Persuasive Essays: Primary Sources - Web Links

A research guide from the Reference and User Service Association History Section in the American Library Association.

A research guide from U.C. Berkeley Library.

An expansive archive of American history and culture from the Library of Congress features photographs, prints, motion pictures, manuscripts, printed books, pamphlets, maps, and sound recordings going back to roughly 1490. Currently this site includes more than 9 million digital items from more than 100 collections on subjects ranging from African-American political pamphlets to California folk music, from baseball to the Civil War.

The DPLA brings together digitized resources that include books, images, historic records, and audiovisual materials from many collections produced by universities, public libraries, and other public-spirited organizations.

Searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. A partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC).

Extensive collection of documents in Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. From Yale Law School.

Collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly for educational use.

Hundreds of primary source texts 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. (Part of the Internet History Sourcebooks Project.)

Primary documents in text, image, and audio about the experiences of ordinary Americans throughout U.S. history. All of the documents have been screened by professional historians and are accompanied by annotations that address their larger historical significance and context

Current and historical United States government documents which define the American democracy. These legislative and legal, regulatory, presidential, demographic, and economic documents are selected and authenticated by the Government Printing Office's GPO Access service.

Important documents in U.S. history from 800 to the present.

Thousands of literary and historical texts. From University of Virginia.

Narratives and other first person sources for historical events prior to the 1940's, such as the World Wars, the Civil War, Medieval Europe, the Old West, and many others.

Primary texts from all time periods and regions available to students and faculty for use in history and humanities courses.

Index to more than 3,350 collections of personal narratives in English from around the world.

Extensive archives of primary sources. Click on “Research Room” , “Digital Classroom” and “The Exhibit Hall” . Access to Archival Databases (AAD) System provides access to material from more than 30 archival series of electronic records, which include well over 50 million unique records. The series selected for AAD identify specific persons, geographic areas, organizations, or dates. Some of these series serve as indexes to accessioned archival records in non-electronic formats.

100 milestone documents that chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration.

Listing of materials such as manuscripts, photographs, and works of art held in libraries, museums, archives, and other institutions across California. Look for links to "online items" for direct access to digital materials.

Thousands of digitized historical and literary texts.

Transcripts of oral histories from U.C. Berkeley's Regional Oral History Project in the following subject areas: The Free Speech Movement, Women's Suffrage Movement, Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement, The Earl Warren Oral History Project, and Health Care, Science, and Technology.

This visually rich and authoritative website provides information on the slave trade that spanned five continents. Offers maps, images, timelines, tables, essays, bibliographies, a database of African names, and more. Sponsored by Emory University and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Part of the American Memory project project, these 190 works presented on this site—approximately 40,000 written pages and more than 3,000 illustrations—provide eyewitness accounts covering California history from the Gold Rush through the end of the 19th century. Most authors represented are white, educated, male Americans, including reporters detailing Gold Rush incidents and visitors from the 1880s attracted to a highly-publicized romantic vision of California life.

From Harper's Weekly magazine.

From U.C. Berkeley Bancroft Library

Collection of late-nineteenth-century American books and journals covering social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 8,500 books and 50,000 journal articles. From the University of Michigan Digital Library Initiative.

A collection of nineteenth century United States primary source material, including documents, editorials, speeches, and articles. Sections include: Early National Politics; Slavery and Sectionalism; Nebraska Bill; Sumner's Caning; Dred Scott Decision; John Brown and Harper's Ferry; 1850s Statistical Almanac; 1860 election; Secession and War; and Post Civil War.

Narratives of fugitive and former slaves published in broadsides, pamphlets, or book form from beginnings to 1920 and many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves published before 1920.

About 8,000 images and pages of primary source materials that describe the experiences of Chinese immigrants in California. Materials include photographs, original art, cartoons and other illustrations; letters, excerpts from diaries, business records, and legal documents; as well as pamphlets, broadsides, speeches, sheet music, and other printed matter. Part of the Library of Congress American Memory Project.

The Library of Congress presents information on Abraham Lincoln, including the Emancipation Proclamation and his assassination, in this online exhibit of primary sources.

Diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, including not only prominent individuals, but also of relatively inaccessible populations: women, African Americans, enlisted men, laborers, and Native Americans.

On March 25, 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City killed 146 factory workers. This site documents this historic disaster and its aftermath with a collection of photographs, oral histories, political cartoons, audio survivor interviews, copies of original documents, articles, bibliography, and links to related online resources.

Case files for early immigrants to San Francisco & Hawaii from 1882-1943, a collaboration with the National Archives and Records Administration, Pacific Region in San Bruno.

The Living New Deal aims to inventory, map, and publicize the achievements of the New Deal and its public works across all fifty states.

More than 400 interviews documenting Latino WWII experiences.

This Collection includes several complete books and several hundred individual documents, all original material relating to WWII; plus the Pearl Harbor Archives hold more than 5,000 pages of documents, exhibits, and testimonies surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Personal testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II.

In 1943, Ansel Adams documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese Americans interned there. This site provides side-by-side digital scans of both Adams' 242 original negatives and his 209 photographic prints, collection highlights, Adams' book Born Free and Equal, a selected bibliography, and a chronology of Adams' life. From the American Memory Project of the Library of Congress.

Student audio and video interview projects, largely first-person accounts related to 20th century Filipino-American history.