Top Ten Great Sites in American History

Other Great Sites in American History (By Subject)

Cyberspace contains an almost infinite amount of information and misinformation. Therefore, one must choose websites wisely. To assist my colleagues, students, and friends, I have compiled here my top ten great sites in American History in my other fields of specialization (in no particular order). These sites contain either superior online digital collections or fantastic links to online collections. You will find that some extraordinary sites are cross-listed. I hope you find these websites as helpful for research and teaching as I. Please visit again, because this list may change.

General American History

American and British History Resources of the Internet: This site is a comprehensive collection of full-text primary sources and reputable links on the entire scope of American and British histories. The site is maintained by Rutgers University Library. www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rulib/socsci/hist/amhist.html

CivNet Resources: Full text documents of significant events in American and European history including some of the world's great historic documents and speeches pertaining to civics, democracy, human rights, tolerance, and freedom (e.g., Magna Carta, US Declaration of Independence, Universal Declaration of Human Rights). The site is maintained by CIVITAS, an international, non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting civic education and civil society.
www.civnet.org/resoures/greatdoc.htm

Making of America: This site is a digital library of primary sources in American 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. This site is maintained by the University of Michigan. http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/

American Studies Web: This site contains an impressive collection of links to reputable sites in History, Literature, Philosophy, Religion, Legal Studies and more. The site also includes SiteScene, reviews of new American studies websites. http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/asw/index.html

American Radicalism Collection: This remarkable website includes electronic texts and digital images associated with American extremism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The site is maintained by Michigan State University Library. http://www.lib.msu.edu/spc/digital/radicalism/

Douglass -- Archives of American Public Address: Full text American oratory and other related documents maintained by Northwestern University. http://douglass.speech.nwu.edu/

American Memory -- Library of Congress: The Library of Congress has compiled digital online collections in multiple topics from its vast holdings. This site links directly to online collections on African Americans, the Civil War, environmentalism, baseball, presidential politics, New Deal programs, national lawmaking, women's suffrage, and more. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/collections:@field(SUBJ+@1(History)):heading=Topics%3a+History

NARA Archival Information Locator (NAIL): Nail is a searchable database that full-text and digital images from the National Archives and Records Administration that covers a broad range of the American experience. Accessible material includes presidential library, motion pictures, still pictures (including actual images), military, civilian, and regional documents. http://www.nara.gov/cgi-bin/starfinder/0?path=images.txt&id=demo&pass=&OK=OK

The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory: This site contains phenomenal images and text of the great fire and its impact on Chicago. The site serves as a great teaching tool for a history survey course. www.chicagohistory/org/fire

Writing Black: This site contains historical documents and literary texts by African-American authors. The materials offered here will complement any American history course. The site, maintained by Keele University, serves as an essential resource for courses on African-American history or African-American studies. www.keele.ac.uk/depts/as/Literature/amlit.black.html

The Modern English Collection (1500-Present): This multifarious collection contains fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, letters, newspapers, manuscripts and illustrations from 1500 to the present, arranged for browsing by author's last name or by category of interest. Subjects include African American, including Letters from Liberia; Native American; American Civil War; Salem Witch Trials; Thomas Jefferson; Edgar Allan Poe; Mark Twain; William Shakespeare; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Women Writers; Young Readers; Literature in Translation; Best Sellers, 1900-1930. The site is maintained by the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/modeng/modeng0.browse.html

The American South (special focus on 19th Century History)

Nineteenth-Century Documents Project: This site contains accurate transcriptions of many important and representative primary texts from the history of the nineteenth-century American South, with special emphasis on those sources that shed light on sectional conflict and transformations in regional identity. The site is maintained by Furman University. www.furman.edu/~benson/docs

Making of America: This site, also listed in my top ten general american history sites, includes many documents related to the nineteenth-century American South. Among the most interesting set of documents is a full-text collection of nineteenth-century southern journals. The collection also contains a wide variety of monograph, newspaper, and autobiographical workl. This site is maintained by the University of Michigan. http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/

