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Primary Sources

General Sites

Library of Congress Digital Collections
"Access online collections (including American Memory): view maps & photographs; read letters, diaries & newspapers; hear personal accounts of events; listen to sound recordings & watch historic films."

Milestone Documents This link opens in a new window
The documents chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965.

Colonial Era and American Revolution

Education

19th Century Schoolbooks This link opens in a new window
Searchable set of 140+ titles, representing grammar, spelling, reading, arithmetic, geography, history, civics, physiology, penmanship, and letter-writing.

Civil War

Making of America This link opens in a new window
Primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. Includes the areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online - ECCO (CRKN - Gale) This link opens in a new window
Contains digitized texts of over 183,000 titles published during the 18th Century.

The American South and Slavery

North American Slave Narratives This link opens in a new window
Documents the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Includes narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books to 1920.

African Americans

Literature

African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
From the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, focuses on the writers who founded the African American women's literary tradition.

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