquest Black Studies This link opens in a new window
Scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books. Includes The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, Index to Black Periodicals Full Text, Black Literature Index, and the Chicago Defender historical newspaper.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery This link opens in a new window
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.
Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice This link opens in a new window
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.
Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database This link opens in a new window
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.
Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
Alternative press journals, magazines, and newspapers covering feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Latinx, gays, lesbians, etc.
Coverage: 1951-2015.
Jewish Life in America This link opens in a new window
Charting the Jewish Diaspora from the earliest settlements through to the mass European influx of the early twentieth century, primary source materials offer insight into the everyday lives of the American Jewish population, explores the communal and social aspects of Jewish identity and culture, and traces Jewish involvement in the political life of American society as a whole.
Coverage: 17th - 20th century.
American Indian Newspapers This link opens in a new window
National periodicals as well as local community news and student publications covering subjects from an Indigenous perspective, including the civil rights era and American Indian Movement (AIM), education, environmentalism, land rights, and cultural representation.
Coverage: 1828-2016 (bulk of material from 1970-2016).
Indigenous Peoples: North America This link opens in a new window
Manuscripts, book collections, newspapers from various tribe and Indian-related organizations; materials such as Bibles, dictionaries and primers in Indigenous languages.
Coverage: 17th - 20th centuries.
Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America This link opens in a new window
Manuscripts, artwork, and rare printed books that provide unique insight into interactions between American Indians and Europeans from their earliest contact right up to the civil rights movement. Sourced from the Newberry Library’s Edward E. Ayer Collection.
Coverage: Early 16th century to the end of the 20th century.

US Sources: Foreign Relations

Colonial America This link opens in a new window
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.
Confidential Print: North America This link opens in a new window
Papers of the British Foreign and Colonial Offices covering such topics as slavery, Prohibition, the First and Second World Wars, racial segregation, territorial disputes, the League of Nations, McCarthyism, and the nuclear bomb.
Coverage: 1824-1961.
Declassified Documents Reference System (DDRS) (now called U.S. Declassified Documents Online) This link opens in a new window
Declassified government documents covering major domestic and international events since the end of World War II. Cabinet meeting minutes, correspondence, diary entries, intelligence reports, political analyses and technical studies from the White House, State Department, National Security Agency, FBI, and CIA.
Digital National Security Archive This link opens in a new window
Full-text collection of declassified documents relating to U.S. foreign policy decisions from post-World War II to the present.
Coverage: 1945 to present.
First World War This link opens in a new window
Covers an array of international perspectives by showcasing intimate personal narratives, wartime propaganda and recruitment material, the truly global reach of the conflict, and the role of women in war through various documentary and visual forms.
Coverage: 1914-1920s.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports This link opens in a new window
FBIS Daily Reports issued by the U.S. Government, includes translations of broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from nations around the world. Current coverage includes 1941-1996.
Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1945-80 (US Department of State) This link opens in a new window
Official documentary historical record of major US foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity.
Coverage: 1945-80.

US Sources: Gender and Sexuality

Archives of Sexuality & Gender This link opens in a new window
Mainstream and alternative gay and lesbian newspapers, newsletters, and periodicals from several countries, reports, policy statements, and other documents related to gay rights and health, including the worldwide impact of AIDS, materials tracing LGBTQ activism in Britain, etc.
Coverage: 1940-.
Gender: Identity and Social Change This link opens in a new window
Primary source materials from men’s and women’s organizations, advice literature, and etiquette books documenting women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, government and legislation, employment, education, the body, the family, and changing societal expectations about gender roles.
Coverage: 19th to 21st centuries.
Women and Social Movements in the United States This link opens in a new window
Document projects and archives, including book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools; organized around the history of women in social movements.
Coverage: 1600-2000.
Witchcraft Collection This link opens in a new window
Titles documenting the history of the Inquisition and the persecution of witchcraft. Manifestations of the belief in witchcraft, its geographical boundaries, works on canon law, the Inquisition, torture, demonology, trial testimony, and narratives. Focuses on witchcraft not as folklore or anthropology, but as theology and as religious heresy.
Coverage: 15th to 19th centuries.

