MRU Library Website: History: Primary Sources for US History

Primary Sources for U.S. History

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General Advice for Finding Primary Sources
General U.S. History Sources
Historical Newspapers, Journals and other Periodicals
Government Sources
African American Sources
Slavery and Anti-Slavery Sources
Foreign Relations Sources
Indigenous American Sources

General US History Sources

MRU LibrarySearch
Search here for items in the MRU collection, including print and electronic items. Add the word SOURCES to your search terms, or a term describing a specific type of primary source e.g., correspondence, diaries, speeches etc.
American Colonial Documents to 1776
Documents relating to the foundation of the colonies, the economy, population, labour, religion, education and more.
LIbrary of Congress: American History Digital Collections
A collection of written and spoken words, sound recordings, images and music documenting the American experience. Topics include various aspects of US history, from advertising to the African-American experience, diplomacy to folk culture, popular magazines to Sunday school books, and slavery to women’s suffrage.

Archives of Sexuality and Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940
Primary source content on social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world, including the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/Aids crisis, and more.
Authorized users: Include any person within the geographically defined area of Alberta that can authenticate via IP address using the Gale Geo IP authentication service.

Data mining: Licensed content available via text and data mining hard drives available from the Library for use in accordance to terms of use.

Scholarly sharing: Allowed with adherence to MRU's fair dealing guidelines.
Civil War Antebellum Period to Reconstruction
Newspapers, government documents and rare printed materials covering politics, society and daily life during the American Civil War period (1840-1877).

Documenting the American South
Texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture via 16 thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.

Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters
Coverage of the various European and colonial frontier regions of North America, Africa and Australia through documents that reveal the lives of settlers and indigenous peoples from 1650-1920. This is a perpetual package with unlimited simultaneous user access.

National Archives
A wide variety of archival documents held by the US National Archives. Note that not all records are available online, limit searches to digital items where possible.

Nineteenth Century New York
Content from print and manuscript directories, member lists, travel guides and other sources, chronicling the people and organizations of New York City from the late 18th through the early 20th century.
LGBTQ+ Source
Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender contains full text for significant LGBT journals magazines and regional newspapers and books.

Making of America
This site documents US social history from the antebellum period through Reconstruction, including monographs, journals, and Civil War documents (Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, and War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies).

Sabin Americana: 1500-1926 This link opens in a new window
This digital collection, drawn from Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, "Bibliotheca Americana: A Dictionary of Books Relating to America from Its Discovery to the Present Time" offers a perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late fifteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century.
Authorized users: Include any person within the geographically defined area of Alberta that can authenticate via IP address using the Gale Geo IP authentication service.

Data mining: Licensed content available via text and data mining hard drives available from the Library for use in accordance to terms of use.

Scholarly sharing: Allowed with adherence to MRU's fair dealing guidelines.

Smithsonian Institution - Online Image Collections
Search the Smithsonian Institutes large collection of museum objects, archival images and documents and more, covering a range of aspects of US history and culture. To limit to digital items, use the dropdown menu to select "online media."
War: Military Experience Digital Collections - University of Western Michigan
Experiences of American life during the Civil War, World War I and World War II. Includes photographs, diaries and other writings of the soldiers that were there.

Witchcraft in Europe and America
Comprehensive collection that offers a broad range of documents, dated between 1500 and 1930. Included are many rare and fragile manuscripts containing eyewitness accounts and court records of the trials of witches. Documents are primarily in Latin, English, and German.

Historical Newspapers, Journals & Other Periodicals

African American Newspapers (1827-1998)
Newspapers from more than 35 states chronicling a century and a half, 1827-1998, of the African American experience.
Indigenous Newspapers in North America This link opens in a new window
Historic pressings to contemporary periodicals, explore nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the US and Canada. Discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.
This resource has been developed with, and has only been made possible by, the permission and contribution of the newspaper publishers and Tribal Councils concerned.
American Periodicals Series
Contains special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically significant periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900.
Early American Newspapers, Series I
Chronicles the evolution of American culture and daily life from 1690 to the recent past through newspapers.
New York Times (1851-) (Proquest Historical Newspapers)
Searchable full text, full page, and article-level images from the Historical New York Times with historical, local, regional, national and international news from 1851-
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Primary source newspaper content from the 19th century, featuring full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S.
Authorized users: Include any person within the geographically defined area of Alberta that can authenticate via IP address using the Gale Geo IP authentication service.

Data mining: Licensed content available via text and data mining hard drives available from the Library for use in accordance to terms of use.

Scholarly sharing: Allowed with adherence to MRU's fair dealing guidelines.
Women's Magazine Archive
Full backfiles of leading women’s interest consumer magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, and Women's Day. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century through to 2005.

Government & Legal Sources

America's Historical Documents
US federal government documents held by the National Archives, including founding documents, war, foreign policy and military records, exploration and expansion documents.
Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
Includes collections related to African American history, the American Revolution, the constitution, U.S. diplomacy and treaties, slavery, the Civil War, among others.
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation - US Congressional Documents and Debates
This site brings together online the records and acts of Congress from the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention through the 43rd Congress, including the first three volumes of the Congressional Record, 1873-75.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Reading Room
A library of declassified U.S. intelligence documents.
Colonial State Papers
Hand-written documents and more than 40,000 bibliographic records on Colonial History. In addition to Britain's colonial relations with the Americas and other European rivals for power, this collection also covers the Caribbean and Atlantic world. It is an invaluable resource for scholars of early American history, British colonial history, Caribbean history, maritime history, Atlantic trade, plantations, and slavery.
Federalist Papers
The Federalist, commonly referred to as the Federalist Papers, is a series of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison between October 1787 and May 1788. The essays were published anonymously, under the pen name "Publius," in various New York state newspapers of the time.

