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Online Sources: American Revolution Primary Sources: A - G
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10 Contemporary Accounts of the Battle of Bunker Hill
From the Massachusetts Historical Society - o mark the 225th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill in 2000, the Massachusetts Historical Society presents its first "web exhibition" – personal accounts and eyewitness descriptions of the battle, along with contemporary maps, drawings, engravings, broadsides, and artifacts, either preserved by the participants or found on the battlefield.
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100 Milestone Documents: The Constitution of the United States
Includes documents that chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965.
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Adams, John (1735-1826) Library
Deposited with the Boston Public Library in 1894, the John Adams Library includes over 3,000 volumes collected by the second president during his lifetime (1735-1826) as well as many volumes donated by members of his family. One of the greatest private collections of its day, the Adams Library remains one of the largest colonial American libraries still intact.
This remarkable collection represents the intellectual tastes of an influential thinker, writer, and political philosopher who helped shape the Constitution of the United States and drafted the Massachusetts Constitution, the oldest functioning written constitution in the world. John Adams’s library spans the fields of classics, literature, history, politics, government, philosophy, religion, law, science, mathematics, medicine, agriculture, language and linguistics, economics, and travel. The collection is of particular interest to scholars and historians because Adams recorded thousands of interpretive and critical manuscript annotations in the margins of hundreds of his books.
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Adams Family Resources (Massachusetts Historical Society)
The Adams Family Papers at the MHS are the most comprehensive and historically complete family collection held by an American cultural institution, public or private. The collection spans the years 1639 to 1889 and consists of the official records and writings of three generations of Adamses. This includes the papers of John and Abigail, John Quincy, Charles Francis, and their extended families. Comprising nearly 300,000 manuscript pages, the materials provide a comprehensive look at major historical events from before the Revolution to the end of the 19th century.
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Adams Papers Digital Edition
Welcome to the Adams Papers Digital Edition, which began life as part of the Founding Families Digital Editions. Here in one, easily accessible resource you will find the content of the previously printed volumes of the Adams Papers, a long-standing documentary edition prepared at the Massachusetts Historical Society. This digital edition includes all text of the historical documents and all editorial text. There is a single consolidated index for volumes published through 2006, while the indexes for more recent volumes appear separately.
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African American History: Primary Documents
BlackPast.org is dedicated to providing the inquisitive public with comprehensive, reliable, and accurate information concerning the history of African Americans in the United States and people of African ancestry in other regions of the world. It is the aim of the founders and sponsors to foster understanding through knowledge in order to generate constructive change in our society. - See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/mission-statement#sthash.4bRLwHuw.dpuf
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The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship (Library of Congress)
The exhibition The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, showcases the incomparable African American collections of the Library of Congress. Displaying more than 240 items, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings, this is the largest black history exhibit ever held at the Library, and the first exhibition of any kind to feature presentations in all three of the Library's buildings.
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African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts (Massachusetts Historical Society)
This website features 117 items from the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. This group of unique manuscripts and rare published materials includes handwritten documents and letters by African Americans (Phillis Wheatley and members of the Hartford family), the earliest antislavery pamphlet published in Massachusetts (The Selling of Joseph, printed in 1700), petitions of African Americans requesting freedom, documents certifying the freedom of specific individuals, materials relating to two African Americans involved in landmark legal cases that brought an end to slavery in Massachusetts (Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker), warrants and depositions for runaway slaves, bills of sale and account books documenting slave transactions, and a series of letters written in 1795 in which some notable men share their perspective on the history and end of slavery in Massachusetts.
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Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy, 1719-1820
In 1984, a professor at Rutgers University stumbled upon a trove of historic data in a courthouse in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. Over the next 15 years, Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, a noted New Orleans writer and historian, painstakingly uncovered the background of 100,000 slaves who were brought to Louisiana in the 18th and 19th centuries making fortunes for their owners.
Poring through documents from all over Louisiana, as well as archives in France, Spain and Texas, Dr. Hall designed and created a database into which she recorded and calculated the information she obtained from these documents about African slave names, genders, ages, occupations, illnesses, family relationships, ethnicity, places of origin, prices paid by slave owners, and slaves' testimony and emancipations.
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Alexander Hamilton Papers (Library of Congress)
The papers of Alexander Hamilton (ca. 1757-1804), first treasury secretary of the United States, consist of his personal and public correspondence, drafts of his writings (although not his Federalist essays), and correspondence among members of the Hamilton and Schuyler families. The collection, consisting of approximately 12,000 items dating from 1708 to 1917, documents Hamilton's impoverished Caribbean boyhood (scantily); events in the lives of his family and that of his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton; his experience as a Revolutionary War officer and aide-de-camp to General George Washington; his terms as a New York delegate to the Continental Congress (1782-1783) and the Constitutional Convention (1787); and his careers as a New York state legislator, United States treasury secretary (1789-1795), political writer, and lawyer in private practice. Most of the papers date from 1777 until Hamilton's death in 1804. Additional details may be found in the collection's finding aid (HTML and PDF versions).
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Alexander Hamilton Plan of a Constitution for America 1787 (New York Public Library)
Alexander Hamilton's autograph draft of a constitution for the United States government, 1787. Alexander Hamilton was an American statesman and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury. He was a New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The draft, in ten articles, is a more developed expression of the outline or plan of a constitution presented by Hamilton at the Constitutional Convention on June 18, 1787. While the document is undated, its text resembles that copied by James Madison, identified as being given to him by Hamilton at the close of the Convention in September, 1787.
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AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History
Collection of primary documents and speeches essential for the study of US History. Arranged chronologically: as of August 2004, from Columbus' journals to the report of the 9/11 Commission.
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America and the Utopian Dream
Utopias in America, from the first Puritan settlements to the communes of the 1960s, share the goal of removal from the heart of civilization to the wilderness in order to establish a new social order. Communities with European roots embraced the equalizing demands and freedoms of the New World’s open frontier, even as the new country claimed the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right. Though their inspirations varied—theocracy, millenialism, socialism, theosophism, behaviorism—they all reflected the American dream of a better world, now.
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America in Caricature: 1765-1865
The modern definition of caricature is a pictorial representation of a person or thing through the gross exaggeration of its most characteristic features. In times of social and political upheaval the caricaturist boldly, and satirically, portrays the world as they see it, and any text present is secondary to the meaning constructed by the portrait. The caricatures in this collection depict times of turbulence in American history and range in date from the Revolutionary War to the War of 1812 and to the presidential elections of 1860 and 1864 which brought Abraham Lincoln to the White House.
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American Antiquarian Society Collection (maps)
The AAS library today houses the largest and most accessible collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, music, and graphic arts material printed through 1876 in what is now the United States. Of the approximately 10,000 maps in the AAS collection, 560 are dated 1750-1800, from which we selected approximately 140 items. Most of these are printed maps of eastern North America and the West Indies not duplicated in the Leventhal Map Center collection, as well as a smaller number of manuscript maps of local Massachusetts interest, all dated during the last half of the 18th century.
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American Archives: Documents of the American Revolution, 1774-1776 (Northern Illinois Univ.)
Beginning in 1837 the printer Peter Force, who also served as mayor of Washington, D.C., devoted sixteen years to collecting thousands of pamphlets, booklets, and newspaper articles pertaining to the "Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies in North America" from the Revolutionary Era in order to preserve them for future generations. He published them in a set of nine large volumes that he called the American Archives. By the late twentieth century Force's collection of materials from the years 1774-6 had become a valuable scholarly resource, as it contained the only surviving copies of many important documents. But while a number of large research libraries around the world held the American Archives in their collections, it remained an underused resource. Scholars and students alike struggled with Force's unwieldy index and complicated organization of the materials. In 2001 Northern Illinois University Libraries and Professor Allan Kulikoff of the University of Georgia received grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the digitization of the American Archives and their presentation in a free-use World Wide Web site. This site will allow its users to use sophisticated search and indexing software to explore Force's volumes. Professor Kulikoff has also produced a thematic indexing scheme describing the contents of every individual text in the American Archives collection. Together, these tools will offer scholars, students, and lifetime learners with unprecedented new access to these important primary source materials from American history.
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American Historical Documents (Harvard University Library)
Text of 47 treaties, speeches, historical accounts and governmental documents that trace U.S. history from the settling of the continent to the founding of the country to the Civil War and early twentieth-century international relations.
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American Independence (Fordham University)
Part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook from Fordham University
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American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement, 1000-1800 (Wisconsin Historical Society)
American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.
Read the words of explorers, Indians, missionaries, traders and settlers as they lived through the founding moments of American history. View, search, print, or download more than 150 rare books, original manuscripts, and classic travel narratives from the library and archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society.
To get started, simply select an activity on the toolbar above.
Funded by the U.S. Institute of Museum & Library Services and by private donors, American Journeys is a collaborative project of the Wisconsin Historical Society and National History Day. It was originally created for students exploring National History Day's 2004 theme, "Exploration, Encounter & Exchange" and everyone else who loves American history.
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American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920 (Library of Congress)
Comprises 253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920. Also included is the thirty-two-volume set of manuscript sources entitled Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, published between 1904 and 1907 after diligent compilation by the distinguished historian and secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society Reuben Gold Thwaites. Although many of the authors represented in American Notes are not widely known, the collection includes works by major figures such as Matthew Arnold, Fredrika Bremer, William Cullen Bryant, François-René de Chateaubriand, William Cobbett, James Fenimore Cooper, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Sir Charles Lyell, William Lyon Mackenzie, André Michaux, Thomas Nuttall, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The narratives in American Notes therefore range from the unjustly neglected to the justly famous, and from classics of the genre to undiscovered gems. Together, they build a mosaic portrait of a young nation.
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The American Revolution - A Documentary History (Avalon Project at Yale Law School
The Avalon Project at Yale Law School presents a compilation of primary source documents from 1764 to 1783 associated with the American Revolution.
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American Revolution and Its Era: Maps and Charts of North America and the West Indies, 1750-1789 (Library of Congress)
The maps and charts in this online collection number well over two thousand different items, with easily as many or more unnumbered duplicates, many with distinct colorations and annotations. Almost six hundred maps are original manuscript drawings, a large number of which are the work of such famous mapmakers as John Montrésor, Samuel Holland, Claude Joseph Sauthier, John Hills, and William Gerard De Brahm. They also include many maps from the personal collections of William Faden, Admiral Richard Howe, and the comte de Rochambeau, as well as large groups of maps by three of the best eighteenth-century map publishers in London: Thomas Jefferys, William Faden, and Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres. Historical cartographers can compare multiple editions, states, and impressions of several of the most important maps of the period, follow the development of a particular map from the manuscript sketch to the finished printed version and its foreign derivatives, and examine the cartographic styles and techniques of surveyors and mapmakers from seven different countries: Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Italy, and the United States.
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American Revolutionary War- Era Maps (Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center)
Building upon this Collection of Distinction, the Map Center has developed the American Revolution Portal, which is a curated digital collection of maps related to the American Revolutionary War era, broadly defined as maps of the eastern part of North America and the West Indies dated 1750-1800. The Portal is designed to provide digital access to a wide-ranging selection of the finest and most informative manuscripts and printed maps from public and private collections in the United States and Great Britain. More than 2,000 maps, including selections from the partners listed below, are currently available in the Portal.
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American Revolutionary War 1775-1783 (New York State Library)
he New York State Library holds an extensive collection of material on the American Revolutionary War in print, microform, and online formats. This material consists of troop rosters and other details extracted from muster and pay rolls, Loyalist records, colonial New York State history documents, military bounty land records, diaries, orderly books, personal papers of participants and broadsides. The New York State Library is also a depository for several record series compiled by New York State Chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, including grave locations of Revolutionary soldiers and their immediate family members buried in New York State.
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American Revolutionary War Era Maps
Building upon this Collection of Distinction, the Map Center has developed the American Revolution Portal, which is a curated digital collection of maps related to the American Revolutionary War era, broadly defined as maps of the eastern part of North America and the West Indies dated 1750-1800. The Portal is designed to provide digital access to a wide-ranging selection of the finest and most informative manuscript and printed maps from public and private collections in the United States and Great Britain. More than 2,000 maps, including selections from the partners listed below, are currently available in the Portal.
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American Revolutionary War Manuscripts at the Boston Public Library
The Boston Public Library has an extensive collection of original manuscripts from the American Revolutionary War era. The letters and documents were drafted by John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, James Otis, Joseph Warren, George Washington and other important Revolutionary War figures. The materials are mostly of American origin, but also include British, European, and West Indian sources. Some of the topics covered include the war’s political origins, the unfolding of military and naval campaigns, foreign alliances, opinions, and the economic aspects of the struggle.
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American Rhetoric
Database of and index to 5000+ full text, audio and video versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events, and a declaration or two.
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American Shores: Maps of the Middle Atlantic Region to 1850 (New York Public Library)
The Mid-Atlantic region of North America – stretching from New York south to Virginia – was a pivotal area in the early development of the American colonies and the United States. This website looks at this region and its history through maps created up to 1850.
