Basic Sites

Links to best history websites; categories include: pre-history, ancient/biblical, medieval, early modern European, US history, twentieth century, WWII, art history, maps; also links to key history networks

Links to most trusted and valuable websites on US History

University of Pennsylvania Online Books Page

Nineteenth Century in Print

Primary site for sources on legal and constitutional history

Simply indispensable for Americanists

PBS documentary search site

Gutenberg e-book site; over 5,500 books in many languages

Native Americans

Cahokia Mounds State Historical site (Illinois); archeological and cultural information about Cahokia

Mayan architecture, history, society and culture

Logan Museum of Anthropology at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin; Anasazi, Mogollon, Membres, Hohokam, and other ancient peoples of the American Southwest

Photos, drawings, and information about Native Americans from Alaska to the Great Plains to Central America and South America; anthropology sites links

Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian); materials on Native American culture

The Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska; information on Native Americans; nineteenth century; other interesting subjects, such as paper-making, etc.

Columbian Exchange

National Humanities Center site; contains historians' essays on religious history and environmental history; the Columbian Exchanges is discussed in an essay from Alfred Crosby

PBS production on the Spanish conquistadors; Cortez and the Pizarro brothers; Aztec civilizations, etc.

Colonial America

University of Virginia site; Virtual Jamestown; continuous; maps; historical records; early settlers' names and occupations; a lot of links to laws of early Virginia; slavery; Bacon's Rebellion; etc.

Library of Congress site; religion and founding of America

Jamestown history and archeological information

The history of the Mayflower with primary sources, including the passengers' names and other useful information

PBS video (four parts) about history of American slavery

Various Chesapeake Bay colonies

Rich resources on Middle Colonies, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island, Long Island; also containing information important historical figures in the Middle Colonies; other subjects include religion, Native Americans; links to other colonies

A PBS production ("American Experience" series) based on Martha Ballard's diary and the book by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Useful information on the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, discussed in the PBS documentary The West

Site for Salem Witchcraft Trials Transcription Project; primary sources; maps; excellent site for the subject

The American Revolution

British Parliament site on the Glorious Revolution

Library of Congress site, primary sources for British-American relations for four centuries

Boston Tea Party eyewitness account; this site also offers a detailed chronology of US history

Site containing scholarly and bibliographic information and resources on the American Revolution; essays; PBS production Liberty; and links to Founding Fathers, etc.

PBS site for the documentary Liberty

Information, maps, timelines on the Revolutionary War

The Constitution and Constitutional Issues

Contains many resources and links on the Constitution or constitutionally-related issues and documents; links for important legal resources

One of the best sites for American legal and political documents, treatises; collections emphasizes on legal, political, diplomatic history; also contains resources on African Americans, slavery, German-Americans, Cold War, etc.

First Federal Congress resources

This site contains the Federalist Papers written by Hamilton, Jay, and Madison in support of the newly proposed federal constitution

Complete transcripts of a few hundred of the most important US Supreme Court decisions

On Shays's Rebellion

The James Madison site, containing a lot of archival information and useful sources on the American Revolution, Confederation, and Constitution

Biography of Alexander Hamilton

Site containing Paine's writings and links to other important historical writers and their works

Early Republic Period

History of the Erie Canal; archive materials and other sites related to canal history

Text of Alexis de Tocquevilles' Democracy in America

Indian Removal Act of 1830 and other useful links

A tourist site on the Trail of Tears and the Indian Removal of the Jackson era

NHC site containing essays on the First and Second Great Awakening; Native American and African American religion

PBS documentary "Manifest Destiny" site, with essays and other resources

Monroe Doctrine essay and links

Slavery, Slave Culture, and Slave Resistance

Very rich resources for slavery, slave culture, and slave resistance; particularly, look at the from slavery to freedom, slaves and courts, and pamphlets collections; slave narratives; oral history

A Quaker publication in 1841 on "Facts and Observations Relative to the Participation of American Citizens in the African Slave Trade."

PBS documentary of "Africans in America" (Part II) covering the period of the Revolution; information of religion, freedom, and bondage in the Colonial era; the Constitution

Part III of "Africans in America" covering 1791-1831; topics include: black church, resistance, colonization, growth of slavery

Part IV of "Africans in America" covering 1831-1865; antebellum slavery, abolitionism, western expansion, Civil War

Click on "Slavery" under the table of contents on the page to get many valuable links on the subject; the main page offers other useful subjects, such as civil rights movement, Brown case, and jazz, etc.

Site specializing on Harriet Tubman

Slavery narratives, online anthology

Early American Industrialization, Reforms

Chronicles the parallel industrial development of the United States and Great Britain, including inventions, tools, and machines

 

A series of primary documents relating to the Lowell textile mills are posted on this site

On religious culture of the Shakers; links to useful resources on religious history

American South

Duke University site; containing resources on slavery, slave narratives, Civil War, religious history, North Carolina history, southern literature, etc.

Abolitionist Movement

This site chronicles the parallel development of the British and the American abolitionist movements in the early- to mid-nineteenth century.

This site records the Amistad Slave Revolt and the trial of the African slaves who mounted that revolt.

Containing a number of primary documents relating to the history of Western exploration in the early nineteenth century

The Civil War Era

A portrayal of two communities, one northern and the other southern, from the years immediately before until immediately after the Civil War.

A site containing the slave codes of the State of Georgia for the year 1848.

A site containing the complete text of the Fugitive Slave Act of September 18, 1850.

Images taken from one of the many published versions of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

A site containing some drawings and photos from the Civil War period; note plantation map from South Carolina; some photos of slavery times

PBS documentary on John Brown

PBS documentary on the Lincolns

Site containing essays, maps, battle analysis, governments, policies, home fronts, etc., of the Civil War; primary sources, too.

Civil War Primary Documents

First Inaugural Address of Lincoln, March 4, 1861

A site providing primary documents, descriptive narrative, photographs, and drawings of the life of the freedman during Reconstruction.

The impeachment proceedings of Andrew Johnson.

The 1915 film by D.W. Griffith called Birth of a Nation, based on the racist book The Clansman .

Reconstruction Era Primary Documents

Grant's first inaugural address, 1869

Wade-Davis Bill

Lincoln's veto of the Wade-Davis Bill

Reconstruction Act of 1867

The Force Acts of 1870-1871

Site covering the history of the KKK

The official website for the Freedom and Southern History Project at the University of Maryland; with sample documents and important laws (text) for the period of slavery and Civil War, Reconstruction

History of the West

PBS collection, "The West," contains both photographs and primary documents on westward expansion during the nineteenth century

Booker T. Washington

This exhibition describes the America of African-Americans from the 1870s to World War 1 as Booker T. Washington gained prominence as a black leader.

Industrialization

This is an Internet version of Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives , a classic 1890 study of tenement lives in New York City

A comprehensive online history of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire (1911).

WWI

American World War I posters

Presidents' addresses, including those of Warren G. Harding

 

WWII

WWII resources site

Churchill's "Iron Curtain Speech" delivered March 5, 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri

A collection of presidential speeches from Washington through George Bush.

A description of the My Lai incident

The Camp David Accords brokered by Jimmy Carter in 1978 between Egypt and Israel