Research Guides: History: Primary Documents for HIS112

Databases and Library Sources for Primary Documents

Infobase American History American History is an indispensable resource for student research. Spanning our nation’s history—from prehistory to the present day—American History was developed and curated by leading editors and scholars in the study of American history. It is composed of a variety of learning assets, including articles, images, primary source documents, timelines, videos, and slideshows.
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...
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,...
Salem Press eBooks
Collection of eBooks in Literature, Careers, History, Immigration, and Primary Sources.
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.
DigitalNC Explore the history and culture of North Carolina through original materials from cultural heritage repositories across the state.
Digital Public Library of America The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) provides access to millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Find primary sources to use in school projects, academic research, family history research, and more.
Historic North Carolina Digital Newspaper Collection Newspapers.com North Carolina Collection. 3.5 million pages of digitized content from over 1,000 NC county newspapers.
HeritageQuest Treasury of American genealogical sources: unique primary sources, local and family histories, and finding aids. Includes historical census, PERSI, Revolutionary War records, and more.
History Study Center A targeted collection of full-text journals and popular magazines providing expansive coverage of a wide range of global historical topics and themes.
Infobase Ancient and Medieval History Ancient and Medieval History provides thorough coverage of world history from prehistory through the mid-1500s, with special Topic Centers on key civilizations and regions, including the ancient Near East, ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient and medieval Africa, ancient and medieval Asia, the Americas, medieval Europe, and the Islamic World. Each civilization’s history is brought to life through articles, videos and slideshows, primary sources, and more.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law This HeinOnline collection brings together a multitude of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.
Infobase Modern World History Modern World History offers a comprehensive look at world history from the mid-15th century to the present. Thousands of subject entries, biographies, images, videos and slideshows, maps and graphs, primary sources, and timelines combine to provide a detailed and comparative view of the people, places, events, and ideas that have defined modern world history.

Global Exploration and Global Empires 1400-1700

John Barbot: on coasts of north and south Guinea (ca. early 18th century)
John Barbot, a French slaver and the author of this text about the maritime commerce in African slaves, wrote on the topic with great clarity and concision. Throughout the document, Barbot voices his opinion that his fellow slavers and he were "very nice" in their efforts to keep the slaves alive and passive during the Middle Passage.
Hernán Cortés: letter describing Mexico (1520)
A Spanish explorer and adventurer, Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico in 1519 and promptly claimed the region for Spain. Over the next two years, he successfully conquered the native Aztecs and established a firm basis for Spanish colonial rule in the New World. Below is an excerpt of a letter he wrote to Spain's King Charles V in 1520, describing Mexico.
Sebastian Cabot: comments on map of North America (1544)
There are few surviving examples of the writings of explorer Sebastian Cabot, but he did include these comments about the first voyage of his father John Cabot on his 1544 map showing the continent of North America.
Amerigo Vespucci: description of Amazonian people and animals (1504–1505)
In this excerpt from his second published letter, Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci describes an experience from his third voyage, one of the two that scholars believe actually occurred. In his descriptions of the people and animals of the Amazon rainforest, Vespucci appears to be providing an accurate account of his observations.

African and the Atlantic Slave Trade 1400-1800

John Barbot: on coasts of north and south Guinea (ca. early 18th century)
John Barbot, a French slaver and the author of this text about the maritime commerce in African slaves, wrote on the topic with great clarity and concision. Throughout the document, Barbot voices his opinion that his fellow slavers and he were "very nice" in their efforts to keep the slaves alive and passive during the Middle Passage.
Barbot, John: description of slaving in Africa (1682)
In the excerpt below, published as "A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea" in 1732, John Barbot describes the effects of slavery on the region, which supplied most of Africa's slaves throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. As an agent for the French Royal African Company, Barbot made at least two voyages to the west coast of Africa, one in 1678 and the other in 1682. In this excerpt, Barbot details the extent to which West Africans had long participated in slavery and the slave trade. This they did by enslaving and selling their enemies, sentencing offenders to slavery, and even selling themselves for food in times of famine.