The cartographic record created on paper by the early mapmakers preserves, places and events in the physical and historical context of the time in which the maps were made. Much of that context no longer exists on land, as development and growth have ridden roughshod over the past. The maps on this site cover the early modern period ending in 1850, just as so-called internal improvements (canals, highways, and railroads) began to cross the young nation and change the landscape. These early maps provide contemporary documentation of particular times and places and present a compelling way to study history today.
The digitized maps and atlases included in American Shores are drawn from the extensive holdings of the Map Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. In particular, the maps by English mapmakers from the Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection form the core of this site.
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American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
The Printed Ephemera collection at the Library of Congress is a rich repository of Americana. In total, the collection comprises 28,000 primary-source items dating from the seventeenth century to the present and encompasses key events and eras in American history. An American Time Capsule, the online presentation of the Printed Ephemera collection, comprises 17,000 of the 28,000 physical items. More are scheduled to be digitized in the future. While the broadside format represents the bulk of the collection, there are a significant number of leaflets and some pamphlets. Rich in variety, the collection includes proclamations, advertisements, blank forms, programs, election tickets, catalogs, clippings, timetables, and menus. They capture the everyday activities of ordinary people who participated in the events of nation-building and experienced the growth of the nation from the American Revolution through the Industrial Revolution up to present day. A future final release will include thousands of oversize items in the collection.
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Anthony Wayne Letters Collection
A collection of letters to and from Anthony Wayne, a Revolutionary War general and friend of George Washington.
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Anti-Slavery Collection (Cornell University Library)
The May Anti-Slavery Collection
In 1870, White was instrumental in bringing an extensive collection of slavery and abolitionist materials gathered by his close friend, Reverend Samuel Joseph May, to the Cornell Library. Numbering over 10,000 titles, May's pamphlets and leaflets document the anti-slavery struggle at the local, regional, and national levels. Much of the May Anti-Slavery Collection was considered ephemeral or fugitive, and today many of these pamphlets are scarce. Sermons, position papers, offprints, local Anti-Slavery Society newsletters, poetry anthologies, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes all document the social and political implications of the abolitionist movement.
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Antislavery Pamphlet Collection, 1725-1911
The Antislavery Collection contains several hundred printed pamphlets and books pertaining to slavery and antislavery in New England, 1725-1911. The holdings include speeches, sermons, proceedings and other publications of organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society and the American Colonization Society, and a small number of pro-slavery tracts.
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Appeals to the Privy Council from the American Colonies: An Annotated Digital Catalogue
In the century before the creation of the Supreme Court of the United States, the British Privy Council heard appeals from the 13 colonies that became the United States and from the other ‘American’ colonies in Canada and the Caribbean. This catalogue focuses on all currently known cases appealed from the colonial courts to the Privy Council from the future United States. There are 231 reports of such cases, a number totaling more than one-quarter (28%) of the 827 reports of such cases from the Americas from the late seventeenth century until 1783. For the appeals from the 13 colonies, the catalogue provides links to original documents in England and the United States. Most significantly, the site includes images of surviving briefs filed in 54 of these appeals. Known as ‘printed cases’, these briefs provide the ‘reasons’ for the appeals.
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ArchiveGrid
ArchiveGrid includes over 7 million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,400 archival institutions represented, ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies.
If you'd like to see your collections included in ArchiveGrid or have questions about the ArchiveGrid project, please get in touch with us.
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Archive of Early American Images
A database of graphic representations of the colonial Americas, from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego, drawn entirely from primary sources printed or created between 1492 and ca. 1825.
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Atlantic Canada Virtual Archives
"The Atlantic Canada Portal maintains the Atlantic Canada Virtual Archives (ACVA), a virtual archive of primary source material relating to the Atlantic Provinces. Each collection features digitized documents and images, accompanied by learning activities and commentary, of interest to a wide range of readers."
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Barbary Wars at the Clements (University of Michigan)
A new online exhibit is now available on our website: The Barbary Wars at the Clements. It was created by Philip Heslip, Project Archivist in the Manuscripts Division of the Clements Library from 2009 to 2011.
This online exhibit highlights the Clements Library’s best holdings related to the Barbary Wars. Featured items include manuscripts, books, maps, and engravings documenting the United States’ first interactions with the Arab world and the early development of the U.S. Navy. The heart of this material comes from three manuscript collections: The Tobias Lear papers, the John Rodgers papers, and the Isaac Chauncey papers. Together, these collections document the highest level of naval and diplomatic decision-making during and after the wars. Additionally, the exhibit relies on several other manuscript collections that contain discussions of and references to early American activities in the Mediterranean. Also showcased is the Clements’ collection of 19th-century Barbary captivity narratives, books that informed and inflamed the American public on the home front, as well as images of the naval conflict and maps of the region. We hope that the exhibit will draw attention to an often-neglected episode in American history, and inspire researchers and enthusiasts to pursue new discoveries at the Clements Library.
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Battle Lines: Letters from America's Wars
"This online exhibition of letters and audio, created by the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Legacy Project, features correspondence from over 200 years of American conflicts, ranging from the Revolution to the war in Iraq. This exhibition uses the words of famous generals and lesser-known troops, as well as parents, sweethearts, and children, to explore such themes as leaving home, life in the military, the pride and worries of those left behind, and ultimate sacrifice. "
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The Battle of Bunker Hill (The Massachusetts Historical Society)
The Massachusetts Historical Society's online exhibit on the Battle of Bunker Hill. The exhibit presents personal accounts and eyewitness descriptions of the battle, along with contemporary maps, drawings, engravings, broadsides, and artifacts, either preserved by the participants or found on the battlefield.
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Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania State Archives)
Materials by and about Benjamin Franklin from the State Library collection digitized in commemoration of his 300th birthday.
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Benjamin Franklin, letters on the prospects of reconciliation and the beginning of war, 1775-1776
1775-1776, selections. Benjamin Franklin's letters to American and British friends during the critical transition years of 1775 and 1776 trace the last hopes of avoiding war with Britain and the fateful realization that the "outbreak of hostilities" in April 1775 had been, indeed, the outbreak of fullscale war, made official and irreversible in July 1776 with the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress. This collection includes excerpts from Franklin's letters to fifteen friends—six American and nine British—spanning the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April 1775 to his departure to France to negotiate an alliance in late 1776. Franklin had lived in London for many years while serving as the colonial agent for several colonies and there developed friendships with members of Parliament, British military officers, and other British officials. Many of these letters express unchecked astonishment and condemnation of British actions. (7 pp.)
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Benjamin Franklin...In His Own Words (Library of Congress)
Benjamin Franklin: In His Own Words, indicates the depth and breadth of Benjamin Franklin's public, professional, and scientific accomplishments through important documents, letters, books, broadsides, and cartoons. Marking the tercentenary of Franklin's birth, this exhibition, concentrates on his achievements as a printer and writer, an inventor and scientist, and, particularly, as a politician and statesman. The physical exhibition will be on view at the Library through June 17, 2006.
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Benjamin Franklin Papers (Library of Congress)
The papers of statesman, publisher, scientist, and diplomat Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) consist of approximately 8,000 items spanning the years 1726 to 1907, with most dating from the 1770s and 1780s. The collection's principal strength is its documentation of Franklin's diplomatic roles as a colonial representative in London (1757-1762 and 1764-1775) and France (1776-1785), where he sought to win recognition and funding from European countries during the American Revolution, negotiated the treaty with Britain that ended the war, and served as the first United States minister to France. The papers also document Franklin's work as a scientist, inventor, and observer of the natural world, and his relations with family, friends, and scientific and political colleagues.
Notable correspondents include John Adams, Sarah Franklin Bache, Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy, Edmund Burke, Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, Cadwallader Colden, Peter Collinson, Thomas Cushing, Charles-Guillaume-Frédéric Dumas, Charles James Fox, Deborah Read Franklin, William Franklin, William Temple Franklin, Joseph Galloway, George III, King of Great Britain; Rodolphe-Ferdinand Grand, David Hartley, Mary Stevenson Hewson, Jan Ingenhousz, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, John Paul Jones, the Marquis de Lafayette; Henry Laurens, Antoine Lavoisier, Arthur Lee, Jane Franklin Mecom, Robert Morris, Richard Oswald, Joseph Priestley, William Strahan, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes; George Washington, Jonathan Williams, Jonathan Williams Jr., and more.
Benjamin Franklin: An Index of His Papers in the Library of Congress (PDF), created by the Manuscript Division in 1973 after the bulk of the collection was microfilmed, provides a complete list of the correspondents and notes the dates of the items indexed and their locations in the collection by series. Materials added to the collection after 1973 are not listed in this index.
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Benjamin West - Biography and Legacy
The British colonists did not bring a strong art tradition with them to the shores of North America, but this did not stop Benjamin West, the first internationally recognized artist to hale from the New World. Self-taught in his early years, West became a prominent portrait painter in Philadelphia and New York before travelling to Europe to immerse himself in the Italian Old Masters and Greek and Roman art. There he took up the newly forming Neoclassical style and painted several large-scale history paintings that were wildly popular with the public.
Wrapped in a mythology of self-promotion, West was hugely influential for a new generation of American artists, including Gilbert Stuart and John Singleton Copley, that shaped the early Republic's visual identity. While his reputation languished with later critics and historians, West's eventual transition to Romanticism and embrace of current trends has prompted some scholars to consider West one of the first modern artists.
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Birth of the Nation: The First Federal Congress 1789-1791
This exhibit provides an overview of the work of and issues faced by this seminal Congress, which was a virtual second sitting of the Federal Convention, fleshing out the governmental structure outlined in the Constitution and addressing the difficult issues left unresolved by the Constitution. Each topic begins with a quote from the Constitution relating to it. The illustrations (letters, newspaper articles, cartoons, portraits, etc.) for the topics provide just a sampling of the wealth of material in the Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, 1789-1791.
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Black Loyalists Digital Collections
This Digital Collection was produced under contract to Canada's Digital Collections Program, Industry Canada. -- Explore this website to learn "how Canada became the home of the first settlements of free blacks outside Africa." Includes a section of documents.
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Bonds Conway Papers 1763-1907
Papers of Bonds Conway (1763-1843), a free African-American resident of Camden (Kershaw County, S.C.). This collection of family letters, land papers, and other items documents several generations of a free family of color from the 18th through the 20th centuries in South Carolina, Georgia, Kansas, east Texas, and elsewhere. Topics discussed include social relations during antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras through the early 20th century.
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Boston Massacre Trials (1770)
Although it has been over two centuries since the moonlit March night in 1770 when British soldiers killed five Bostonians on King Street, people still debate responsibility for the Boston Massacre. Does the blame rest with the crowd of Bostonians who hurled insults, snowballs, oyster shells, and other objects at the soldiers, or does the blame rest with an overreacting military that violated laws of the colony that prohibited firing at civilians? Whatever side one takes in the debate, all can agree that the Boston Massacre stands as a significant landmark on the road to the American Revolution
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Bush River Declaration March 22, 1775
The Bush River Declaration - March 22, 1775 documents of this period on this subject
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Cabell Family Papers (Virginia)
The history of Virginia and that of the Cabell family are inextricably linked; indeed, since about 1726, the Cabells have been one of the Commonwealth’s most interesting and influential families. This site offers a broad introduction to the Cabell family and to the extraordinary archival material that Cabells in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries left behind.
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Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, America & West Indies
Calendars provide summaries full enough, for most purposes, to replace the original documents. These summaries are printed in chronological order and do not necessarily reflect the archival ordering of the documents (hence calendar). They are the primary finding aid for the records that they describe. The State Papers Colonial are the accumulated papers of the secretaries of state relating to colonial affairs from the 16th to the 18th century. This series details papers relating to Colonial America and the West Indies for the period 1574-1739.
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Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, ca. 1600-1925 I(Library of Congress)
The fourth in a series of local history collections presented by the National Digital Library Program as part of American Memory, joining "California As I Saw It", Pioneering the Upper Midwest, and Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age. Together, these online collections make up a virtual local history bookshelf. Like the other local history collections, The Capital and the Bay comprises first-person narratives, early histories, historical biographies, promotional brochures, and books of photographs in an attempt to capture in words and pictures a distinctive region as it developed between the onset of European settlement and the first quarter of the twentieth century. Works published after that time generally pose copyright challenges that prevented their inclusion.
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A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875
Beginning with the Continental Congress in 1774, America's national legislative bodies have kept records of their proceedings. The records of the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the United States Congress make up a rich documentary history of the construction of the nation and the development of the federal government and its role in the national life. These documents record American history in the words of those who built our government.
Books on the law formed a major part of the holdings of the Library of Congress from its beginning. In 1832, Congress established the Law Library of Congress as a separate department of the Library. It houses one of the most complete collections of U.S. Congressional documents in their original format. In order to make these records more easily accessible to students, scholars, and interested citizens, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation 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.
