Web Resources - History of the United States Colonial Period - Reconstruction

Rag Linen Firsts Drafts of History

Rag Linen, named for the heavy-duty paper on which pre-19th century news was printed, is an online museum of rare and historic newspapers, which serve as the first drafts of history and the critical primary source material for historians, authors and educators. Curator and publisher Todd Andrlik has built one of the most significant and comprehensive private collections of Revolutionary War era newspapers.

That a Nation Might Live

This podcast series, sponsored by Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, will focus on events leading up to and during the United States Civil War.

Today’s Document from the National Archives

Web Resources in World History

Academy of Achievement
The Academy of Achievement is like no other organization in the world. For 50 years, this unique non-profit foundation has sparked the imagination of students across America and around the globe by bringing them into direct personal contact with the preeminent leaders of our times. The Academy was founded by Brian Blaine Reynolds, an acclaimed photographer best known for his contributions to Life magazine and Sports Illustrated. Reynolds established the Academy of Achievement to bring aspiring young people together with real-life heroes
American Memory at the Library of Congress
American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.
The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy
Use The Avalon Project to access historical documents from numerous time periods throughout History.
Civil War - Harper's Weekly
Digital copies of Harper's Weekly during the Civil War era.
Digital History
This website presents American history by using new technologies. It contains an interactive timeline, primary sources,virtual exhibitions, multimedia, sections for teachers, biographies, maps, images, etc.
The Food TimeLine
FoodTimeline library owns 2000+ books, hundreds of 20th century USA food company brochures, & dozens of vintage magazines (Good Housekeeping, American Cookery, Ladies Home Journal &c.) We also have ready access to historic magazine, newspaper & academic databases. Service is free and welcomes everyone
Historical World Maps
Internet Modern History Sourcebook
This site is intended to serve the needs of teachers and students in college survey courses in modern European history and American history, as well as in modern Western Civilization and World Cultures.
Library of Congress World History & Cultures
These pages link to selected collection content available online at the Library of Congress, arranged by broad categories. The Library's online content represents only a small percentage of its physical holdings.
The National Archives
Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept forever. Those valuable records are preserved in the National Archives and are available to you, whether you want to see if they contain clues about your family's history, need to prove a veteran's military service, or are researching an historical topic that interests you.
National Archives Civil War Gallery
Find other Civil War information by typing "Civil War" or "American Civil War" into the search box at the top right corner of the National Archives webpage
Smithsonian.com - History & Archaelogy
Smithsonian magazine's in-depth coverage of history, science, nature, the arts, travel, world culture and technology
United States Slave Narratives
During the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project interviewed African Americans who were enslaved prior to the American Civil War. These are the records of those interviews.

Colonization

Exploring the Early Americas
Exploring the Early Americas features selections from the more than 3,000 rare maps, documents, paintings, prints, and artifacts that make up the Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress. This ongoing exhibition has three major themes: Pre-Contact America; Explorations and Encounters; and Aftermath of the Encounter.
Virtual Jamestown
This site explores the legacies of the Jamestown settlement, and "the Virginia experiment" using documents, archaeological finds, 3-D reconstructions, and much more.
America in 1607: Jamestown and the Powhatan
Explore the historic Jamestown fort and the Powhatan village of Werowocomoco through this interactive website
France in America
This website is a bilingual digital library published by the Library of Congress. It explores the history of the French presence in North America from the first decades of the 16th century to the end of the 19th century, including the French and Indian War, and the French involvment in the American Revolution.
Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier
This is a bilingual, multi-format English-Spanish digital library site that explores the interactions between Spain and the United States in America from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. A cooperative effort between the National Library of Spain, the Biblioteca Colombina y Capitular of Seville and the Library of Congress, the project is part of the Library of Congress Global Gateway initiative to build digital library partnerships with national libraries around the world.
Salem Witch Trials
This site consists of an electronic collection of primary source materials relating to the Salem witch trials of 1692 and a new transcription of the court records.

American Revolution and Shaping a New Government

The American Revolution
This open course from Yale will examine the Revolution from a broad perspective, tracing the participants' shifting sense of themselves as British subjects, colonial settlers, revolutionaries, and Americans. The site provides syllabi, and lectures taught by scholars at Yale.
A Guide to the American Revolution, 1763-1783
The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with the American Revolution, including manuscripts, broadsides, government documents, books, and maps. This guide compiles links to digital materials related to the American Revolution that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web site
Massachusetts Historical Society: Online Collections
Founded in 1791, the Massachusetts Historical Society, an independent research library, is an invaluable resource for American history, life, and culture. Its extraordinary collections tell the story of America through millions of rare and unique documents, artifacts, and irreplaceable national treasures.
Spy Letters of the American Revolution
This online exhibit from the University of Michigan examines the everyday intelligence operations of both the British and American armies. The exhibit includes a gallery of letters, a timeline, biographical information, stories, and a variety of educational resources.
Shays' Rebellion - From Revolution to Constitution
Website presents Shays' Rebellion, and a crucial period in our nation's founding when the survival of the republican experiment in government was neither destined nor assured.
The Founder's Constitution
Site consists of extracts from the leading works of political theory, history, law, and constitutional argument on which the Framers and their contemporaries drew and which they themselves produced
Birth of the Nation: The First Federal Congress, 1789-1791
This website provides an overview of the work of and issues faced by the first Congress, which was a virtual second sitting of the Federal Convention, fleshing out the governmental structure outlined in the Constitution and addressing the difficult issues left unresolved by the Constitution.
A New Nation Votes
This site is a searchable collection of election returns from the earliest years of American democracy. Data covers the years from 1787-1825. You can search by state, year, candidate or office.
The War of 1812
This PBS website includes the entire documentary of the War of 1812, plus bonus materials, essays, and classroom materials.

