LibGuides UFV: HIST 369, U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction: Primary Sources

About Primary Sources

Primary sources are original sources that first report on research or an idea. In other words, they are documents or records that contain firsthand reports or original data on a topic. Examples of primary sources include:

newspapers
interviews
research reports
scholarly journal articles
conference proceedings
diaries
letters
memoirs
original manuscripts
photographs
drawings
film footage
sheet music

Licensed Primary Source Databases

Defining Gender, 1450-1910
This database contains a wide range of primary sources related to gender, 1450-1910, arranged into 5 themes: conduct and politeness; domesticity and the family; consumption and leisure; education and sensibility; and the body.
Permitted Uses for this Database
Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters
Primary documents revealing the lives of settlers and indigenous peoples and the anglophone colonization of North America, Africa and Australasia. From 1650-1920
Permitted Uses for this Database
Indigenous Peoples of North America
Find the collection by clicking on Resources (top right corner). Varied collection of government documents, images, primary sources and more about Indigenous People in North America. From the seventeenth through the twenty-first century.
Permitted Uses for this Database
InteLex Past Masters
Full text books or collections by seminal figures in the humanities and social sciences, including: Aquinas, Aristotle, Austen, Behn, Betham, Bronte, Calvin, Darwin, Dewey, Dickens, etc., in both original languages and English translation; including their published and unpublished works, articles and essays, and correspondence.
Permitted Uses for this Database
Points to the Past
Nearly 200 million pages of searchable primary source materials, including maps, photos, newspapers, manuscripts, pamphlets, portraits, sermons, poems. It is freely available to residents living in British Columbia. Contains 17th & 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers.
Permitted Uses for this Database
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007
Coverage of trans-Atlantic slavery and abolition topics; content includes original manuscripts, other rare printed materials and contextual essays. The focus is on the African Coast, the Middle Passage, slavery and agriculture, the abolition movement, the Underground Railway and slavery today.
Coverage: 1490 to 2007.
Permitted Uses for this Database
Times Digital Archive, 1785-1985
The Times (of London). Includes every page of the newspaper, including articles, editorials, advertisements, birth and death announcements, photos and illustrations.
Permitted Uses for this Database

Primary sources for American history

Primary Sources: Definition and Resources
This SFU site provides information about Primary Documents in History and the Humanities.
Digital Civil War Collection
From the University of Tennessee.
American History
The Library of Congress' Digital Collections are a "gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections."
American Presidency Project
Established in 1999 at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The following presidential documents have been organized into a searchable database:
-Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Washington - Taft (1789-1913)
-Public Papers of the Presidents, Hoover - Bush (1929 - 1993)
-Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Clinton - G.W. Bush (1993-2008)
Booker T. Washington Online Books
The complete contents, both text and illustrations, of the 14 volume The Booker T. Washington papers, published between 1972 and 1989.
Catalog of Political Cartoons by Dr Seuss
Access to digitized cartoons penned by Theodor Seuss Geisel housed in the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress, this site provides access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).
Discovering American Women's History
This database provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States.
Documenting the American South (DAS)
The Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sponsors DAS, a collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century.
Founders' Constitution
Rich collection of primary documents that are fundamental antecedents to the U.S. Constitution of 1789 and illustrate contemporary thought that gave rise to the Constitution.
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition
Information on the history of Atlantic slavery and its aftermath.
Journals of the Lewis & Clark expedition (1803-1806)
From the University of Nebraska.
Making of America
"A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction." Keyword searchable.
Martin Luther King Jr. Collection
From Morehouse College. Archival materials documenting much of King’s life and work spanning from 1944 to 1968.

Selected Primary Source Books in the UFV Library

Milestone documents in American history : exploring the primary sources that shaped America
Call Number: E 173 M62 2008
Milestone Documents of American Leaders by Paul Finkelman (Editor-In-Chief)
Call Number: E 173 M63 2009
Milestone Documents in African American History by Paul Finkelman (Editor-In-Chief)
Call Number: E 184.6 M55 2010
Jim Crow America : a documentary history
Call Number: E 185.61 J527 2009

More Primary Sources

Underground Railway: Niagara's freedom trail
Material documenting the role of Canadian border towns in providing sanctuary to runaway slaves.
US Historical Panoramic Maps 1847-1909
From the Library of Congress American Memory Project.
Women Working, 1870-1930
The prototype website of the Open Collections Program Women Working project. This site will provide access to digitized books (over 2000), manuscripts (10,000 pages) and images (1,000) from the collections of Harvard University Libraries and Museums on the topic of women in the U.S. economy from 1870-1930.

University of Washington Directory of Primary Websites

University of Washington assembled a significant list of American primary source websites. The directory is divided into the following subsections.