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Charles F. Heartman Manuscripts of Slavery Collection
he Charles F. Heartman Manuscripts of Slavery Collection consists of over 6000 pieces dating from 1724 to 1897, and relate directly to the social, economic, civil, and legal status of enslaved Negroes and Free People of Color in Louisiana an especially in New Orleans. The manuscripts are written in French, Spanish, and English.
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Church in the Southern Black Community, 1780-1925
The collection of documents brought together in this project begins to tell the story of the growth of Protestant religion among African Americans during the nineteenth century, and of the birth of what came to be known as the "Black Church" in the United States. This development continues to have enormous political, spiritual, and economic consequences. But perhaps what is most apparent in these texts is the diversity of ways in which that religious tradition was envisioned, experienced, and implemented. From the white Baptist and Methodist missionaries sent to convert enslaved Africans, to the earliest pioneers of the independent black denominations, to black missionaries in Africa, to the eloquent rhetoric of W.E.B. DuBois, the story of the black church is a tale of variety and struggle in the midst of constant racism and oppression. It is also a story of constant change, and of the coincidence of cultural cohesion among enslaved Africans and the introduction of Protestant evangelicalism to their communities.
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Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society
Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society contain a variety of letters, diaries, and other papers relating to early America and the Revolution; mainly focused on New England colonies, but other colonies are also mentioned.
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Colonial and Revolutionary Boston (Collection of Distinction)
Boston Public Library holds thousands of manuscripts, correspondence, documents, and printed records from the Colonial and Revolutionary War periods. This collection is unparalleled in the extent of its administrative and judicial records of Massachusetts Bay Colony and early Boston. The collection documents the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as well as the ensuing political, social, and financial crises that led to the American Revolution and the formation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The events leading up to the Revolutionary War, as well as the war itself, are well-documented in both print materials and manuscripts written by George Washington, John Hancock, John and Samuel Adams, James Otis, and other important patriots.
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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
The Colonial and State Records of North Carolina has been an extraordinary resource for students of North Carolina's history for over one hundred years. The series includes documents and materials from throughout the country and from several European repositories covering the earliest days of North Carolina's settlement by Europeans through the ratification of the United States Constitution.
The publication of twenty-six volumes of historical materials, appearing between 1886 and 1907, with a four-volume master index, marked a significant achievement for the state's historians and provided a benefit to the entire state of North Carolina. The turmoil and uncertainty of the proprietary years, the attempts at consolidating power and improving life under royal stewardship, and the emergence of an independent state were documented here through individual, governmental, and organizational records. These documents were handwritten originals that are often difficult for non-experts to read, and some of the originals have disappeared since publication.
When complete, "The Colonial and State Records of North Carolina" digital collection will present the entire original publication, including the index. Its mission is to continue the legacy of an earlier generation's extensive scholarship, improve it with this generation's technology, and empower today's and tomorrow's users by offering easier, more efficient, and more flexible access to thousands of unique documents. Our readers will be able to browse the volumes, consult the index, search the full text, or conduct advanced searches.
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Colonial Charters and Related Documents (Avalon Project)
Colonial Charters and Related Documents (Avalon Project)
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Colonial Manuscript Collection (Hudson River Valley Heritage)
The Colonial Manuscripts Collection offered online here is a growing
accumulation of some of the earliest documents from the archives of
Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz, NY. Presently, the collection
contains 52 separate documents which combined amount to 141
images. The aim of this online collection is to document the various
activities of the New Paltz community during its earliest years. Items
represented include an account book, a military commission letters,
receipts, promissory notes, payment letters, wills, articles of vendue,
contracts, and land papers. For this exhibit, the papers are organized
under four general headings: Financial Documents, Legal Documents,
Church-Related Documents, and Additional Documents, but items can
also be searched by author, subject, date, or by keyword. Items of
particular note in the collection include the 46-paged account book
kept by seamstress, Jannetje DuBois from 1773-1797, the Contract
and Accompanying Papers for the New Paltz Patent between the
Huguenots and the Esopus Indians (also known as the Indian Deed)
1677, a Deacon’s Account from the New Paltz Reformed Church, 1731-
1736, and Letters of Recommendation for Jean Hasbrouck and Louis
Bevier, from Protestant Churches in the German Palatinate, and
several letters relating to the Coetus-Conferentie Dispute in the Dutch
Reformed Church during the 1760s.
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Colonial North America at Harvard Library
Colonial North America at Harvard Library provides access to remarkable and wide-ranging materials digitized as part of an ongoing, multi-year project. When complete, the project will make available to the world approximately 650,000 digitized pages of all known archival and manuscript materials in the Harvard Library that relate to 17th- and 18th-century North America. Each item is connected to countless stories—of lives lived quietly and extravagantly, of encounters peaceful and volatile, and of places near and far – providing an opportunity to travel back in time, to rethink familiar stories, and to discover new ones.
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Colonial Will Books, 1754-1779 (Georgia)
Wills recorded in the Royal Colony of Georgia. These records are from Record Group 049-01-005, Colony of Georgia – Will Books.
Historical Background
After Georgia became a royal colony in 1754, the governor acted as ordinary or appointed an official to carry out such duties. The ordinary probated wills, provided instructions to administrators for the inventory and appraisal of an estate, and ensured that administrators followed all legal requirements in settling the estate. These wills are the official record copy transcribed into volumes by the Ordinary.
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Colonial Wills, 1733-1778 (Georgia)
Wills probated in the Colony of Georgia. These records are from Record Group 049-01-002, Colony of Georgia -- Wills.
Historical Background
Wills probated in the Colony of Georgia. These records are from Record Group 049-01-002, Colony of Georgia -- Wills.
Historical Background
There are thirty two wills from the Trustee period, 1733-1753. After Georgia became a royal colony in 1754, the governor acted as Ordinary or appointed an official to carry out the ordinary’s duties. The ordinary probated wills, provided instructions to administrators for the inventory and appraisal of an estate, and ensured that administrators followed all legal requirements in settling the estate.
These documents are the copies submitted to the ordinary for transcription into volumes. The copy in the volume is the official record copy. The series includes wills in French and in German, some of which include English translations.
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Colonization And Settlement, 1585-1763 - Gilder Lehrman Collection (Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)
At the Institute’s core is the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the great archives in American history. More than 85,000 items cover five hundred years of American history, from Columbus’s 1493 letter describing the New World through the end of the twentieth century.
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Coming of the American Revolution 1764-1776
Introduction
In the years between 1764 and 1776, America truly became a nation. Where before America had been a cluster of competing British colonies—with differing origins, goals, and policies—by 1776 colonists had forged a separate identity flexible enough to support not just revolution but nation building.
By investigating the lives and events recorded in newspapers, official documents and personal correspondence from our collection, you will immerse yourself in the past and discover the fears, friction and turmoil that shaped these tumultuous times.
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Commissioners of Forfeiture Proceedings 1784-1786
Records of the Commission which sold lands seized from Loyalists during the American Revolution through the abolishment of their civil rights and confiscation of their property. In Westchester County, this land primarily belonged to Frederick Philipse and his Philipsburg Manor. Entries include the name of the buyer, the amount pFor ease of reference, a name index has been created for each purchaser named in the Proceedings (the handwritten index in the book itself is not in exact alphabetical order and has not been transcribed). This name index is the best way to find the purchase document(s) associated with a particular individual. Additional references to these same individuals and others may be found throughout the Proceedings, and have been indexed in this collection because the property boundaries were described by referring to property owners.aid, and the property boundaries.
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Congressional Documents and Debates, 1775-1875 (Library of Congress)
Beginning with the Continental Congress in 1774, America's national legislative bodies have kept records of their proceedings. The records of the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the United States Congress make up a rich documentary history of the construction of the nation and the development of the federal government and its role in the national life. These documents record American history in the words of those who built our government.
Books on the law formed a major part of the holdings of the Library of Congress from its beginning. In 1832, Congress established the Law Library of Congress as a separate department of the Library. It houses one of the most complete collections of U.S. Congressional documents in their original format. In order to make these records more easily accessible to students, scholars, and interested citizens, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation 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.
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Constitutional Convention Records (Fold3)
Convened in Philadelphia in May 1787, the Constitutional Convention created one of the most important documents of the new nation - the United States Constitution. Under this title you will also find Bankson's Journal, which includes the important delegate credentials from "Ratifications of the Constitution," and drafts of the Virginia Plan, which ultimately led to a bicameral Congress consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
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Continental Congress - Misc. (Fold3)
These are documents which were misplaced, overlooked, or found in private hands when the Papers of the Continental Congress were first arranged in 1834. Among the most interesting are the official report of the Annapolis Convention of September 1786, the event leading to Constitutional Convention; and the full text of "Bankson's Journal," an account containing the credentials of delegates to the convention found nowhere else, as well as various reports, resolutions, and legal acts.
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Continental Congress - Papers (Fold3)
Official records of the original colonies and the early United States. The First Continental Congress (1774) addressed "intolerable acts" by the British. The Second Continental Congress (1775-1781) created the Declaration of Independence and the first national government. The Congress of the Confederation (1781-1789) followed. Read important papers, letters, treaties, and reports--famous and obscure--relating to the formation of the new nation, as penned by the founding fathers.
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Cornell University Collection of Political Americana
History of the Susan H. Douglas Collection
The central goal of the project is to preserve, digitize, and catalog all items in the Susan H. Douglas Collection of Political Americana. Acquired from an individual collector between 1957 and 1961, the Douglas collection includes approximately 5,500 items of American political campaign memorabilia and commemorative items dating to between 1789 and 1960. Mrs. Douglas characterized them as: ballots, bric-a-brac (larger three-dimensional objects), broadsides, buttons, cartoons, maps and charts, pamphlets, paper miscellaneous, parade items, posters, prints, ribbons, sheet music, songbooks, textiles, trinkets, and wearing apparel.
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Correspondence of George Washington as Commander in Chief, 1775-1778, selections
Correspondence of George Washington as Commander in Chief, 1775-1778, selections. What does it mean to be Commander in Chief? What duties and decisions are unique to the top military leader in a war? What ultimate responsibilities fall on the commander's desk? A close view is afforded by these selections from George Washington's correspondence during the first half of the Revolutionary War, from his appointment as Commander in Chief in June 1775 through the brutal winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to his strategic victory with a revitalized army at Monmouth, New Jersey, in June 1778. Read these excerpts not as a history of the war years but as a sampling of the life-and-death issues and the myriad of routine details that are the charge of a Commander in Chief. (14 pp.)
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CyberCemetery (University of North Texas Libraries)
The CyberCemetery is an archive of government websites that have ceased operation (usually websites of defunct government agencies and commissions that have issued a final report). This collection features a variety of topics indicative of the broad nature of government information. In particular, this collection features websites that cover topics supporting the university’s curriculum and particular program strengths.
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Decisive Day Is Come' -- The Battle of Bunker Hill
To mark the 225th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Massachusetts Historical Society presents its first "web exhibition" -- personal accounts and eyewitness descriptions of the battle, along with contemporary maps, drawings, engravings, broadsides, and artifacts, either preserved by the participants or found on the battlefield.
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Defining Her Life: Advice Books for Women
Among the most common types of literature found on home bookshelves, over the past three hundred years, has been the advice or conduct book. Since the publication of Gervase Markham's The English-Housewife in 1615, advice books for women have incorporated both philosophical and practical guidance. These works not only taught the skills of household management, cooking, gardening, etiquette, childcare, and family medical care, but they also conveyed the appropriate role of a woman in society. Intended for the inexperienced young woman, the books defined an ethical, Christian-based code of behavior, with strict gender role definitions.
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Delaware Digital Archives
Includes a variety of documents, photos, maps, and audio related to the state of Delaware.
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Diary, Correspondence, and Papers of Robert "King" Carter of Virginia, 1701-1732
This site includes transcriptions of the diary, correspondence, and papers of the richest and most important man of his day in Virginia, who owned at his death at least 300,000 acres containing many farms and plantations that produced tobacco and other crops for sale, some 750 slaves to work those plantations, and large sums of money invested in Virginia and in England. Robert Carter was a member of the Council of Virginia, acting governor 1726-1727, and a political power in the colony. He had received a classical education in England, and corresponded widely both within the colony and with merchants in England.
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Diary of Samuel Sewell 1674-1729
Diary of Samuel Sewall. 1674-1729
by Sewall, Samuel, 1652-1730
Publication date 1878
Topics Sewell family
Publisher Boston
Collection americana
Book from the collections of Harvard University
Language English
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Digital History
Digital Scanned documents of the Era of the American Revolution
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Digital Library on American Slavery
There are four collections that make up this website: Race and Slavery Petitions Project, NC Runaway Slave Advertisements, People Not Property, & Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
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Digital Quaker Collection
DQC is a digital library containing full text and page images of over 500 individual Quaker works from the 17th and 18th centuries. The proprietary software developed for Earlham School of Religion provides multiple search functions and an interface for viewing pages.