The North Atlantic Revolutions 1750-1830

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)
Adopted less than two months after the storming of the Bastille ushered in the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen remains one of the primary documents on human rights known throughout the world.
Alexander Hamilton: "Federalist No. 78": The Judiciary in a Federal Republic
The Federalist Papers comprised a series of 85 articles explaining the merits of the proposed United States Constitution and was first published in New York newspapers and later collected into a book due to their popularity. The paper from which the following selection comes, "Federalist 78," is among the most famous. It deals in part with the powers of the judicial branch of the proposed federal government. Hamilton explains and supports the idea of judicial review, or the power of the courts to review laws and declare them unconstitutional, by the clever argument that the Constitution represents the people's will, and when the courts rule the legislature's acts unconstitutional, they are not above the Constitution, but protecting the people from the overreaching of the government.
Bill of Rights (1791)
The first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights was ratified by the requisite number of states on December 15, 1791 and went into effect on March 1, 1792. The U.S. House of Representatives had already granted its approval for these amendments on September 24, 1789, with the U.S. Senate concurring on the following day.
Declaration of Independence - 1776
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted Thomas Jefferson’s amended draft of the Declaration of Independence from Britain.
Constitution of the United States 1787
In May 1787 representatives of twelve of the thirteen states (all but Rhode Island) convened the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to draft a constitution for the union that bound them together. Since the end of the Revolutionary War, the United States had been operating under the Articles of Confederation, but sentiment was growing that the articles were too weak and that the infant nation was in danger of collapsing because it lacked a strong federal government. After weeks of discussion and negotiation, the framers adopted a new constitution on September 17.
Constitution of Haiti 1801
The 1801 Constitution of Haiti, promulgated in the wake of the Haitian Revolution that had begun in 1791, was the first in a series of some twenty-three constitutions that have been adopted in that nation. Haiti, at the time called Saint Domingue, had been a French colony since the late seventeenth century; the name Haiti, from the indigenous name Ayiti (“mountainous land”) was adopted at independence in 1804.

The Great War and the Russian Revolutions 1890-1918

Treaty of Versailles 1919
Negotiated at the Paris Peace Conference throughout the spring of 1919, the Treaty of Versailles formally brought World War I to an end. Its lengthy and complicated provisions placed severe penalties on Germany, forcing the country to assume blame for starting the war in the first place. Although U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had been an active participant in the conference and enthusiastically supported the treaty and the League of Nations it created, the U.S. Senate felt differently and after fierce debate, voted down ratification. Instead, the United States made a separate peace with Germany and its allies.
Balfour Declaration (1917)
On November 2, 1917, British foreign secretary Arthur J. Balfour wrote this letter to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the international Zionist movement, declaring Great Britain's support for the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people carved out of the British protectorate of Palestine. By making such a concession, the British hoped to curry Jewish support for the Allied war effort during World War I. After the war, the League of Nations adopted the substance of the declaration by issuing the Palestinian Mandate along the same lines on July 24, 1922.
Woodrow Wilson: Fourteen Points speech (1918)
On January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson explained to a special joint session of Congress his dream of maintaining world peace after the end of World War I in 14 points.
Vladimir Lenin: What Is to Be Done? (1902)
What Is to Be Done? is a political pamphlet written by Vladimir Ilich Lenin, the architect of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and one of the chief founders of the Soviet Union.
Plans for a Liberty Bond Parade during the 1918 Flu Pandemic
The fall of 1918 was one of the deadliest periods in US history at home and abroad. As World War I raged across the Atlantic in late August 1918, a lethal strain of influenza landed in Boston and spread throughout the rest of America through early November. Despite being overwhelmed by the sick, dying, and unburied dead, Philadelphia continued its Liberty Loan drive through the first three weeks of October, determined that the birthplace of American liberty surpass all others in bond sales.
The Armenian Genocide of 1915
In the midst of World War I, with the Ottoman Empire at war with the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Turkish government decided that the Christian minority Armenians would likely be sympathetic to the Russians, and in 1915 the Turkish government initiated the mass deportation of Armenians living within Turkey, citing, among other reasons, security concerns.