Historical Statistics of the United States
Provides Historical Statistics of the United States/the Confederate States of America with topics ranging from migration and health to crime.

National Security Agency Archives
Access to declassified document relating to American intelligence activities.
Our Documents
100 landmark government documents in American history, relating to a wide variety of themes including race, voting, and war among others.
United States Statutes at Large 1789 - 1951
The collection of every law, public and private, ever enacted by the U.S. Congress, published in order of the date of its passage.
United States Statutes at Large - 1951-2014
Laws enacted by the U.S. Congress to 2014.
US Congressional Record
The official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. Published daily when Congress is in session, the Congressional Record began publication in 1873. To search with a date range, or by keyword, use the ADVANCED SEARCH and limit to CONGRESSIONAL RECORD BOUND for best results.

Presidential Papers

Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
Documents dating from 1774 to 1948, although most of the collection spans from the 1850s through Lincoln’s presidency (1861-1865). Roughly half of the collection, more than 20,000 documents, comprising 62,000 images, as well as transcriptions of approximately 10,000 documents, is accessible online.
Founders Online
Correspondence and other writing of the seven major shapers George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison.
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
Includes FDR's personal and family papers, manuscripts related to his public career at the state and national level, the papers of Eleanor Roosevelt, and of many individuals associated with the Roosevelts' public and private life. Other resources includes timelines and genealogy.
George Washington Papers
Approximately 77,000 items accumulated by Washington between 1745 and 1799, including correspondence, diaries, and financial and military records.
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States
This collection contains papers and speeches of the Presidents of the U.S. , issued by the Office of the Press Secretary. It includes the administrations of Presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
Ulysses S. Grant Digital Collection
Includes annotated letters, military and presidential documents of the U.S. President Grant (1837-1885), along with political cartoons and sheet music.

African American History Sources

African American History Online: A Resource Guide
Digital collections related to African American history at the Library of Congress.
African American History Primary Source Guide
An list of primary source collections relating to African American history, including slavery, migration, and civil rights, with an emphasis on documents from the 19th and 20th centuries. Hosted by Washington University.
Brown v. Board of Education Digital Archive
Includes documents and images relating to segregation in US schools, including Supreme Court cases; busing and school integration efforts, and recent re-segregation trends in American schools.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery Sources

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive
Contains books, pamphlets, newspaper and periodical titles, and major manuscript collections that explore the inner workings of slavery from 1492-1888. Includes more than 5 million documents from libraries and archives around the world.
Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade
Discovery hub that searches datasets relating to the history of enslavement. Primary sources include census records, legal documents, life histories/narratives, advertisements and more.
Slave Voyages
Records relating to the transatlantic and intra-American slave trades. Includes information on the origins and destinations of enslaved people, passages, various related documents, images and statistics.
Slavery in America: A Resource Guide
Digital collections of the Library of Congress containing primary sources related to slavery including photos, documents (slave narratives, legislation, maps presidential papers etc.), and sound recordings.
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
Sermons, position papers, Anti-Slavery Society newsletters, speeches, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and more document the social and political implications of the abolitionist movement and the fight for equality and human rights.

Foreign Relations Sources

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources
Declassified US National Security Archive documents including the Manhattan Project files, "Top Secret Ultra" summaries and translations of Japanese diplomatic cable traffic intercepted under the "Magic" program. Also includes translations from Japanese sources of high level meetings and discussions in Tokyo.
Foreign Relations of the United States
This is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. The series is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian.
United States and its Territories - 1870-1925, the Age of Imperialism
Includes the full text of monographs and government documents published in the U.S., Spain, and the Philippines between 1870-1925, with a focus on the Spanish-American war and subsequent American governance.
Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb
Truman Museum website displaying more than 100 documents relating to Truman's decision to drop the bomb.

Indigenous American Sources

Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America This link opens in a new window
Browse manuscripts, artwork and printed books dating from the earliest contact with European settlers right up to photographs and newspapers from the mid-twentieth century, as well as rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, historic maps and travel journals.
This resource contains material from the Newberry Library’s extensive Edward E. Ayer Collection; one of the strongest archival collections on North American Indigenous history in the world.

We have endeavoured to handle the material and subject matter sensitively and have followed advice to exclude certain documents and collections due to their sensitivity, especially some of those surrounding ceremonies and religious practices. We also took advice from the academic advisory board and from the Newberry Library throughout the development and production processes.
Indigenous Peoples: North America
Covers the history of North American Indigenous groups and supporting organizations from newspapers of various tribes and Indigenous-related organizations, as well as indigenous-language materials, including dictionaries, bibles, and primers.
Authorized users: Include any person within the geographically defined area of Alberta that can authenticate via IP address using the Gale Geo IP authentication service.

Data mining: Licensed content available via text and data mining hard drives available from the Library for use in accordance to terms of use.

Scholarly sharing: Allowed with adherence to MRU's fair dealing guidelines.

Film as a Primary Source

Newsreels and other types of film can often serve as useful primary sources. Try the following for primary source films:

Films on Demand - use the filter options to limit by type to newsreels/primary sources

Academic Video Online - use the advanced search and limit by content type to archival footage, newsreel, speech/address etc.

Associated Press newsreel archive - try the advanced search and limit results by decade

Alice Swabey

Contact:

Drop-in help Mondays 12-2 at the Library Service Desk. Appointments available via Google Meet or in-person. Email help is also available.
Email: aswabey@mtroyal.ca

History | Primary Sources for US History