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Digital Witchcraft Collection
Cornell University Library’s Witchcraft Collection is part of the Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. It contains more than 3,000 books, manuscripts, and related materials. More information about the content of the collection is available on the Collection Overview page.
An online selection of 104 English language books from the Witchcraft Collection is available to search, browse by title, or browse by author. These titles were digitally scanned from microfilm by Primary Source Media in 1998. The resulting full text scans were later made available to Cornell University Library to enable free public access.
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Discovering American Women's History Online
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. These diverse collections range from Ancestral Pueblo pottery to interviews with women engineers from the 1970s.
The database offers the following features:
Detailed descriptions and links to more than 650 digital collections
Quick access to basic and advanced searches on every page
Options for browsing by subject (300+ entries), place, time period, and primary source type
Options for narrowing search results by subject, time period, place, and primary source type
RSS feeds (at right) alert users to new records in the database.
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DocsTeach: Primary Source Documents (National Archives)
Access thousands of primary sources — letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos, and other document types — spanning the course of American history. We're always adding more!
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Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina)
Search or browse full text sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the early 20th century: slave narratives, other first person narratives, literature, life during the Civil War and African American churches.
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Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention
Contains 277 documents relating to the work of Congress and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Items include extracts of the journals of Congress, resolutions, proclamations, committee reports, treaties, and early printed versions of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Most broadsides are one page in length; others range from 1 to 28 pages. A number of these items contain manuscript annotations not recorded elsewhere that offer insight into the delicate process of creating consensus. In many cases, multiple copies bearing manuscript annotations are available to compare and contrast.
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Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary
DoHistory invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of ordinary people in the past. It is an experimental, interactive case study based on the research that went into the book and film A Midwife's Tale, which were both based upon the remarkable 200 year old diary of midwife/healer Martha Ballard. Although DoHistory is centered on the life of Martha Ballard, you can learn basic skills and techniques for interpreting fragments that survive from any period in history. We hope that many people will be inspired by Martha Ballard's story to do original research on other "ordinary" people from the past.
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Drums Along the Mohawk
Drums Along the Mohawk contains the following: It Chronicles the events with a calendar of the Revolution's events in the Colonies and in New York State. Looks at valley dwellers - the people who lived there at this time. It looks at the stockades and settlements, It offers up Letters from Home with First hand accounts of life in the Mohawk and Schoharie valleys.
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Early American Art
The museum’s collection begins with works from the colonies of New Spain and New England. Some of the oldest works in the collection are from seventheenth-century Puerto Rico—Santa Bárbara (Saint Barbara), a painting from about 1680–90, and Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (Our Lady of Sorrows), a painted wood sculpture from about 1675–1725. The collection features artworks that trace the transformation of the thirteen colonies into a nation, including portraits by John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, and Gilbert Stuart; landscapes by Thomas Cole; and sculptures by Horatio Greenough. Copley’s portrait of Mrs. George Watson emphasizes luxurious fabric, lace, Delft pottery, and flowers—costly imports and fitting props for the wife of a prominent Boston merchant. That port city was a vital center of shipping and trade in the English colonies.
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Early Americas Digital Archive (Maryland Institute of Technology in the Humanities)
The Early Americas Digital Archive (EADA) is a collection of electronic texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820. Open to the public for research and teaching purposes, EADA is published and supported by the University of Maryland Libraries’ e-Publishing Initiative, and was originally developed with the support of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH). Intended as a long-term and inter-disciplinary project committed to exploring the intersections between traditional humanities research and digital technologies, it invites scholars from all disciplines to submit their editions of early American texts for publication on this site. To learn more about EADA, please see Introduction to the Archive. In order to search the database of documents housed at EADA, see Browse/Search the Archive. In order to find early American texts on the Internet, at the EADA and elsewhere, see Gateway of Early American authors on the Internet.
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Edmund Burke, speech to Parliament on reconciliation with America, 1775,
1775, selections. An Irish-born British statesman, Edmund Burke not only sympathized with American grievances but argued that Parliament could, without loss of dignity or authority, recognize and address them. In a dramatic speech to the House of Commons, he presented a plan to "conciliate and concede" to America without making Britain appear spineless and defeated. Unfortunately, he delivered the speech one month before the Battle of Lexington and Concord of 19 April 1775, after which little prospect of reconciliation survived. So why read the speech? First, because Burke forcefully describes the Americans' "fierce spirit of liberty" on the eve of revolution, and traces its origins point by point to their heritage as Englishmen (and the vast physical distance separating them from Britain). And second, because transitional moments in history reveal much of adversaries' ultimate motivations—what, in the end, they will or will not compromise to maintain peace. We pick up mid-point in the lengthy speech, as Burke concludes his prefatory arguments and proceeds to his plan. If acted upon earlier, might it have achieved peace? (4 pp.)
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Elizabeth Murray Project: A Resource Site for Early American History
The archive, which includes letters, portraits, newspaper articles, and maps, to examine the rich documentary record of this fascinating woman. An interactive timeline, portrait, and other kinds of explorations can be experienced in the activities section. For classroom applications, helpful links, bibliographies, and other curricular materials, go to the teaching resources section. Tools include guides on how to use primary sources and how to evaluate websites.
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English Crime and Execution Broadsides (Harvard Law School Library)
This collection of nearly 600 broadsides highlights crime and capital punishment, primarily in England, as seen through the popular press in the 18th and 19th century.
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Evans Early American Imprints - free TCP version
Online texts of books, pamphlets, and broadsides are known to have been printed in the U.S. between 1640 and 1821.
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Excerpts from Slave Narratives
Excerpts from Slave Narratives
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Federalist Papers (Library of Congress)
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. This web-friendly presentation of the original text of the Federalist Papers (also known as The Federalist) was obtained from the e-text archives of Project Gutenberg. Any irregularities with regard to grammar, syntax, spelling, or punctuation are as they exist in the original e-text archives.
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First Person Narratives of the American South
"First-Person Narratives of the American South" is a collection of diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives written by Southerners. The majority of materials in this collection are written by those Southerners whose voices were less prominent in their time, including African Americans, women, enlisted men, laborers, and Native Americans.
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Founders' Constitution
Hailed as "the Oxford English Dictionary of American constitutional history," the print edition of The Founders' Constitution has proved since its publication in 1986 to be an invaluable aid to all those seeking a deeper understanding of one of our nation's most important legal documents. These rich and varied materials are arranged, first, according to broad themes or problems to which the Constitution of 1787 has made a significant and lasting contribution. Then they are arranged by article, section, and clause of the U.S. Constitution, from the Preamble through Article Seven and continuing through the first twelve Amendments. Those seeking additional information and guidance should consult "A Reader's Advisory" and the "Introduction".
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Founders Early Access
he Rotunda Founders Early Access project makes available for the first time thousands of unpublished documents from our nation’s founders in a free online resource. Collected over many years by the Founders documentary editions, these letters and other papers penned by important figures such as James Madison, John Adams, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson offer Americans of all ages and interests a wider view of the early Republic.
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Founders Online
Now, for the first time, users can freely access the written record of the original thoughts, ideas, debates, and principles of our democracy. You can search across the records of all six Founders and read first drafts of the Declaration of Independence, the spirited debate over the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the very beginnings of American law, government, and our national story. You can compare and contrast the thoughts and ideas of these six individuals and their correspondents as they discussed and debated through their letters and documents. In its initial phase, Founders Online contained nearly 120,000 fully searchable documents.
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Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware
The history of the free African American community as told through the family history of most African Americans who were free in the Southeast during the colonial period. Two books you can read on-line containing about 2,700 pages of family histories based on all colonial court order and minute books on microfilm at the state archives of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Delaware (over 1000 volumes), tax lists, wills, deeds, free Negro registers, marriage bonds, parish registers, Revolutionary War pension files, etc. There are also another 5,000 pages of abstracted colonial tax lists, Virginia personal property tax lists, under "Colonial Tax Lists..."
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Free at Last? Slavery in Pittsburgh in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Free at Last? results from my desire to illuminate a little-known aspect of the establishment, growth, and development of Pittsburgh. The 55 records that were on display in the Heinz History Center substantiate that, at least between 1792 and 1857, the region’s Black children and youth, whose older relatives were slaves for life, were subject to a system —legal and otherwise— that in stages enslaved them, indentured them in a kind of de facto term slavery, and forced them to prove their free status.
These and other slavery-related documents, recorded earlier or at the same time as the 55 records, shouted out from their aged pages the need to be publicly inspected. And they suggested to me that the much bigger story must be told of how and why slavery came to Western Pennsylvania, the locus of the 55 records and the focus of the exhibition. And equally important were the means by which slavery in this region was legally ended and the extent to which Southern slavery and the effects of slavery persisted.
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French Colonial, Spanish Colonial, & 19th century Louisiana Documents (1655-1924)
Louisiana documents from 1655 to 1924 with a strong emphasis on the French colonial, Spanish colonial, and early national periods. Includes correspondence, land sales, slave sales, plantation journals, business licenses, property sales, professional and family papers, legal documents, land grants, tax receipts, theater programs, broadsides, engravings, and more. A noted Louisiana document collector, Felix Kuntz (1890-1971) donated his collection to Tulane University in four installments beginning in 1954 and requested that it be named after his parents. Today, the Rosemond E. and Emile Kuntz Collection (LaRC Manuscripts Collection 600) is a renowned resource for studying Louisiana with a special emphasis on New Orleans. Particularly noteworthy are records from the Company of the Indies, papers of Francisco Bouligny describing early French and Spanish authority over Louisiana, documents spanning Louisiana's entry into the United States through the Civil War and New Orleans? growth as a major commercial center, New Orleans municipal records (1805-1850s, including an 1805 census), and several small personal and family collections such as those of John McDonogh, the Pontalba family, and the Pierson family.
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Friendly Association Papers
The “Friendly Association for Regaining and Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures” was established in 1756 by a group of eminent Quakers in Philadelphia following months of horrific violence between settlers and Native Americans on the Pennsylvania frontier. Self-consciously contrasting themselves with the British army, the militia, and the more militant representatives of the proprietary government, the leaders of the Friendly Association sought to establish peaceful relations with the Delaware Indians and other nearby tribes, and thereby prove the effectiveness of Quaker pacifism. The Friendly Association papers contain hundreds of unique and detailed accounts of behind-the-scenes treaty negotiations; historical documents dating back to the early years of Pennsylvania related to Indian affairs; the correspondence of Pemberton and others relating to fund-raising and the exigencies of Pennsylvania politics; and missives from Indian leaders, transcribed or otherwise transmitted by an intricate network of Indian “go-betweens” who maintained almost constant contact with the Association.
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Friends Historical Library Selections
The Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College is devoted to the history of the Society of Friends (Quakers) and its concerns. The Library includes printed works dating from the mid-seventeenth century to the present, as well as archives, manuscripts and other materials. This digital database is a small sample of its approximately 60,000 visual resources
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From Revolution to Reconstruction (University of Groningen)
November 1994 a group of students from the Arts Faculty of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands under my supervision created a World Wide Web-site dedicated to the pre-World War I history of the United States of America. The primary goal of this project was to improve basic computer-skills of the students and to teach them a number of more advanced skills. We started with a scanned booklet the American Information Agency provides for free abroad: An Outline of American History.
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Geography of Slavery in Virginia
The Geography of Slavery in Virginia is a digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers. Building on the rich descriptions of individual slaves and servants in the ads, the project offers a personal, geographical and documentary context for the study of slavery in Virginia, from colonial times to the Civil War.
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Geometry of War: Fortification Plans from 18th-Century America
An introduction to the diverse elements of the 18th centory fortifications in America. This onlilne exhibit features examples from the Library’s rich collection of plans and maps.
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George Washington Notebook as a Virginia Colonel 1757
Notebook kept by George Washington, first President of the United States, while a colonel in charge of the Virginia militia during the French and Indian War, 1757. Memoranda concern military matters and consist of his outlines for letters to be written, orders to be given, and tasks to be accomplished. Letter recipients include the Governor of Virginia, the Speaker of the House of Burgesses, Colonel Stanwix, and others. Initial entries are dated, beginning 1757 June 7, correlating to his command at Fort Loudoun in Winchester, Virginia. Items were apparently cross-hatched once completed. Memoranda include a list of officers' commissions given out by him in May and July; a list of his wagon horses with their names, physical descriptions and drawn brand marks; and a list of things to be done in Williamsburg should he go there in November. Also in his handwriting is an undated recipe for making "small beer." The volume also contains items not written by him: an earlier roll of the artificers employed at the works at Winchester under the command of Captain William Peach[e]y, with an account of their lost time for July, 1756; an undated list of men drafted from the artificers to do garrison duty for a time, drafted on July 9; and an undated list of men drafted from various Virginia counties, sometimes noting their occupation and description of fitness for service.
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George Washington Papers (New York Public Library)
The Washington Papers was established in 1968 at the University of Virginia, under the joint auspices of the University and the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union, to publish a comprehensive edition of George Washington’s correspondence. Forty years later, the project broadened that scope to include other significant editions, such as the George Washington’s Financial Papers, the Martha Washington Papers, and Washington Family Papers projects.
