American History: Find Primary Sources

The classic version of the library catalog. Search the library’s collections to find books, e-books, journal titles, films, and more. Search your topic by keyword or subject--or search for specific items by author or title.

Full-text primary sources from 17th and 18th-century America. Includes advertisements, almanacs, broadsides, catalogs, charters, cookbooks, elegies, erotica, laws, maps, narratives, novels, pamphlets, plays, poems, primers, sermons, songs, speeches, textbooks, and more. Search by keyword or browse by genre, subjects, author, history of printing, place of publication, or language. This collection is based on the renowned bibliography by Charles Evans.

Sabin Americana is a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Includes original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more.

American State Papers are "Legislative and executive documents, many originating from the important period between 1789 and the beginning of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set in 1817."

Search or browse the full-text of over 1,000 early American newspapers published between 1690 and 1922. This database includes titles from all fifty states and there are nine titles for North Carolina alone. Also included are several early newspapers in languages such as French and German.

American Periodical Series Online (APS Online) includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century.

Collections include digitized images of daily life from 3,700 American magazines and journals collected by the American Antiquarian Society from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Though these are British newspapers, there will be discussion of what's happening in the Americas.

Most of the content is British, but there will be information about the Americas.

Archive of 1.8 million pages of primary source documents pertaining to Native American history and life from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Records include Indian Census Rolls and Records of the Cherokee Indian Agency of Tennessee.

Over 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries plus 4,000 pages of previously unpublished materials depicting the personal experiences of hundreds of women. Contains materials from Colonial times to 1950.

The classic version of the library catalog. Search the library’s collections to find books, e-books, journal titles, films, and more. Search your topic by keyword or subject--or search for specific items by author or title.

Full-text primary sources published in the early part of the 19th century. Includes broadsides, diaries, genealogies, letters, maxims, memoirs, primers, puzzles, sermons, slave narratives, songs, treaties, and wills. Also includes works of many European authors reprinted for the American public. Search by keyword or browse by genre, subjects, author, history of printing, place or publication, or language. The collection is based on the distinguished bibliography by Ralph B. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker.

Search or browse the full-text of over 1,000 early American newspapers published between 1690 and 1922. This database includes titles from all fifty states and there are nine titles for North Carolina alone. Also included are several early newspapers in languages such as French and German.

Collections include digitized images of daily life from 3,700 American magazines and journals collected by the American Antiquarian Society from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction.

American Periodical Series Online (APS Online) includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century.

Contains the full text of these historical newspapers: the Washington Post (1877-2002), Los Angeles Times (1881-1995), New York Times (1851 - 2015), and Chicago Tribune (1849-1996). As well as The Wall Street Journal 1984-Present and other newspapers.

Cover-to-cover archive of the magazine from 1857-2014 that covers events and political issues through literary and cultural commentary. It includes more than 1,800 issues providing a broad view of 19th, 20th and early 21st-Century American thought. Include original advertisements.

An archival research resource comprising the backfiles of leading women's interest consumer magazines. Issues are scanned in high-resolution color and feature detailed article-level indexing. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century through to 2005 and these key primary sources permit the examination of the events, trends, and attitudes of this period. Among the research fields served by this material are gender studies, social history, economics/marketing, media, fashion, politics, and popular culture.

Primary documents from collections including the American Indian Correspondence Collection of Presbyterian Missionary Letters, 1833-1893 and the documents from the War Department and Indian Affairs 1800-1824, as well as the Papers of the Panton/Leslie Company, Indian Trade in the Southeastern Spanish Borderland and the Meriam Report On Indian Administration . More contemporary collections include documents of the American Indian Movements and Native American Radicalism, 1968-1979.

Archive of 1.8 million pages of primary source documents pertaining to Native American history and life from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Records include Indian Census Rolls and Records of the Cherokee Indian Agency of Tennessee.