US Sources: Law, Politics & Culture

American History, 1493-1945 This link opens in a new window
Primary source documents from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History that cover the major themes of American History.
Coverage: 1493-1945.
American Memory This link opens in a new window
Written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.
American Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals. Includes Ladies' Home Journal, Harper's, and professional journals.
Coverage: 1740-1940.
American President: A Reference Resource This link opens in a new window
Information on presidents and first ladies, biographies of each cabinet member, listings of presidential staff and advisers, and timelines detailing significant events in the lives of each administration. Audio and video since Kennedy is also available.
American State Papers, 1789-1838 This link opens in a new window
Congressional and Executive Department publications. Speeches and messages of Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.
American West This link opens in a new window
Original manuscripts, maps, ephemeral material, and rare printed sources from the Everett D. Graff Collection at the Newberry Library cover social, political, and economic aspects of the American West. Explore tales of frontier life, Indigenous Peoples, the growth of urban centers, and the environmental impact of westward expansion.
Coverage: Early 18th to Mid-20th Century.
Digital Collections at the Center for Research Libraries This link opens in a new window
Newspapers, journals, documents, archives, and other traditional and digital resources. Most materials acquired are from outside the United States, many from Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Latin America.
Access Note: CRL materials should be requested via an interlibrary loan request.
Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window
Complete text of works cited in Charles Evans' American Bibliography, as enhanced by Roger Bristol's Supplement to Evans' American Bibliography. Resource for information about life in 17th- and 18th-century America, from agriculture and auctions through foreign affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War, temperance, and witchcraft.
Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new window
American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the early part of the 19th century which are many of the rarest materials published in early America. Based on the noted "American Bibliography, 1801-1819" by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker.
Everyday Life and Women In America This link opens in a new window
Monographs, pamphlets, periodicals, and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. The collection is rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.
Coverage: 1800-1920.
Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
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).
Gilded Age and Progressive Era This link opens in a new window
Covering America’s transformative age of industrialization, expanding wealth, inequality and social change. Personal collections, business records and rich visual content offer fresh perspectives on this influential period.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive legal research database. Extensive coverage of law reviews and historical access to resources such as the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, and US Supreme Court decisions. Legislative history and select foreign and international materials. Contains specialized libraries: intellectual property, taxation and economic reform, etc.
HeritageQuest Online This link opens in a new window
Collection of genealogical and historical sources, with coverage dating back to the 1700s. Searches U.S. Federal Censuses, genealogy and local history books, Periodical Source Index (PERSI), Revolutionary War records, Freedman's Bank Records, slave records (from either the 1850 or 1860 US Census) including counts of enslaved people by state, and the Memorials, Petitions and Private Relief Actions from the U.S. Serial Set.
Historic Documents This link opens in a new window
Primary sources covering current events around the world.
Coverage: 1972 to present.
Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition (HSUS) This link opens in a new window
Historical statistics on social, political, and economic aspects of the United States. Census and other statistical data. Create custom tables and merge columns from multiple tables to create custom tables, which can also be downloaded, printed, or graphed. Essays by experts place topics such as migration, slavery, health, crime, Native Americans, and the Confederate States of America in historical context.
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History Vault This link opens in a new window
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
Service Newspapers of World War Two This link opens in a new window
Wartime newspapers published for soldiers serving in major theatres around the world. Both Allied and Axis publications are presented, offering a broad view of the war and the experiences of those on its front lines.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Large and important archive for academic journals, books, and primary sources in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Many journals do not have current issues.
Magazine Archives (EBSCOHost) This link opens in a new window
Collection of popular magazine archives.