Work on The Papers of George Washington, our first edition, is now more than two-thirds complete. It will consist of approximately ninety-two volumes, to be published in print and online. Our Martha Washington and Washington Family Papers editions are also underway, and the George Washington Financial Papers is now available online.
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George Washington Papers (Univ. of Virginia)
The Washington Papers was established in 1968 at the University of Virginia, under the joint auspices of the University and the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union, to publish a comprehensive edition of George Washington’s correspondence. Forty years later, the project broadened that scope to include other significant editions, such as the George Washington’s Financial Papers, the Martha Washington Papers, and Washington Family Papers projects.
Work on The Papers of George Washington, our first edition, is now more than two-thirds complete. It will consist of approximately ninety-two volumes, to be published in print and online. Our Martha Washington and Washington Family Papers editions are also underway, and the George Washington Financial Papers is now available online.
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George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress 1741-1799
The papers of army officer and first U.S. president George Washington (1732-1799) held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress constitute the largest collection of original Washington papers in the world. They consist of approximately 65,000 items accumulated by Washington between 1745 and 1799, including correspondence, diaries, and financial and military records. The collection documents Washington’s childhood education, his first career as a surveyor, his experiences as a militia colonel during the French and Indian War, his election as a Virginia delegate to the first and second Continental Congresses, his role as general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, his presidency of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, his two terms as president (1789-1797), and his retirement. Also documented is his management of Mount Vernon, his plantation home in Virginia, and the lives of his family, servants, and slaves. Notable correspondents include John Adams, Benedict Arnold, Edward Braddock, Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Because of the wide range of Washington's interests, activities, and correspondents, which include ordinary citizens as well as celebrated figures, his papers are a rich source for almost every aspect of colonial and early American life.
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Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
“History by Era” is the Institute’s gateway to our historical content. Each of the ten Eras is divided into thematic Sub-eras, which all follow the same template so readers can move easily from one to another:
Introductions to each Era and Sub-era written by distinguished scholars offering fifty unique interpretations of American history.
Essays written by eminent historians on a wide variety of themes in American history.
Featured Primary Sources supported by a historical introduction, images, transcripts, and, for members of the Affiliate School Program, document-based questions by a master teacher.
Multimedia presentations, from five-minute responses to important historical questions to full-hour lectures by leading historians.
Lesson plans and other classroom resources by master teachers.
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Gloucester County (NJ) Slavery Records
This collection of documents comes with its own introduction so we won't try to redo that here. Instead, we'll thank the Gloucester County Historical Society for its help in getting these documents published on the web. Also, If you are interested in these documents, you might be interested in the Minutes of the Gloucester County Society for Promoting the Aboltion of Slavery.
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Governors Papers, Historical (North Carolina) (1776-1795)
The Historical Governors’ Papers collection is an ongoing digitization project and will eventually include the correspondence of many of North Carolina’s early governors. These materials are from the collections of the State Archives of North Carolina and each group of correspondence will be indexed by month and year. Also included are materials from North Carolina’s colonial governors.
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Guide to the American Revolution, 1763-1783 (Library of Congress)
The collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with the American Revolution era (1763-1783), including manuscripts, broadsides, government documents, books, images, and maps. This guide compiles links to digital materials related to the American Revolution that are available throughout the Library of Congress website. In addition, it provides links to external websites focusing on the American Revolution and a bibliography containing selections for both general and younger
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Making the Revolution: America, 1763-1791
As did many Americans, Benjamin Franklin loved Britain and identified himself as a Briton. In his lifetime of 85 years he spent twenty years, almost a quarter of his life, serving in London as an American agent. He rejoiced in Britain's victory in the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War), and he heralded America as the future "grandeur and stability of the empire." Yet he also knew the challenges awaiting the colonies in their new postwar relationship with Britain. The relative autonomy they had enjoyed since the 1600s, due to Britain's focus on its European rivals for empire, changed on a dime when America, not Europe, became Britain's obsession. All that land in North America to protect—all the soldiers and ships required to defend it—all the money needed to replenish the treasury and stimulate postwar commerce. All these new anxieties, wrote Patriot historian David Ramsay in 1789, "occasioned doubts in the minds of enlightened British politicians whether or not such immense acquisitions of territory would contribute to the felicity of the Parent State. They saw, or thought they saw, the seeds of disunion planted in the too widely extended empire."1 The seeds of disunion: a worrisome prospect, indeed.
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Revolutionary War, 1775 to 1783 (Family Search)
The American Revolutionary War was fought from 1775 to 1783. It was also known as the American War of Independence. The Revolutionary War began with the confrontation between British troops and local militia at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, on 19 April 1775. Throughout the war, state troops and local militias supplemented the Continental (Federal) Army. The total number of men who served is not known. Men between the ages of 16 and 60 may have served during the war in either the Continental Army, State Line Troops, or local militia mustered to help the Continental Troops.
Online Sources: American Revolution Primary Sources: H - Z
Online Sources: American Revolution Primary Sources: H - Z
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Hail Great Republic
"During the American Revolution, Thomas Paine penned a patriotic song called “Hail Great Republic” which is to be sung to the tune of Rule Britannia (of course!) (1776)"
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Haldimand Collection (Papers)
Over 20,000 thousand letters and documents in relation to the birth of Canada and the United States of America.
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History Matters: Many Pasts
This feature contains 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. Browse the list of documents below (sorted by time period, beginning with the earliest).
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Hunterdon County - Slave Manumissions
This series includes original manumission papers filed by Hunterdon County slaveowners (with overseers of the poor and justices of the peace) as early as 1788. The documents are among those originally copied into two manumission/slave birth books now (1993) held by the Hunterdon County Historical Society in Flemington. Abstracts of the recorded manumissions were published in Some Records of Old Hunterdon County, 1701-1838 by Phyllis B. D'Autrechy (Trenton: 1979), pp. 147-157, 173-196, 201-204. Well over 500 acts of manumission during the period 1787-1856 are recorded in the Hunterdon County manumission books, while original papers for only 56 are included here.
This series is arranged chronologically. The items have been listed below using the following format: name of slaveowner: name of slave (age if recorded), other identifying information if included, location, date [remarks]. To aid in research, three name indexes have been added following the contents list.
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Image Collections: The John Carter Brown Library
"include the Archive of Early American Images, the Map Collection, and the Political Cartoon Collection. These image collections assist scholars in their quest for contemporary images to illustrate their research and to facilitate the study of historical images in their own right. They are also a unique resource for picture researchers, documentary filmmakers, and others looking for material for commercial use. Many of these American images have never been reproduced before."
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Images of the American Revolution
"Many factors contributed to the eventual success of the American colonies as they revolted against British rule. American leadership, the timely support of international allies, and international respect and recognition played major roles in the struggle for independence. Several documents and engravings held by the National Archives help to illustrate these important factors that led to the founding of the United States. "
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Immigrant Servants Database (1607-1820)
This ongoing project introduces a novel approach for spotting early American immigrants in Colonial American and European sources. The basic thesis is that most indentured servants were European immigrants. This project aims to create a reconstructed passenger arrival list for people who came to Colonial America as indentured servants, redemptioners, and transported convicts between 1607 and 1820. A random sample taken from among the database’s first 10,000 immigrants revealed that approximately 50% do not appear in Filby’s multi-volume Passenger and Immigration Lists Index. Check back regularly for updates.
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Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930 (Harvard Library)
This digital collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the start of the Great Depression. Concentrating heavily on the 19th century, the collection includes: over 400,000 pages from more than 2,200 books, pamphlets, and serials over 9,600 pages from manuscript and archival collections more than 7,800 photographs.
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Indenture of John Henry Coats, 1750
This 1750 legal document between John Henry Coats, his father, and shoemaker John Humphries obligates Humphries to teach Coats the trade.
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Indenture of Letitia Beard, 1794
This 1794 indenture, or contract, binds Letitia Beard "to learn the art, trade and mystery of a housewife."
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Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties (Kappler's)
This historically significant, seven volume compilation contains U.S. treaties, laws and executive orders pertaining to Native American Indian tribes. The volumes cover U.S. Government treaties with Native Americans from 1778-1883 (Volume II) and U.S. laws and executive orders concerning Native Americans from 1871-1970 (Volumes I, III-VII). This digitization project was made possible by significant gifts from the AMIGOS Bibliographic Council, the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Foundation and the Angie Debo estate.
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Indian Converts Collection
First published in 1727 under the title Indian Converts, or Some account of the lives and dying speeches of a considerable number of the Christianized Indians of Martha's Vineyard, in New-England, Experience Mayhew's history of the Wampanoag Indians on Martha's Vineyard provides a rare look at the lives and culture of four generations of Native Americans in colonial America. Dividing his treatment into four sections—Indian Ministers, Good Men, Religious Women, and Pious Children—Mayhew details the books that different age groups were reading, provides insights into early New England pedagogy and childrearing practices, and describes each individual in terms of genealogy, religious practice, way of life, and place of residence. In addition to drawing on his own first-hand knowledge of the community and transcriptions of oral testimony he and others collected, Mayhew inserts translations of Wampanoag texts that have since been lost.
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Indian Land Cessions in the United States, 1784-1894 (Library of Congress)
ndian Land Cessions in the United States, 1784-1894 is in U.S. Congressional Serial Set, Number 4015, which contains the second part of the two-part Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896-1897. Part one is in U.S. Congressional Serial Set, Number 4014, and also included in this collection. Part two was also printed as House Document No. 736 of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 56th Congress, 1st Session. Part two features 67 maps and two tables compiled by Charles C. Royce, with an introductory essay by Cyrus Thomas. The tables are titled: (1) Schedule of Treaties and Acts of Congress Authorizing Allotments of Lands in Severalty, and (2) Schedule of Indian Land Cessions.
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Intelligence in the War of Independence
A site provided by the Central Intelligence Agency.
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Invasion of America: How the United States Took Over an Eighth of the World
Between 1776 and 1887, the United States seized over 1.5 billion acres from the North American Indigenous people by treaty or executive order. Explore how in this interactive map of every Native American land cession during this period.
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James Glen Papers, 1738-1777
The papers of colonial governor James Glen (1701-1777), who served as Governor of South Carolina from 1738 to 1756, include official government documents, papers concerning relations with Native American Indians, business papers relating to his ownership of a South Carolina rice plantation, and correspondence between Glen and South Carolina planter, John Drayton (1713-1779).
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James Madison Papers (Library of Congress)
James Madison (1751-1836) is one of 23 presidents whose papers are held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The Madison Papers consist of approximately 12,000 items, spanning the period 1723-1859, captured in some 72,000 digital images. They document the life of the man who came to be known as the “Father of the Constitution” through correspondence, personal notes, drafts of letters and legislation, an autobiography, legal and financial documents, and his notes on the 1787 federal Constitutional Convention. The papers cover Madison’s years as a college student; as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Continental Congress, and Confederation Congress; as a delegate to the 1787 federal Constitutional Convention and the Virginia ratification convention of 1788; his terms in the House of Representatives, as secretary of state, and as president of the United States. Also documented are his retirement and the settlement of his estate; matters relating to his family, including his wife, Dolley Payne Madison; and his home, Montpelier, in Virginia. For information about the ownership and chain of custody of the Library’s Madison Papers, see the Provenance essay on this site, which is excerpted from the Index to the James Madison Papers (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1965).
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James Madison Papers (New York Public Library)
James Madison (1751-1836) was one of the key contributors in the drafting of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights and the fourth President of the United States. The James Madison papers, dated 1773-1847, primarily consist of correspondence and documents either written by or sent James Madison. Topics of the correspondence include the American Revolution, war intelligence reports, foreign relations, political events, slavery, and domestic and family affairs. Other documents include checks, contracts, an annotated address, and a note of Madison's accounts with James Monroe. Letters to and from Madison's family, the bulk of which were addressed to Dolley Madison, are also included. The bulk of these pertain to domestic and social affairs.
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Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents 1610 to 1791
This site contains the entire English translation of the The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, originally compiled and edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites and published by The Burrows BrothersCompany, Cleveland, throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century. Each file represents the total English contents of a single published volume. The original work has facing pages in the original French, Latin or Italian, depending on the author.
The volumes on this site were not professionally scanned and proof read so if you are using them for publication purposes it is best to recheck them against the original volumes as there are some errors in them. Alexander Street Press does have a full set of the Jesuit Relations properly proofread for scholarly use in their electronic resource: Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures and the Environment. This is a subscription based library. Alexander Street Press graciously provided Volume 51 for this resource, the only volume not scanned by Mr. Metrak.
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John Peter Zenger Trial 1735
The man generally perceived to be the villain of the Zenger affair, William Cosby, arrived in New York on August 7, 1731 to assume his post as Governor for New York Province. Cosby quickly developed a reputation as "a rogue governor." It is almost impossible to find a positive adjective among the many used by historians to describe the new governor : "spiteful," "greedy," "jealous," "quick-tempered," "dull," "unlettered," and "haughty" are a sample of those that have been applied.