The Digital Scriptorium at Duke: This superior digitized collection contains several collections related to southern history, especially slave narratives and documents on women's history and the civil war. Other non-south collections are also superb, though this site is not comprehensive enough for me to include in my top 10 general american history sites list. The site is maintained by the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/

The African-American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship: This site showcases the incomparable African American collections of the Library of Congress. The collection contains more than 240 items, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aointro.html

The Valley of the Shadow: This very sophisticated Civil War website traces the prewar and wartime events that occurred in two Virigina communities. The site contains digitized newspapers, letters, diaries, military records, public records, church records, maps, and more. The authors have constructed an impressive and interesting array of teaching tools, as well. It is a site, maintained by professors at the University of Virginia, that can't be missed. http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/

Documenting the American South: This site is a collection of full-text sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20^th century. Projects include southern literature, the Civil War, slave narratives, the black community, and first-person narratives and memoirs. The site, maintained by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries, includes a text-search feature, though it is somewhat cumbersome. http://metalab.unc.edu/docsouth/index.html

Africans in America: The site surveys the origins of racial slavery in American and the global economy that prospered from it. The site contains narrative interpretation, "resource banks" (my favorite feature) that include annotated images and documents, and a teacher's guide. PBS produced this website as a companion to their TV special. www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html

Virtual Jamestown: This site offers research, teaching, and learning tools to explore the Jamestown settlement and its legacies. The site contains many documents, including full-text statutes, contracts, letters, government documents, maps, and images. Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, and the Virginia Center for Digital History sponsor this site, and a professor of history at Virginia Tech maintains it. http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown

Civil War Resources on the Internet: This well-organized site contains hundreds of links to Civil War-related primary documents, maps, discussion listservs, and bibliographies. The material is extremely convenient for teaching purposes. http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rulib/socsci/hist/civwar-2.html

The Freedmen's Bureau Online: This genealogical site offers numerous records, such as indentures, labor contracts, marriage records, and reports of outrages and arrests, (organized by state) from the Freedmen's Bureau papers. The site also links to additional Freedmen's Bureau-related sites, including the esteemed Freedmen and Southern Society Project, which has just begun to incorporate some of its many records on the internet. www.freedmensbureau.com

African-American History

African-American Women Writers of the 19th Century: The New York Public Library has created this website as part of its digitized library collection. The site is a rich source for nineteenth-century African-American women's literature, poetry, and autobiography. http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/writers_aa19/

Mystic Seaport: the Museum of America and the Sea: This museum has digitized pages from over 500 Amistad-related primary documents. The educational site is organized around three componets; primary documents (newspaper coverage, court documents and trial testimony, diplomatic correspondence, Congressional and political commentary, images, and a selection of the contemporary pamphlets, books and other accounts that the revolt stirred up in the U.S), narrative interpretation, and thematic arrangement. http://amistad.mysticseaport.org/search/welcome.html

Daniel A. P. Murray Pamphlet Collection: This site presents a panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture, spanning almost one hundred years from the early nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, with the bulk of the material published between 1875 and 1900. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aapcoll.html

U.S. Women's History

Internet Women's History Sourcebook: This formidable site includes documents pertaining to women's history in a global context. Scroll down to "North America" to find the U.S. Women's History sources. This site is part of a larger, and very impressive, project called the Internet History Sourcebooks Project at Fordham University constructed by Dr. Paul Halsall. www.fordham.edu/halsall/women/womensbook.html

Ninteenth-Century American Women Writers: This site contains full-text selections in nineteenth-century American women's literature, antislavery and suffrage documents. The 19thCentury Women Writers' Web Page contains links to other useful literary sources, as well. the site is maintained by the Society for the Study of American Women Writers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. http://www.unl.edu/legacy/Archiveshome.html

The Digital Scriptorium at Duke: This superior digitized collection contains several collections related to women's history, especially slave narratives, southern women, women and 1960's-1970's radicalism, and the Civil War. Other collections are also superb, though this site is not comprehensive enough for me to include in my top 10 general american history sites list. The site is maintained by the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/

Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Women Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921: This site includes documents from the Library of Congress' Rare Book and Manuscript Collection. The site contains an extensive collection of digitized suffrage documents that nicely complements a U.S. Women's History course. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawshome.html

The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: The documents here focus on the first decade of Cady's and Stanton's collaboration, from 1852 until 1861, when they honed their skills as reformers in New York State. These primary historical sources are pertinent to the study of women, American politics, New York State, and antebellum reform movements. The site is maintained by the University of South Carolina. http://mep.cla.sc.edu/sa/sa-table.html

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1830-1930: This site, organized by "projects," introduces problems in American women's history by first posing a scholarly question and then offering visitors an explanatory introduction, ample related documents, bibliographies, and endnotes. The authors, professors at the State University of New York at Binghamton, have designed a creative resource for teachers and students. www.binghamton.edu/womhist

Suffragists Oral History Project: Sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley Library, this site contains digitized transcriptions of oral histories preserving the memories of leading suffragists. These transcripts document women's activities to win the right to vote for women and their careers as leaders of the movements for welfare and labor reform, world peace, and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/ROHO/ohonline/suffragists.html

Emma Goldman Papers Project: The online Emma Goldman Papers Project contains a wealth of information and full-text primary sources of this famous American radical and feminist. The site contains primary text, biograpical essays, and teaching tools. In additon, the visitor will find online samples of materials from the published version of the project. The site is maintained by The University of California, Berkeley, Sunsite project. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/

Margaret Sanger Documents on the Web: This site documents the life of another significant American feminist, Margaret Sanger. The online collection includes digitized speeches and a mini-edition of Sanger's journal, The Woman Rebel. The site also contains links to other sometimes hard-to-find Sanger publications. http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/msweb.htm

U.S. Legal History

Famous American Trials: Perhaps my favorite American history-related website, Famous American Trials is an impressive selection of documents on extremely well-known trials. Organized by subject, the site includes trial summaries, contextual essays, trial transcripts, biographies of participants, and images such as photographs and cartoons. The site is maintained by Professor Doug Linder and his students at the University of Missour-Kansas City Law School. Great links include "Bill of Rights Golf," a stimulating intellectual exercise. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ftrials.htm

Thomas: Legislative Information on the Internet: This site, maintained by the Library of congress, offers a full-text databse of legislation introduced into Congress since 1989. Thomas also includes summary information for legislation introduced since 1973. The site offers instructions for obtaining print copies of the text of legislatvie documents prior to 1989. The FAQ link is a fine navigational tool for this site. http://thomas.loc.gov

The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School: This site offers a comprehensive collection of 17th-20th century full-text resources on law, politics, and foreign relations of the western world. A limited number of nonwestern documents are included, as well. The Avalon Project, maintained by the Yale Law School, is a great teaching and research site. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm

A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: The Library of Congress has shaped this site into an online respository for U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates from 1774-1783. The site contains constitutional documents, statutes, Congressional journals and debates. The site also includes special exhibits on prominent topics useful for teaching. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html

FindLaw: Maintained by a Web portal company, this site features full-text U.S. Supreme Court documents since 1893. The site includes an easy-to-use search function and links to other legal information and documents on the web. http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html

The Constitution Community: The National Archives has formulated this very useful teaching site in accordance to the National History Standards. Arranged by subject (such as the Louisiana Purchase, The Great Depression, Brown vs. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Act, and the Vietnam War), the site sports a very good collection of primary sources on constitutional issues. http://www.nara.gov/education/cc/main.html

History of American Law: Documents: University of Texas Law Professor Thomas D. Russell has collected dozens of American legal documents from significant events in American history. The diverse collection, part of Professor Russell's online History of American Law course, ranges from John Winthrop's 1645 "Speech on Liberty" to Lochner vs. New York 198 U.S. 45 (1905). The site also includes a nifty search engine. http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~russell/hal/haltoc.html

And Then....

Yahoo! History Directory: Believe it or not, the Yahoo! directory references some mighty fine online digital collections. However, use this directory with discretion, because it includes some wacky internet sites, as well. http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/