Welcome - HIS 132 - American History II - Research Guides at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College

Foundations of American Democracy

Made available through the NCLive Homegrown Collection with no limits - immediate access for everyone, at any time, forever.

Reading the founding documents of the United States and understanding their historical context can help us to consider vital questions about governance and democracy in present day America. In Foundations of American Democracy, our 250-year evolution is examined through the lens of twenty-one critical documents from our nation’s past. Each chapter includes a short introduction, one primary document, questions for discussion, and a section on further readings. The reader includes well-known documents such as the Federalist Papers and the Emancipation Proclamation as well as other works that broaden our view of America’s ongoing democratic experiment.

This volume which was developed as a resource for the foundations of American democracy requirement across the UNC System.

Recommended History Databases

Infobase American History
This database includes primary documents and other sources about American History.
Infobase Ancient and Medieval History
Ancient and Medieval History covers prehistory through the mid-1500s and includes maps and other primary documents.

American Indian Experience
Access to more than 15,000 years of culture and history, covering more than 600 Native American groups, including videos, images, biographies of key people, event and topic entries, primary sources,...
African-American Experience
Developed with the guidance of African American librarians and subject specialists, The African American Experience is the widest ranging and easiest-to-use online database collection on African...
Daily Life through History
An archive of everyday life in all areas of the world from ancient times to the present day as shown in reference articles, illustrations, posters, cultural and government documents, speeches, letters, and personal narratives.
Alexander Academic Video Online
Curated for the educational experience, the massive depth of content and breadth of content-types (such as documentaries, films, demonstrations, etc.) in Academic Video Online makes it a useful resource for all types of patrons.

Black Freedom Website

Black Freedom Struggle contains 1,600 primary source documents from the following time periods in American History.

Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860)
The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877)
Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932)
The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945)
The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975)
The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)

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Web Resources for American History

Votes for Women: Struggle for Women's Suffrage
Selected Images From the Collections of the Library of Congress
American President: A Reference Resource
From the Scout Report" The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia is "a national meeting place to research, reflect and report on issues of national importance to the governance of the United States, with special attention to the central role and history of the presidency." With that in mind, staff members at the Center have created this excellent site containing in-depth information reviewed by prominent scholars on each president and their administration."
American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of American Exploration and Settlement
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.
Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
The culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research by scholars drawing upon data in libraries and archives around the Atlantic world. The Voyages website itself is the product of two years of development by a multi-disciplinary team of historians, librarians, curriculum specialists, cartographers, computer programmers, and web designers, in consultation with scholars of the slave trade from universities in Europe, Africa, South America, and North America.
Top 10 U.S. Civil War Sites
National Geographic's list of the Top 10 Civil War Sites.
Civil War Parks from the National Park Service
Long list of National Parks dedicated to the memory of the Civil War. Each park has a "History and Culture" feature with a short summary of the battle.
The Valley of the Shadow
The Valley Project details life in two American communities, one Northern and one Southern, from the time of John Brown's Raid through the era of Reconstruction. In this digital archive you may explore thousands of original letters and diaries, newspapers and speeches, census and church records, left by men and women in Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Giving voice to hundreds of individual people, the Valley Project tells forgotten stories of life during the era of the Civil War.