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John Singleton Copley (American, 1738-1815)
John Singleton Copley (1738 - 1815) was an American painter, born presumably in Boston, Massachusetts and a son of Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Irish.
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Jonathan Edwards Collection
The collection consists of the great majority of Edwards’ surviving manuscripts including over one thousand sermons, private theological and philosophical notebooks, correspondence, printed materials, and artifacts.
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Journal of John Woolman
The Journal of John Woolman tells the encouraging and
powerful story of John Woolman's life. John Woolman was
an 18th century Quaker and abolitionist. His Journal focuses
on his moral, spiritual, and intellectual development. In particular, it depicts Woolman's deep concern for equality and
justice. His concern made him act as an agent of restoration
towards those whom he saw as being oppressed in his time.
He was an open advocate of abolition, and encouraged many
to free their slaves. But his influence extended beyond the
Quakers. His letters and journeys have impacted many different people; his Journal alone has been continuously published since 1774--a true testimony to the significance and
impact of his life! Reading this powerful work will encourage
one to be, following John Woolman's example, a positive
force of justice, equality, and restoration in the world.
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Journals of the Continental Congress (Library of Congress)
The First Continental Congress met from September 5 to October 26, 1774. The Second Continental Congress ran from May 10, 1775, to March 2, 1789. The Journals of the Continental Congress are the records of the daily proceedings of the Congress as kept by the office of its secretary, Charles Thomson. The Journals were printed contemporaneously in different editions and in several subsequent reprint editions. None of these editions, however, includes the "Secret Journals," confidential sections of the records, which were not published until 1821.
This complete edition, published by the Library of Congress from 1904 to 1937, is based on the manuscript Journals and other manuscript records of the Continental Congress in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Further information on how this edition was assembled, as well as notes explaining features introduced by the editors, may be found in the Prefatory Note to volumes 1 and 2.
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Law of Slavery in New Jersey: An Annotated Bibliography
This bibliography is part of a digital collection on The Law of Slavery in New Jersey, in the New Jersey Digital Legal Library at Rutgers-Newark Law Library. Links to the texts in the digital collection are included in the bibliography.
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Lee Family Digital Archive
The Lee Family Digital Archive is the largest online source for primary source materials concerning the Lee family of Virginia. It contains published and unpublished items, some well known to historians, others that are rare or have never before been put online. We are always looking for new letters, diaries, and books to add to our website.
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Legislative Petitions Digital Collection (Virginia)
Petitions to the General Assembly were the primary catalyst for legislation in the Commonwealth from 1776 until 1865. Public improvements, military claims, divorce, manumission of slaves, division of counties, incorporation of towns, religious freedom, and taxation were just some of the concerns expressed in these petitions. The petitions often contain hundreds of signatures and are a useful tool in genealogical research. Frequently, the petitions contain supplementary support documents useful in research, including maps, wills, naturalizations, deeds, resolutions, affidavits, judgments, and other items.
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Letters of delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 (Hathi Trust)
Letters of delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 /
Paul H. Smith, editor, Gerard W. Gawalt, Rosemary Fry Plakas, Eugene R. Sheridan, assistant editors.
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Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 (Library of Congress)
Letters of Delegates
to Congress, 1774-1789
Published by the Library of Congress, 1976-2000
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Liberty Threatened: Maine in 1775
Images from Maine Historical Society
American colonists had struggled at least since 1763, the end of the Seven Years' War, with British regulations and taxes that they found unfair. The conflicts escalated, especially in Massachusetts (of which Maine was a part) until the Revolution began on April 19, 1775.
In Maine, some colonists also demanded that residents comply with the embargo of British goods. Disputes then arose between patriots and loyalists, the latter group siding with the British government.
In 1775, conflict erupted in Machias and Falmouth (Portland). In addition, Benedict Arnold and his troops marched through Maine on their way to Quebec, leaving a legacy of a failed mission to drive the British out of the north.
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Library of Congress - American Revolution: A Resource Guide
The collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with the American Revolution era (1763-1783), including manuscripts, broadsides, government documents, books, images, and maps. This guide compiles links to digital materials related to the American Revolution that are available throughout the Library of Congress website. In addition, it provides links to external websites focusing on the American Revolution and a bibliography containing selections for both general and younger readers.
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Library of Congress - Web Guides - Primary Documents, 1775-1815
The American Revolution and The New Nation, 1775-1815 - A list of documents from the time period that can be located in various digital collections within the Library of Congress.
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A Loyalist's address to the American soldiers: Peter Oliver, letter to the Massachusetts Gazette, January 1776,
Peter Oliver, letter to the Massachusetts Gazette, January 1776, selections. A Boston-born Loyalist and Supreme Court judge in Massachusetts, Peter Oliver condemned the American rebellion as illegal, unfounded, and utterly self-destructive. For his staunch defense of British imperial authority, Oliver was harassed by Sons of Liberty and forced from his judgeship in 1774. In January 1776, he published this address urging Continental soldiers to consider their situation and abandon the Patriot cause. Two months later, he left Boston with the British as they evacuated the town, and he eventually settled in England. In 1781 he published an irate account of the pre-revolutionary period titled Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion.
In this address (published as a letter to the Massachusetts Gazette in January 1776), Oliver is responding to a statement issued about two months earlier by the officers of the Continental Army to its soldiers, urging them to remain in the downsized army and stand resolute despite hardship. What is Oliver's goal in refuting the officers' plea? How does he work to turn the soldiers against their officers? How does he maximize the impact of his address? (6 pp.)
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The Loyalist Collection
Site provides information on available microfilm not online documents. - "The Harriet Irving Library at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, N.B. is a repository of Loyalist resources which is unique in Canada. The Loyalist Collection contains microfilm of British, North American Colonial, and early Canadian primary sources from approximately 1740 - 1870, with the chief focus being the American Revolution, and the early years of Loyalist settlement in British North America. "
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Making of America (Michigan)
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. (Collaborative effort with Cornell University; see above.)
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Manumissions, Indentures, and Other
History Online › Digital History Projects › Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers
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Mapping Early American Elections (1787-1825)
Explore how Americans voted for their legislators during the formative era of American politics, 1788–1825. Mapping Early American Elections provides interactive maps and tables of U.S. Congressional elections during the First Party System, contextual essays, open access data, and tutorials.
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Maps of the French and Indian War
Maps of the French and Indian War
From the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society
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Martha Washington: A Life
This site will allow you to explore the contours of Martha Washington’s life while also providing you with a window on women’s lives during the 18th century, including women’s access to property and education, their role in the Revolution, their thoughts on the promises of rights called for in the founding documents, and their everyday experiences of marriage, motherhood, labor, sickness, and death
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Medford Slave Trade Letters - 1759-1765
The goal of this project has simply been to preserve an essential and valuable part of history. In these letters we hope to offer a resource on the atrocities of the eighteenth-century slave trade.
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Medicine in the Americas, 1610-1920: A Digital Library
Medicine in the Americas is a digital library project that makes freely available original works demonstrating the evolution of American medicine from colonial frontier outposts of the 17th century to research hospitals of the 20th century.
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Military Resources: American Revolution
A site provided by the National Archives for researching the American Revolution.
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Missing Chapter:Untold Stories of the African American Presence in the Mid-Hudson Valley
It is our obligation and our goal to illuminate the roots of the African American presence in the Mid-Hudson Valley, and to reveal the realities of the critical but subservient role African Americans played in colonial and antebellum society in this region. Through Photographs, Bills of Sale, Last Will and Testaments, Inventories, Vendues, Runaway Slave Notices, Court Cases, Slave Law Codes, Journals, Ledgers, and Correspondences, we can gain a deeper understanding of Slavery in New York in general and of the experiences and fates of specific African Americans. As part of the missing chapter in the book of the African American experience, the stories told here provide a glimpse of the collective heritage some of us seek to find, and that none of us should ever forget.
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Monticello Plantation Database
A database of information on all known enslaved individuals owned by Thomas Jefferson
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Mystic Seaport Museum: Digital Items
The Collections Research Center (CRC) is the nation’s leading maritime research facility. Located across the street from Mystic Seaport, the former J. Rossie Velvet Company houses the Museum’s collections and offers safe and easy access to maritime researchers and scholars. Artifacts at the CRC include more than two million examples of maritime art, artifacts, tools, buildings, imprints and other documents, photographs, 1,000 ships registers, 600 audiotaped oral history interviews, 200 videotaped interviews, and 1.5 million feet of historic and contemporary maritime-related footage. The CRC opened in the fall of 2002 and was designed to exceed national museum standards for conservation, preservation, accessibility, and safety. The research center provides cutting-edge temperature and humidity control for the Museum’s artifacts and also boasts audio/video production suites and extensive photo processing and digitizing labs.
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National Archives Military Resources: American Revolution
A compilation of resources on the American Revolution compiled by the Archives Library Information Center at the National Archives and Records Administration. It includes links to documents and images at the National Archives, as well as links to external sites.
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New Nation Votes: American Election Returns 1787-1825
A New Nation Votes is a searchable collection of election returns from the earliest years of American democracy.
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New York Slavery Records Index
The New York Slavery Records Index is a searchable compilation of records that identify individual enslaved persons and their owners, beginning as early as 1525 and ending during the Civil War.
Our data come from census records, slave trade transactions, cemetery records, birth certifications, manumissions, ship inventories, newspaper accounts, private narratives, legal documents and many other sources. The index contains over 35,000 records and will continue to grow as our team of John Jay College professors and students locates and assembles data from additional sources.
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Northwest Territory Collection, 1721-1825
Northwest Territory Collection, 1721-1825
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Online Library of Literature: The American Revolution and Constitution
"The Online Library of Liberty is particularly strong in its collection of material covering the American Revolution, the creation of the Constitution, and the Early Republic. This reflects the interest the Liberty Fund has in the ideals of individual liberty and limited government and the belief that these ideals motivated the men and women who took part in the creation of the American Republic."
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On the Water: Living in the Atlantic World 1450-1800
Over nearly four centuries, Atlantic-based trade shaped modern world history and life in America.
Maritime commerce connected the peoples and nations that rimmed the Atlantic in a web of trade, conquest, settlement, and slavery. Europeans carved out vast new colonies in the Americas. From gold to sugar, the resources of the New World transformed European societies. The transatlantic slave trade carried millions of Africans westward to lives of labor and suffering. Ships and sailors helped create a complex new world with maritime commerce at its core.
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Papers of John Jay
The Papers of John Jay is an image database and indexing tool comprising some 13,000 documents (more than 30,000 page images) scanned chiefly from photocopies of original documents. Most of the source material was assembled by Columbia University's John Jay publication project staff during the 1960s and 1970s under the direction of the late Professor Richard B. Morris. These photocopies were originally intended to be used as source texts for documents to be included in a planned four-volume letterpress series entitled The Selected Unpublished Papers of John Jay, of which only two volumes were published.
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Papers of the War Department: 1784 to 1800
Offers access to 55,000 documents of the early War Department, many long thought irretrievable but now reconstructed through a multi-year research effort. Covers the history of the Early Republic, from the handling of Indian affairs, pensions and procurement to the nature of the first American citizens’ relationship with their new Federal government.
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Parallel Histories: Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier
Parallel Histories: Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier is a bilingual, multi-format English-Spanish digital library site that explores the interactions between Spain and the United States in America from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. A cooperative effort between the National Library of Spain, the Biblioteca Colombina y Capitular of Seville and the Library of Congress, the project is part of the Library of Congress Global Gateway initiative to build digital library partnerships with national libraries around the world.
Through the presentation in digital form of books, maps, prints and photographs, manuscripts, and other documents from the collections of the partner libraries, this project illuminates five main themes related to the history of Spain and the parallel histories between the United States and Spain: Exploration and Early Settlement, Colonization and Settlement, Meeting of Cultures and Religious/Evangelical Activities, American Revolution, and Mutual Perceptions. Exploration and Early Settlement was launched in June 2005; the other sections are in process.
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A Patriot's address to the American soldiers: Thomas Paine, The Crisis, #1, December 1776
Thomas Paine, The Crisis, #1, December 1776. As Patriot soldiers were contemplating the British offer of pardon in return for leaving the army, Thomas Paine—the renowned and notorious author of Common Sense—published in December 1776 the first of sixteen pamphlets entitled The American Crisis (or The Crisis). Paine had joined the Continental Army in July 1776, in time to witness Washington's retreat into Pennsylvania as the British occupied New York. With that experience in mind he crafted his direct appeal to the troops to resist the British and reject Howe's offer of pardon. So effective was his prose that Washington had The Crisis #1 read aloud to his army before the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776.