World War 2 and the Holocaust 1933-1945

Adolf Hitler: Proclamation to the German People - 1933
At 10:00 pm, February 1, 1933, Adolf Hitler delivered a Proclamation to the German People, his first address as the nation’s chancellor. In his Proclamation to the German People, the Volk, Hitler enunciated themes that had obsessed him for more than a decade. His expressed goal was to revive the German nation and lead it back to the stature it had once enjoyed.
Experiences of Japanese Soldiers in WWII: Fighting in the Philippines
As with other nations, the experiences of Japanese servicemen varied enormously. By 1944, as defeat came closer and Allied restrictions hit home, surviving Japanese soldiers, sailors, and fliers were under increasing pressure. In the following excerpt, Kobuko Yumio recalls fighting on the Philippine Island of Negros as a teenage soldier.
Strategic Bombing Survey of Europe (1945)
Air operations were essential war tactics during World War II. Technological advances in air power made the war one of the most destructive wars in history. The United States' Strategic Bombing Survey of Europe addressed the crucial role that air power played in the victory of the Allies. According to the summary report of the survey, air power proved to be a decisive strategy in the defeat of Germany.
Report on Conditions in Auschwitz and Birkenau (1944)
Throughout the war, German concentration and extermination camps continued to murder millions of Jews. They were also used to provide slave labor for German industry and agriculture. In summer 1944, the U.S. government received a graphic account of the horrifying conditions in the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. Note that Auschwitz is here called Oswieczim.
Truman, Harry S: Executive Order 9981 (1948)
On July 26, 1948, President Harry S Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which formally ended segregation in the military forces of the United States. The order called for complete equality of opportunity for all members of the armed services, regardless of race, religion, or national origin.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Fireside Chat on the home front (1942)
In an effort to boost the morale of the American public in the face of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt began delivering fireside chats in nationwide radio broadcasts shortly after he took office, with the first one occurring on March 12, 1933. On October 12, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered a radio address on the national war effort after touring the country. This fireside chat from the White House was officially titled "Report on the Home Front."
Japanese Constitution (1947)
The Constitution of Japan was approved by the National Diet of Japan (Japan's representative assembly) in October 1946, during the U.S. occupation of Japan following World War II, and went into effect in May of the next year. The following are summaries and excerpts of the Constitution.
Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech 1946
Former British prime minister Winston Churchill, in 1946, described the Soviet Union’s growing control over the countries of Eastern Europe behind an “iron curtain.” He called on the United States to join the United Kingdom in a “fraternal association of English-speaking peoples,” which in his view would be capable of deterring Soviet expansionism and securing world peace.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: prayer on D-Day (1944)
This prayer was written and read by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was broadcast to the nation over the radio on D-Day, June 6, 1944. On D-Day, 150,000 Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, in an early phase of the largest amphibious military operation in history.

Manzanar High School newspaper (1944)
Published by the journalism class, The Campus Pepper and The Spot kept students informed on scholastic activities, sports, and social gossip. In October, 1944, The Campus Pepper reported on a speech by Dillon Myer, national War Relocation Authority director, to a student assembly urging them to keep their chins up and "make the most out of your time in high school.”
Draft letter from Harold Ickes to Franklin Roosevelt
Draft of a letter from Harold Ickes to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, suggesting that the internment of Japanese Americans should be brought to an end.
Japanese Surrender Documents
The nuclear attacks forced a Japanese surrender–beginning with the first of a series of documents signed aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2–and brought World War II to a close, even as they made possible the age of potential, and sometimes imminent, mutual destruction called the cold war.

Post WW2 Documents

Treaty of Peace with Japan
Japan had agreed to unconditional surrender after World War II by signing the instrument of surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in 1945. The 1951 treaty formalized these terms and defined others.
"A Glory Has Departed"
A eulogy to Gandhi by Prime Minister Nehru.
"Ich bin ein Berliner"
Address by John F Kennedy at the Berlin Wall.
Warsaw Pact
The "Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance," or Warsaw Pact, created the Warsaw Treaty Organization, a military alliance between the USSR and its Eastern European satellites as a Communist counterpart to NATO.
"Six Million Accusers"
Speech by Gideon Hausner, attorney-general of Israel from 1960 to 1963, who was the chief prosecutor who delivered the opening speech at the trial of Eichmann, a Nazi who delivered European Jews to death camps. Eichmann escaped the Nuremberg Trials and was caught in Argentina and brought back to Israel for trial in 1961.

Library of Congress

Search for Primary Documents, Digital Collections, copyright information and other valuable American Treasures in the Library of Congress.

Chronicling American Historic Newspaper Database
Excellent Resource. Use the date range and keywords. Remember these are AMERICAN newspapers and the date range is 1777 to 1963.

