This page provides access to selected primary source collections, organized by time period. Primary sources are original materials that document an era or event, created by someone who witnessed or lived through it. Examples include letters, diaries, photographs, manuscripts, magazines, and newspapers. Additional subject specific guides are linked at the top of this page and in the left hand box below.
This collection of historical periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society documents life in America from the Colonial period through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Cover-to-cover digitizing gives access not only to the main text, but also to advertisements, illustrations, obituaries, cover art, and more.
This collection includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines, journals, and newspapers published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines.
A digital collection of historical content pertaining to U.S. Hispanic history, literature, politics, and culture from colonial times to the 20th century. Series 1 and 2 contain advertisements, books, broadsides, essays, newspapers, pamphlets, short stories and more.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries offers a large collection of women's diaries and correspondence spanning more than 300 years.
Based on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more.
Published histories and records of women’s reform organizations throughout the United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It includes The History of Woman Suffrage; proceedings of the national conventions of female Anti-Slavery societies in the 1830s and of women’s rights conventions in the 1850s and 1860s; annual reports of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; and local and national histories of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.
This collection of books, pamphlets, and broadsides published in America in the 17th and 18th centuries includes items listed in Charles Evans’s American Bibliography and Roger Bristol’s supplement. The database is cross-searchable with Shaw-Shoemaker (Early American Imprints, Series II), American Pamphlets, Series I: 1820-1922, and American Broadsides & Ephemera.
Access requires on-campus authentication.
Material from the Newberry Library’s Edward E. Ayer Collection contains early contacts between Europeans and American Indians and the subsequent political, social and cultural effects of those encounters on American Indian life. It covers the period from early western frontier through the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.
Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment explores relationships between Native American, African, and European peoples from 1534-1850, using primary sources and personal accounts.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions. It consists of books, serials, manuscript collections, supreme court records and briefs, reference articles, and encyclopedias.
The database is in four parts: Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition; Part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World; Part III: The Institution of Slavery and Part IV: The Age of Emancipation.
Rotunda’s American Founding Era Collection offers primary and secondary source documents from some of the most preeminent figures of that age. This collection includes the papers of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madision, Dolly Madision, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, John Jay and more.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) is a digitized library representing most of the significant English- and foreign-language texts published in Great Britain and the colonies during the eighteenth century. Subject access to this collection is provided by the British Library’s online English Short Title Catalogue.
This database provides access to periodicals by and about African Americans. Representing 26 states, the publications offer a range of material, including academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations’ bulletins, annual reports and other genres.
On-Campus Login Required.
Primary source material from 18th and 19th Century periodicals. Included in the collection is Godey's Lady's Book, The Civil War: A Soldier's Perspective, African American newspapers, American county histories and various other newspapers, gazettes and collections.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions. It consists of books, serials, manuscript collections, supreme court records and briefs, reference articles, and encyclopedias.
The database is in four parts: Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition; Part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World; Part III: The Institution of Slavery and Part IV: The Age of Emancipation.
This database provides access to periodicals by and about African Americans. Representing 26 states, the publications offer a range of material, including academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations’ bulletins, annual reports and other genres.
On-Campus Login Required.
This collection explores the African American community in Atlanta, Chicago, Brooklyn, and North Carolina, highlighting challenges of racism, discrimination, and integration, as well as their unique culture and identity.
This collection includes the full text of historically significant African American newspapers, published in 36 states.
On Campus Login Required.
Full-text archive of many important magazines documenting the early days of the film, television and popular music industries. Notably, includes Billboard (1894-2000), Variety (1905-2000), and The Stage (1880-2000).
Many archives make their primary source documents available freely online. See especially the following:
Making of America is made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.This is a freely accessible site. Contents may change without warning.
Making of America is made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.This is a freely accessible site. Contents may change without warning.
Gateway to primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States.
This is a freely accessible site. Contents may change without warning.
A collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century.
This is a freely accessible site. Contents may change without warning.