Beginning with one of the most familiar quotations in American history, Paine explains that as a soldier himself he understands the plight of the troops. He presents the soldiers' steadfastness as a virtue. Our problems are caused not by weakness but by inexperience, which we are overcoming. Even if the British should win some battles, we will still have the advantage because other colonies will come to our aid. In retreat our forces were brave and orderly, and we have reassembled for a forceful resurgence. As Oliver claimed the allegiance of God for the Loyalist cause, Paine invokes it for that of the Patriots. Comparing these two appeals illustrates the extent to which the American Revolution was a battle for hearts and minds. (5 pp.)
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Personal narratives, British at HathiTrust
United States History Revolution, 1775-1783
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Personal Narratives at HathiTrust
United States History Revolution, 1775-1783. Personal narratives."
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Perspectives on the Boston Massacre
The collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society include newspaper accounts, broadsides, letters, diary entries, pamphlets, printed depositions, orations, trial notes, and even bullets (pictured right) recovered from the site, all relating to this significant event in America's early history. Have you ever read a newspaper account written in March 1770 describing what happened in Boston? Was the event a “Horrid Massacre” or an “Unhappy Disturbance”? Do written descriptions of "an awful scene" and "uproar and confusion" help you to understand what the atmosphere in Boston was like at the time and what issues were at stake? Many people are familiar with Paul Revere’s engraving, but have you examined Newburyport engraver John Mulliken's version of the image, or looked at a nineteenth century lithograph that depicts Crispus Attucks in the middle of the confrontation?
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Petition to George III, King of Great Britain (1775)
Manuscript petition (7 p.) signed by forty-six members of the Second Continental Congress on July 8, 1775, asking King George III to use his authority and influence to address grievances and restore harmony in the government's relations with the American colonies. The petition, drafted by John Dickinson, is considered the colonies' final effort to avert revolution against Great Britain. The document is also known as the Olive Branch Petition.
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Political Cartoons - John Carter Brown Library
"Showcases the complete collection of 462 political cartoons held by the Library. The subject matter focuses primarily on British responses to political events in the late-eighteenth-century Atlantic world."
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Portraits of George Washington as Commander in Chief, 1779, 1780, 1785
1779, 1780, 1785. Internal Link to Discussing Art page How did portrait painters depict the revered General Washington during and after the war? Here we view three portraits of Washington by the noted artists Charles Willson Peale, John Trumbull, and Robert Edge Pine. Peale and Trumbull—both of whom served with Washington—portray a triumphant, stalwart, almost cocky Washington, while Pine presents us with the retired Washington who has returned home to Mount Vernon—permanently, he hoped. How could one argue that each portrait reveals the "real" George Washington? the "real" Commander in Chief? (4 pp.)
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Primary Sources (Providence College): diaries, journals, etc. from the American Revolution
This series contains selected primary sources such as diaries, letters, manuscripts, etc.
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Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera (Library of Congress)
The collection contains, among other materials, posters, playbills, songsheets, notices, invitations, proclamations, petitions, timetables, leaflets, propaganda, manifestos, ballots, tickets, menus, and business cards. There are more than 28,000 items in the collection with 10,172 available online. The material dates from the seventeenth century to the present day and covers innumerable topics.
The library of Peter Force, acquired by the Library of Congress in 1867, furnished the basis of the Printed Ephemera Collection. Force himself had secured many of the pieces assembled by an earlier American historian and collector, Ebenezer Hazard. The majority of the items in the collection were produced in America and their major strength is in historical Americana. In adding to the collection, the Library's aim was to accumulate a record of all broadsides printed in America, and to do so, photostats as well as originals were collected.
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Probing the Past: Virginia and Maryland Probate Inventories, 1740-1810
A probate record or inventory is a list of possessions recorded after someone dies. The county court appointed appraisers, local men, to visit an estate, list what was there, and estimate its value. These listings, from a time when household goods were not widely mass-produced, illuminate a family’s routines, rituals, and social relations, as well as a region’s economy and connection to larger markets. Inventories were taken for the head of a household, usually, although not always, a man. In all of these documents, however, there is information about the lives and work of women, children, and slaves.
Reading this list carefully, we can start to ask and answer important questions about life in eighteenth-century Virginia and in early America. How was property valued? What items were expensive? Mahogany? Silk? Silver? What kinds of work did women in this house do? What goods did Sarah Green's and Moore Fauntleroy's estates produce and what did they purchase? What can we learn about the lives of slaves—the work they did and how their labor was valued? How diverse was the slave population in terms of age, gender, and skill level? Were slaves in a given household related?
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Quakers and Slavery
The materials selected for this project are available for research within the confines of our two Quaker repositories. However, these materials are unique or rare, and as such should receive limited physical handling in order to ensure their longevity. Digitization of these materials supports their long term preservation by reducing the amount they are handled, as well as providing greatly increased access to researchers who are not able to visit. Moreover, within each repository the documents span a range of material types and come from several collections, such that there is no easy way to bring them together physically. This project allows for the virtual reunification of these materials and collections.
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Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704
In the pre-dawn hours of February 29, 1704, a force of about 300 French and Native allies launched a daring raid on the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, situated in the Pocumtuck homeland. 112 Deerfield men, women, and children were captured and taken on a 300-mile forced march to Canada in harsh winter conditions. Some of the captives were later redeemed and returned to Deerfield, but one-third chose to remain among their French and Native captors.
Was this dramatic pre-dawn assault in contested lands an unprovoked, brutal attack on an innocent village of English settlers? Was it a justified military action against a stockaded settlement in a Native homeland? Or was it something else?
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Records of the French Superior Council [Louisiana], 1714-1769
These civil and criminal records are an invaluable source for researching Louisiana's colonial history. They record the social, political and economic lives of rich and poor, female and male, slave and free, African, Native, European and American colonials.
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Religion and the Founding of the American Republic (Library of Congress)
The religion of the new American republic was evangelicalism, which, between 1800 and the Civil War, was the "grand absorbing theme" of American religious life. During some years in the first half of the nineteenth century, revivals (through which evangelicalism found expression) occurred so often that religious publications that specialized in tracking them lost count. In 1827, for example, one journal exulted that "revivals, we rejoice to say, are becoming too numerous in our country to admit of being generally mentioned in our Record." During the years between the inaugurations of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, historians see "evangelicalism emerging as a kind of national church or national religion." The leaders and ordinary members of the "evangelical empire" of the nineteenth century were American patriots who subscribed to the views of the Founders that religion was a "necessary spring" for republican government; they believed, as a preacher in 1826 asserted, that there was "an association between Religion and Patriotism." Converting their fellow citizens to Christianity was, for them, an act that simultaneously saved souls and saved the republic. The American Home Missionary Society assured its supporters in 1826 that "we are doing the work of patriotism no less than Christianity." With the disappearance of efforts by government to create morality in the body politic (symbolized by the termination in 1833 of Massachusetts's tax support for churches) evangelical, benevolent societies assumed that role, bringing about what today might be called the privatization of the responsibility for forming a virtuous citizenry.
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Revolutionary-Era Boston Newspapers - The Annotated Newspapers of Harbottle Dorr, Jr. (Massachusetts Historical Society)
The Massachusetts Historical Society presents the complete four volume set of Revolutionary-era Boston newspapers and pamphlets collected, annotated, and indexed by Harbottle Dorr, Jr., a shopkeeper in Boston.
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Revolutionary War Era Maps from the Hessian State Archives
About 20 years ago, Bill Leap happened to visit the Hessian State Archives in Marburg, Germany. While there, he discovered some amzing maps that no one outside of Germany had seen in a long time. The maps depicted New Jersey and surrounding states at the time of the Revolution. In that pre-digital era all he could do was make some notes and then tell his friends at home what he had seen. Less that a year ago, Ed Fox checked through the online holdings list of the Hessian State Archives. He found the maps and asked the archives if it was possible to obtain digital copies. Such a thing was possible and a cd with the map images was picked up and returned from Germany by Ed's friend Curt Noe. Here, then, are the maps. While the West Jersey History Roundtable has sent copies of the maps to various libraries, archives and government agencies, this is still, so far as we know, the only place to view them easily. The files tend to be large ( around 300k to over 2mb). This is certainly not ideal but necessary to keep the map images large enough to use. We hope you find these worth the wait. Viewers should note that, while these maps are detailed, they only show those details that the mapmakers were interested in. So, not all roads are shown, some creeks may be a bit off, and, particularly on the larger maps, there are some slight issues of scale and placement. That said, these maps are an amazing resource and we hope you enjoy them.
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Road to Revolution: 1763-1776 (Digital Public Library of America)
After the conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763, relations between the American colonists and the British Crown and Parliament quickly deteriorated. By 1776, many of the colonists, and representatives of all 13 colonies, were ready to declare their independence and take up arms. This set of sources focuses on a selection of events, legislation, and perspectives from both sides during this time period. The documents, images, and artifacts help the student-historian understand the process of going from loyal subjects of the British Crown to rebels willing to risk their lives. Through this inquiry, together with other knowledge, the student should be able to understand the background of America’s Revolution and some of the factors leading to all revolutions. Students can answer the question, “Would you have revolted?”
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Rochambeau Map Collection (18th c.) (Library of Congress)
The collection consists of 40 manuscript and 26 printed maps, and a manuscript atlas, the originals of which are in the Library of Congress' Geography and Map Division.
The Rochambeau Map Collection contains cartographic items used by Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), when he was commander in chief of the French expeditionary army (1780-82) during the American Revolution. The maps were from Rochambeau's personal collection, cover much of eastern North America, and date from 1717 to 1795. The maps show Revolutionary-era military actions, some of which were published in England and France, and early state maps from the 1790s. Many of the items in this extraordinary group of maps show the importance of cartographic materials in the campaigns of the American Revolution (1776 to 1783) as well as Rochambeau's continuing interest in the new United States. The personal papers of Rochambeau were purchased by an act of Congress in 1883.
The maps and views cover both much of the continent of North America, from as far north as Placentia Bay in Newfoundland and Labrador, to the Mississippi River Valley and as far south as Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. The maps date from 1717 to 1795, but the majority of the items are from the years of the American Revolution. For his personal use and later as mementos of his time in America, Rochambeau collected maps of fortifications and troop positions prepared by the French army engineers, including a manuscript atlas containing plans of 54 French encampments during the army's 1782 march from Yorktown to Boston; Revolutionary-era maps published in England and France; and early state maps from the 1790s.
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Samuel Adams Papers
Samuel Adams (1722-1803) was an American revolutionary and post-revolutionary era political leader. Adams served as lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts from 1789 to 1793, and was governor from 1794 to 1797. The Adams papers contain letters to Adams and drafts of letters by him, chiefly on public affairs; as well as manuscripts of addresses, petitions, committee minutes, resolutions, and other documents. Much of Adams’ correspondence is with notable figures of the period in America and Europe including John Adams, Samuel Cooper, Christopher Gadsden, Horatio Gates, Elbridge Gerry, Joseph Hawley, Thomas Jefferson, Arthur Lee, Richard Henry Lee, James Lovell, Thomas Paine, and James Warren. There are also letters (1778-1781) to Adams’ wife, Elizabeth Wells Adams, on family matters, as well as letters neither to nor from Adams.
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Samuel Wyllys Papers, 1663-1728
The Samuel Wyllys Papers, 1663-1728, undated, are a group of 88 court documents also known as Depositions on Cases of Witchcraft, Assault, Theft, Drunkenness, and Other Crimes Tried In Connecticut 1663-1728. The papers include 6 cases of witchcraft (42 documents), 12 cases concerning assault and battery, theft, adultery and other crimes (35 documents), and 11 other documents.
Samuel Wyllys served as a magistrate in the General Court, 1654-1685, 1689-1692, and 1698, whose members also sat on the Particular Court and later the Court of Assistants on a rotating basis. Between 1658 and 1670 he sat on courts that tried witchcraft cases and as an Assistant in 1693 he was one of three judges that granted a stay to Mercy Disborough, who was later acquitted. Wyllys also was a Commissioner for the United Colonies in 1662, 1666, 1667, 1669, and 1671, a patentee and custodian of Connecticut's 1662 Charter.
The spelling of names as given in the documents is used, and the Library of Congress authorized form of name is given in parentheses, as seen in the Case of Abigail Bets (Abigail Betts) & John Slead (John Slade). The modern or LC form of name is used in Subject and Contributor but the author's spelling is used in the Description.
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The Sentiments of an American Woman
At the commencement of the actual war, the women of America manifested a firm resolution to contribute as much as could depend on them, to the deliverance of their country. - Part of An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
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Sid Lapidus '59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution
Books, pamphlets and prints representing the intellectual origins of the American Revolution; the Revolution itself; the early years of the republic; the resulting spread of democratic ideas in the Atlantic world; and the effort to abolish the slave trade in both Great Britain and the United States.