Ebony Magazine Archive, Life Magazine Archive, Sports Illustrated Magazine Archive, The Atlantic Magazine Archive, The Nation Magazine Archive, Time Magazine Archive, The National Review Archive, Architectural Digest Magazine Archive, Maclean's Magazine Archive, People Magazine Archive, The New Republic Magazine Archive, U.S. News and World Report Magazine Archive, Vanity Fair Magazine Archive, Jet Magazine Archive
Making of America (Cornell) This link opens in a new window
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. Separate sites at Cornell and the University of Michigan contain different sets of materials.
Coverage: 19th century.
Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, 1620-1926 This link opens in a new window
State and municipal codes, documents relating to constitutional conventions, and other resources in American legal history.
Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new window
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.
Migration to New Worlds This link opens in a new window
Set against a backdrop of colonial expansion, industrial progress, and global conflict; diaries, correspondence, photographs, shipping logs, and oral histories tell the stories of individuals and families who risked everything to build new lives in North America and Australasia.
Coverage: 1800-1980.
National Security Archive This link opens in a new window
Documents that have been declassified and organized into Electronic Briefing Books. Each document accompanied by identifying information and a summary of its significance.
Coverage: Post World War II to present.
Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Women’s interest consumer magazines with detailed article-level indexing. Includes Better Homes and Gardens, Chatelaine, Cosmopolitan, Essence, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, Parents, Redbook, Seventeen, WIN News, and Woman's Day.
Coverage: late-19th century to 2005.
Nixon Years This link opens in a new window
Complete UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) 7 and 82 files for the entire period of Richard Nixon's presidency.
Coverage: 1969-1974.
Political Extremism and Radicalism This link opens in a new window
Diverse mixture of materials by and about both far-right and radical left political groups spanning the pre-war period into the twenty-first century. It contains a diverse range of content, including campaign materials, propaganda, government records, and various ephemera.
Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 This link opens in a new window
Explores the dynamic period of social, political, and cultural change in the U.S. and U.K., covering such topics as music and television, the Vietnam war, student protests, the civil rights movement, and women's liberation. Includes the Social Protest Collection from UC Berkeley, a wide range of zines and alternative press publications, posters, and multimedia.
Coverage: 1950-1975.
Presidential Recordings Digital Edition This link opens in a new window
Recordings and annotated transcripts of telephone conversations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Transcripts are searchable and browseable by administration, series, speaker, date, place, and duration.
Race Relations in America This link opens in a new window
Speeches, reports, surveys, and analyses produced by the Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries based at Fisk University.
Coverage: 1943-1970.
Rotunda: The University of Virginia Press Digital Collections This link opens in a new window
Primary and secondary sources and collections in American history and culture. Includes access to:
• Adams Papers
• Diaries of Gouverneur Morris
• Documentary History of the First Federal Congress
• Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution
• Dolley Madison
• Papers of Alexander Hamilton
• Papers of Andrew Jackson
• Papers of Andrew Johnson
• Papers of Benjamin Rush
• Papers of Booker T. Washington
• Papers of Daniel Webster
• Papers of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and Harriott Pinckney Horry Digital Edition
• Papers of George Washington
• Papers of James K. Polk
• Papers of James Madison
• Papers of James Monroe
• Papers of John Marshall
• Papers of the Revolutionary Era Pinckney Statesmen
• Papers of Thomas Jefferson
• Papers of Ulysses S. Grant
• Papers of Woodrow Wilson
• People of the Founding Era
• Selected Papers of John Jay
Sabin Americana This link opens in a new window
Books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, through the early 1900s. Original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions, etc.
Coverage: 1500-1926.
Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
Current and historical census data and demographic information: US Census, American Community Survey, religious membership, carbon emissions data, etc. Customizable maps, charts, and reports.
Proquest Congressional Publications This link opens in a new window
U.S. Congressional materials (hearings, bills, Congressional Record and compiled legislative histories) and Executive Branch documents.
Virginia Company Archives This link opens in a new window
Documents the founding and economic development of Virginia covering topics such as the settlement of North America from Jamestown to the Bermudas; trade between Britain and America; the ethnic and gender composition of early Virginia; tensions among the colonists; and early relations with Native Americans.
Coverage: 1590 - 1790.