Slavery, Abolition, and Southern Culture

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
This database has information on almost 35,000 slaving voyages that transported over 10 million Africans to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Statistics, maps, essays, passanger names, and much more are available at this site.
Africans in America
America's journey through slavery is presernted in four parts, each with a historical narrative and resource bank of materials.
Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture
This site explores Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as an American cultural phenomenon using texts, songs, and images from the various genres Stowe drew upon, Stowe’s defense against criticism, responses to the book, and more.
Documenting the American South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
Slavery Links
This list of links to websites with documents, narratives and texts, as well as research centers, museums, and more was created by a history professor at Washington State University
American Slave Narratives
From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. These former slaves, most born in the last years of the slave regime or during the Civil War, provided first-hand accounts of their experiences on plantations, in cities, and on small farms. Their narratives remain a peerless resource for understanding the lives of America's four million slaves

Civil War and Reconstruction

The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
This course explores the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War, from the 1840s to 1877. The primary goal of the course is to understand the multiple meanings of a transforming event in American history.
The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
This site holds a digital archive of primary sources that document the lives of people in Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, during the era of the American Civil War. You'll find thousands of letters and diaries, census and government records, newspapers and speeches, all of which record different aspects of daily life in these two counties during the war.
Civil War Soldiers and Sailor System
Published by the National Park Service, this website includes a database of soldier records, battle histories, and links to other NPS Civil War resources.
African Americans in Civil War Medicine
African Americans in Civil War Medicine looks at the men and women who served as surgeons and nurses and how their work as medical providers challenged the prescribed notions of race and gender.
The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition
The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition commemorates the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the nation’s revered sixteenth president. More than a chronological account of the life of Abraham Lincoln, the exhibition reveals Lincoln the man, whose thoughts, words, and actions were deeply affected by personal experiences and pivotal historic events.
Civil War Women: Primary Sources on the Internet
Duke University's list of diaries, letters, photographs, and other documents available online about the life and expereinces of women during the Civil War.
Reconstruction: The Second Civil War
Reconstruction: The Second Civil War offers insights into topics in American history including the Civil War, slavery, abolition, race relations, definitions of freedom and citizenship, civil rights, black suffrage and election to political office, impeachment, regional political differences, nationbuilding after war, the cotton economy, sharecropping, federal government intervention in the states, and more.
People and Politics after the Civil War
This exhibit examines one of the most turbulent and controversial eras in American history. It presents an up-to-date portrait of a period whose unrealized goals of economic and racial justice still confront our society.

Westward Expansion

Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
The site features the full text — almost five thousand pages — of the journals. Also included are a gallery of images, important supplemental texts, and audio files of selected passages plus Native American perspectives. With a focus on full-text searchability and ease of navigation, the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online is intended to be both a useful tool for scholars and an engaging website for the general public.
The Mexican-American War
This web site presents a historical overview of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), as well as primary documents and images related to the conflict. Please use the links at the left to view information about history of the war, the primary documents, including images and sound recordings, lesson plans on teaching the Mexican-American War, and more information about this project.
The North American Indian: Photographs by Edward S. Curtis
In 1906, American photographer Edward S. Curtis was commissioned to document the North American Indian way of life at a time when Native Americans were being forced from their land and stripped of their rights.
We Shall Remain: America Through Native Eyes
We Shall Remain, a provocative multi-media project that establishes Native history as an essential part of American history.
The West
The companion website to Ken Burns' 8-part PBS documentary includes biographies, primary sources, maps, timelines and more.
"California as I Saw It:" First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900
consists of the full texts and illustrations of 190 works documenting the formative era of California's history through eyewitness accounts. The collection covers the dramatic decades between the Gold Rush and the turn of the twentieth century. It captures the pioneer experience; encounters between Anglo-Americans and the diverse peoples who had preceded them; the transformation of the land by mining, ranching, agriculture, and urban development; the often-turbulent growth of communities and cities; and California's emergence as both a state and a place of uniquely American dreams.
The Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History online
The Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History online provides access to typescripts of interviews (1967 -1972) conducted with hundreds of Indians in Oklahoma regarding the histories and cultures of their respective nations and tribes. Related are accounts of Indian ceremonies, customs, social conditions, philosophies, and standards of living

The New York Times Disunion Blog

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America's most perilous period -- using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.

History of the United States Colonial Period - Reconstruction: Web Resources