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Siege of Boston: Eyewitness Accounts from the Massachusetts Historical Society
This website presents more than one dozen accounts written by individuals personally engaged in or affected by the Siege, including soldiers, prisoners (one imprisoned Loyalist and one Patriot), and residents along with the record of a town meeting during the Siege. These first-hand experiences recounted in 25 manuscripts (approximately 300 pages of letters, diaries, and documents from the Massachusetts Historical Society collections) give the human side of the American Revolution, a perspective often overlooked in histories that describe the Siege as a series of military events. Three maps show the original, ruggedly-shaped peninsula of Boston, the harbor and harbor islands. The maps show various locations associated with the Siege including some military positions and defenses such as the blockade lines (or "works") on Boston Neck (the thin strip of land connecting the peninsula to Roxbury).
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Skipwith Revolutionary War Collection
"The Skipwith Revolutionary War Collection consists primarily of the papers of Nathanael Greene, Major-General of the Continental Army. During the latter years of the war, Greene commanded the Southern Army, which had suffered from weaker commanders."
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Slave Deeds (Buncombe Co., NC) 1776-1865
When using this website make sure you use the search function as it does not open up to the historical information. i.e. "Slave Deeds"
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Slavery and Indentured Servitude Collection 1752-1864
Contains seven documents pertaining to indentured servants (1766-1785). The remaining documents relate to slavery and include bills of sale, a memorandum describing the slave trade in Havana (1783), estate inventories, public notices, letters, deeds, a will, and indemnity bonds. Many of the documents are facsimiles. Original documents, texts, and images represented by digital images linked to this finding aid are subject to U. S. copyright law. It is the user's sole responsibility to secure any necessary copyright permission to reproduce or publish documents, texts, and images from any holders of rights in the original materials.
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Slavery Images
More than 1200 images, most of them dating from the period of slavery, that depict the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World.
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Slaves and Free African Americans, Reports and opinions from the newspapers of Hagerstown, Washington County, and Cumberland, Allegany County, Maryland, 1790 to 1864
The Hagerstown newspapers from 1790 to 1864 included many stories of African Americans in Washington County, Maryland. Primary source material that has survived from this time period is usually restricted to court documents like wills, jail records and manumissions and the small collection of church records that included African American births, deaths and marriages. Therefore the newspapers, which admittedly provide often a limited view of African Americans since no people of color wrote for these papers, at least provide an insight into the lives of this population over the years.
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Slaves and the Courts: 1740 to 1860
This collection consists of 105 library books and manuscripts, totalling approximately 8,700 pages drawn principally from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, with a few from the General Collections. The selection was guided in large part by the entries in Slavery in the Courtroom: An Annotated Bibliography of American Cases by Paul Finkelman (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1985), which was based on research in the Library collections. The documents comprise an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, examinations of cases and decisions, proceedings, journals, a letter, and other works of historical importance. Most of the items date from the nineteenth century and include materials associated with the Dred Scott case and the abolitionist activities of John Brown, John Quincy Adams, and William Lloyd Garrison. Eighteenth-century cases include Somerset v. Stewart, decided in England a few years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which "underscored the great tension created by slavery in Anglo-American law.
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Sources on Liberty and the American Revolution (Sid Lapidus '59 Collection) (Princeton Univ.)
The Sid Lapidus '59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution features more than 150 recently gifted important books, pamphlets and prints representing the major themes of Lapidus' collecting: the intellectual origins of the American Revolution; the Revolution itself; the early years of the republic; the resulting spread of democratic ideas in the Atlantic world; and the effort to abolish the slave trade in both Great Britain and the United States. On the occasion of the gift in 2009, the Library published an illustrated color-printed 200 page catalogue, the main portions of which are now available as PDF files at: http://www.princeton.edu/rbsc/exhibitions/lar/. ❡ Colleagues at the Gilder Lehrman Insitutue for American History have selected documents from the scanned Lapidus collection and created supportive materials for school curriculum. For details, see https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-now/2012-01/revolutionary-age ❡ During 2013 and 2014, the Library added more than 85 books on the topics of slavery and the slave trade in the empires of Great Britain and France. The books are part of his large private collection and Mr. Lapidus generously made them available for scanning.
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South Carolina Estate Inventories and Bills of Sale, 1732-1872
This collection includes a diverse and valuable mix of 18th- and 19th-century South Carolina court records including estate inventories, appraisements books, bills of sale, and related court documents. Inventoried items may include household goods, furniture, plantation and farming implements, livestock, and slaves.
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Southeastern Native American Documents 1730-1842
Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842, contains approximately 2,000 documents and images relating to the Native American population of the Southeastern United States from the collections of the University of Georgia Libraries, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville Library, the Frank H. McClung Museum, the Tennessee State Library and Archives, the Tennessee State Museum and the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. The documents are comprised of letters, legal proceedings, military orders, financial papers, and archaeological images relating to Native Americans in the Southeast.
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Southern Historical Collection
The Southern Historical Collection (SHC) is home to a diverse collection of unique primary sources about the U.S. South, with strengths in the Antebellum era through the Civil Rights Movement. The collection supports research on a variety of topics, including community and family histories, the history of slavery and its afterlives, social change and activism in the South, Southern arts and literature, and business and labor.
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Spy Letters of the American Revolution (Univ. of Michigan)
The Revolutionary War was not fought by proclamations and battles alone. A major component of the war was the challenge of organizing military strategies over thousands of miles of battlefield. From the very beginning of the war, a complex network of spies, double agents, and traitors began to emerge in an effort to learn the plans of the enemy before they were enacted. The preservation and availability of the Sir Henry Clinton collection at the Clements Library provides an amazingly complete look at the everyday intelligence operations of both the British and American armies. Many of the letters highlighted in this digital exhibit were pivotal to the success and failures of sieges, battles, and surprise attacks.
The exhibit aims to showcase the spy letters of the Sir Henry Clinton Papers and to situate them in an educational framework. The letters form the core of the exhibit. Because the exhibit provides large, readable images of the letters as well as transcriptions, the letters may be used substantively in the classroom. Furthermore, the letters may be accessed and understood in multiple ways. The letters may be reached through their stories, their methods, a timeline, biographies, or a map. The stories provide background contextual information about each letter; while the methods describe their techniques and formats. The map provides a visual representation of the letters’ travels. Biographies and a timeline provide supplementary information for further reference. Prints, portraits, and maps also supply additional background to the contents of the letters.
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Teaching American History Documents
"TeachingAmericanHistory.org is a project of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University. The Ashbrook Center is an independent, non-partisan non-profit, the mission of which is to restore and strengthen the capacities of the American people for constitutional self-government. To fulfill this mission, Ashbrook offers educational programs for students, teachers, and citizens."
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Thomas Addis Emmet Collection
The portion of the Emmet Collection housed in the Manuscripts and Archives Division consists of approximately 10,800 historical manuscripts relating chiefly to the period prior to, during, and following the American Revolution. The collection contains letters and documents by the signers of the Declaration of Independence as well as nearly every prominent historical figure of the period. The manuscripts are arranged in 28 topics, most of them milestones in early American history. Topics include the Albany Congress of 1754, the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, the Continental Congresses, 1774 -1789, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Annapolis Convention, the Federal Convention, and the First Federal Administration. The Revolutionary War is well documented in the correspondence and letterbooks of generals and other officers, as well as in orderly books, muster rolls, and returns. Additional material documents the history of New York City. Highlights of the Emmet Collection include Thomas Jefferson's manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence, an engrossed copy of the Bill of Rights, and manuscript minutes of the Annapolis Convention.
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Thomas Jefferson Papers (Library of Congress)
The papers of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), diplomat, architect, scientist, and third president of the United States, held in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, consist of approximately 27,000 items, making it the largest collection of original Jefferson documents in the world. Dating from the early 1760s through his death in 1826, the Thomas Jefferson Papers consist mainly of his correspondence, but they also include his drafts of the Declaration of Independence, drafts of Virginia laws; his fragmentary autobiography; the small memorandum books he used to record his spending; the pages on which for many years he daily recorded the weather; many charts, lists, tables, and drawings recording his scientific and other observations; notes; maps; recipes; ciphers; locks of hair; wool samples; and more.
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Thomas Johnson Letters (1764-1834; 1st elected governor of Maryland)
Scope and Content - Johnson material
The bulk of the Ross Manuscript collection consists of letters and various manuscripts relating to Thomas Johnson (1732-1819), the first elected governor of Maryland. Most of the items are correspondence to Johnson from a variety of sources including letters from George Washington, Daniel Carroll, John Jay and others. Also included is the commission of Governor Johnson as one of the Justices of the United States Supreme Court. Only the notes and the draft of a letter are penned by Johnson.
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Trial Pamphlets Collection
The Trial Pamphlets collection at the Cornell University Law Library consists of pamphlets ranging in date from the late 1600s to the late 1800s. Trial pamphlets are contemporary accounts of trials that involved prominent citizens or that dealt with especially controversial or lurid topics. These pamphlets were produced quickly and inexpensively, and then sold on the street soon after the trial to a mass audience. The paper used to print the pamphlets was of a lower quality (ephemera) and the pamphlets were not bound. Thus, the pamphlets were not meant to survive much past their initial use. The content of the individual pamphlets varies widely. They were sold to an eager public as both a form of entertainment and as cautionary tales. Some include the details and illustrations of scandalous crimes and others include “execution sermons,” which were meant to serve as moral examples to the readers. Most include valuable information not available elsewhere, such as verbatim transcripts of testimony and arguments of counsel, depositions of parties, and illustrations or copies of evidence used in the trial.
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U.S.Presidential Inaugurations: "I Do Solemly Swear": A Resource Guide
The Library of Congress digital collections include a wide variety of primary source materials documenting presidential inaugurations. This Web guide includes diaries and letters written by presidents and those who witnessed the inaugurations, handwritten drafts of inaugural addresses, broadsides, inaugural tickets and programs, prints, photographs, and sheet music.
A key objective is providing access to many treasures and other important primary source materials held by the Library of Congress. The collection has been organized chronologically by presidential inauguration.
Selections are drawn from the Manuscript Division, the Prints and Photographs Division, the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, the Music Division, and the general collections of the Library of Congress. Additional photographs were provided by the Architect of the Capitol, the White House, and the United States Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms.
Notice: On January 23 to February 4, 2017, the Library of Congress featured a special display of presidential inaugural treasures in the Thomas Jefferson Building. Included in the display were the handwritten speeches of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, as well as maps, newspapers, menus, film clips, and souvenirs from other presidential inauguratio
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Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names
Virginia Untold: the African American Narrative provides digital access to records that document some of the lived experiences of enslaved and free Black and multiracial people in the Library of Virginia’s collections. Traditional description, indexing, transcription, and digitization are major parts of this effort. However, and perhaps more importantly, this project seeks to encourage conversation and engagement around the records, providing opportunities for a more diverse narrative of the history of Virginia’s communities.
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Virginia Runaways (1736-1777; database of ads for runaway slaves)
Now available! The Geography of Slavery in Virginia offers a new search interface and updated supporting materials for ads, 1736-1777. You can now search the ads by gender, age, skill, and intent, among other things. Click on the image opposite.
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Voyage of the Slave Ship Sally 1764-1765
Records of the Sally venture are preserved in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, as well as in the archives of the Rhode Island Historical Society. All known records are displayed on this website, offering a unique opportunity to retrace the journey of a single slave ship, from its initial preparation through the long months on the African coast, to the auctioning of surviving captives on the West Indian island of Antigua.
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Voyages: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them. European colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved laborers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. They forced millions of mostly unnamed Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action.
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Whaling Ship Logs 1791-1858
Whaling Ship Logs 1791-1858
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William Bollan Papers (1749-1757)
The William Bollan Papers (Mss 1074), written between 1749 and 1757, consist primarily of petitions and memorials presented by colonial agent William Bollan to the British parliament and/or Lords Commissioners, and correspondence exchanged with British and American government officials. The government officials include William Wildman Barrington, Viscount Barrington; Thomas Hubbard (speaker of Massachusetts House, 1750-1758); Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle; George Montague-Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax (president of the British Board of Trade); and John Pownall (secretary to British Board of Trade and Plantations). Subjects include the sugar trade, colonial boundaries, the Louisburg Expedition, and British military forces in America.
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William Bond Papers
Papers of William Bond (d. 1776), a Revolutionary Army officer and colonel in the 25th Regiment of Foot from Massachusetts. Bond led the regiment from July 1775 to August 31, 1776, when he died from an illness at Mount Independence near Fort Ticonderoga.
Significant among the few items of correspondence is an autograph letter signed by General George Washington (20 May 1776) to Major General Sullivan. Other important correspondence includes four letters from Bond to his wife Lucy in Watertown, Massachusetts.
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Witness to the Early American Experience (New York Univ.)
The digital images of historical documents in this archive preserve the words of hundreds of eyewitnesses to the American Revolution in and around New York City. The letters, newspapers, broadsides, legal records, and maps presented here record events from the early years of the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam through the British occupation of the city during the Revolution. Here you can explore the history of New York through the words of those who lived it…
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Writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources, 1745-1799 (Hathi Trust)
The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources, 1745-1799;
prepared under the direction of the United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission and published by authority of Congress; John C. Fitzpatrick, editor .