Contains reports and documents of the U. S. Congress and of government agencies and commissions. Browse through the Civil War category, but SEARCH SMART! Not everything related to the Civil War will be labeled with the term "civil war." The solution: use the advanced search feature and search for your topic with a date range of 1861-1865. Leave off the term "civil war", as it will eliminate relevant results.

Documenting the American South provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture. The collection includes oral history interviews, slave narratives, letters, memoirs, literary works, and artifacts.

A gold mine of primary sources. Keep in mind that the library catalog finds BOTH primary and secondary sources, so take a close look at each source. Use the primary sources guide if you aren't sure.

Contains the full text of these historical newspapers: the Washington Post (1877-2002), Los Angeles Times (1881-1995), New York Times (1851 - 2015), and Chicago Tribune (1849-1996). As well as The Wall Street Journal 1984-Present and other newspapers.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers-Black Newspapers offers primary source material essential to the study of American history and African-American culture, history, politics, and the arts. Examine major movements from the Harlem Renaissance to Civil Rights, and explore everyday life as written in the Chicago Defender, The Baltimore Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, Los Angeles Sentinel, Atlanta Daily World, The Norfolk Journal and Guide, The Philadelphia Tribune, and Cleveland Call and Post.

A collection of U.S. newspaper articles published in the 19th and 20th centuries. Chronicles a century and a half of the African American experience, including: life in the Antebellum South, growth of the Black church, the Jim Crow Era, the Great Migration, Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights movement, political and economic empowerment and more. All full text.

170 periodicals by and about African Americans include academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations' bulletins, poetry and fiction, annual reports and other genres. Chronicles the African American experience, from 1825 to 1998, including the Antebellum Era, the U.S. Civil War, reconstruction, segregation, and the Civil Rights movement. All full text.

Collections include digitized images of daily life from 3,700 American magazines and journals collected by the American Antiquarian Society from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Cover-to-cover archive of the magazine from 1857-2014 that covers events and political issues through literary and cultural commentary. It includes more than 1,800 issues providing a broad view of 19th, 20th and early 21st-Century American thought. Include original advertisements.

Full text of Ebony from 1945 to 2014.

Comprehensive index of popular and general-interest periodicals in the 20th century America. Directs you to over 3 million articles from 1890 to 1982. Links to full text from JSTOR and other providers.

Full text archive of Time magazine, a leading US news source, from its beginnings in 1923 through 2000. Useful for researching historical news and events.

FBIS Daily has been the United States' principal record of political and historical open source intelligence for nearly 70 years. The original mission of the FBIS was to monitor, record, transcribe and translate intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories. Reports include English-language, full-text broadcasts and news transcripts--translated as needed--from Africa, South Asia, the Middle and Near East.

Diaries, journals, and narratives of explorers, emigrants, military men, Native Americans, and travelers. In addition, there are accounts on the development of farming and mining communities, family histories, and folklore. These accounts provide a view of the of the vast region of Appalachia which spans three and a half centuries and provides information on the social, political, economic, scientific, religious and agricultural characteristics of the region.

Archive of 1.8 million pages of primary source documents pertaining to Native American history and life from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Records include Indian Census Rolls and Records of the Cherokee Indian Agency of Tennessee.

Over 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries plus 4,000 pages of previously unpublished materials depicting the personal experiences of hundreds of women. Contains materials from Colonial times to 1950.

Topically-focused digital collections of historical documents including Women, War and Society, 1914-1918; International Women's Movement: The Pan Pacific/Southeast Asia Women's Association/1950-1985; Women Organizing Transnationally: The Committee of Correspondence, 1952-1969; and Women's Issues and Their Advocacy Within The White House, 1974-1977.

Contains over half a million pages of original historical documents chronicling the events in both the Pacific and European theatres of the Second World War, such as military conferences, captured German records, JAG case files, Nuremberg interrogation records, and submarine patrol reports. The collections not only provide an in-depth perspective of military activities, but also document the lives of individual military personnel.

News content from many national and international newspapers, newswires and selected news magazines.