West in an Age of Religious Conflict and Global Expansion 1500-1650

Martin Luther: The German Mass and Order of Divine Service (1526)
In January 1526, theologian and Protestant reformer Martin Luther outlined his plan for the Christian worship service in his essay The German Mass and Order of Divine Service, the text of which is below, translated from the original German. In this work, Luther mentions three services separate from the Roman Catholic service: one in Latin and one in German for Christian nonbelievers, and one for Christians.
James I: Proclamation for Use of the Book of Common Prayer (1604)
After English Puritans presented their Millenary Petition to British king James I in 1603, they requested a conference with the king and religious leaders to discuss their complaints about baptism, church services, contents of the Book of Common Prayer, and other issues. The king agreed, and the conference was held at Hampton Court Palace on January 14, 16, and 18, 1604. James, king for less than a year following the death of Elizabeth I, agreed to certain changes to the Anglican prayer book. Below is the 1604 text of James I's Proclamation for the Use of the Book of Common Prayer.
William Bradford: Of Plymouth Plantation (1648)
One of the primary leaders of the Pilgrims, William Bradford published this history of the Pilgrims' settlement at Plymouth Plantation (in present-day Massachusetts) in 1648. The work encouraged more settlers to journey to the "New World" and served as an invaluable source of information for historians of colonial Massachusetts. An excerpt appears below.

Absolutism and Enlightenment in Europe 1600-1763

Voltaire: Philosophical Letters (1734)
Voltaire, the pseudonym of the 18th-century French philosopher, Deist, and political thinker Francois-Marie Arouet, lived most of his life in Geneva, Switzerland, because he had been expelled from most other European countries for criticizing their governments. He was one of the foremost minds of the Enlightenment and a harsh critic of governmental abuse, tyranny, hypocrisy, and organized religion. In this 1734 selection, from his well-known Philosophical Letters, republished in English in 1778 as Letters on the English, his target is the legal privileges of the French nobility, who as a class retained many of the rights they had under the medieval system of feudalism.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Origin of Inequality among Men (1754)
One of several European philosophers who affected the thinking of the American founding fathers, France's Jean-Jacques Rousseau explored the relationship between the individual and the state in his writings. His ideas, which he articulated here in "A Disclosure on a Subject Proposed by the Academy of Dijon: What is the Origin of Inequality Among Men, and Is it Authorised by Natural Law?" (1754), were fully developed in his Social Contract, published in Amsterdam in 1762. Among Rousseau's many important theories was the notion that government must be based on the consent of the governed.

Industry, Ideology, and Their Global Impact 1700-1914

Richard Sheepshanks: on Charles Babbage's failure to fund early computers (1854)
The 19th-century British mathematician Charles Babbage developed ideas for steam-driven computers. The Reverend Richard Sheepshanks (1794–1855), a secretary of the Royal Observatory, who was opposed to his plans. Sheepshanks was so incensed by some of Babbage's public complaints about a lack of funding for his ideas that Sheepshanks responded by publishing a book that included this acidic account of how Babbage's failures were entirely his own fault.
Alexis de Tocqueville: Language in Democracy in 1830s America
Alexis de Tocqueville was sent by the French government to study the American prison system in the 1830s, but his interests were much wider, and he produced a text that has become a landmark of political science, history, and cultural criticism. His analysis of the American democratic system has been widely read for his insights into American life and his prescient predictions of events such as the Civil War and even the Cold War.
British East India Company: Proclamation on Indian slavery (1789)
One of the leading imperial powers in the world, the British East India Company played a dominant role in colonizing India for Great Britain. This July 23, 1789 proclamation by the governor-general of the colony clearly illustrates the company's disapproval of Indian slavery, although the company undoubtedly exploited the Indian people for economic profit, relegating them to second-class status within British Indian society and depriving them of much of the wealth of India's natural resources.
Child Labor in the New York City Tenements 1908
As the Industrial Revolution unfolded in the United States, many poor urban children left school to work in factories and stores to help support their families.Mary Van Kleeck authored the report “Child Labor in New York City Tenements” to uncover the truths behind this practice, hoping to protect children from unfair labor practices and improve their chances of obtaining a proper education.

Anxieties and Ideologies of the Interwar Years 1918-1939

Treaty of Versailles 1919
Negotiated at the Paris Peace Conference throughout the spring of 1919, the Treaty of Versailles formally brought World War I to an end. Its lengthy and complicated provisions placed severe penalties on Germany, forcing the country to assume blame for starting the war in the first place. Although U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had been an active participant in the conference and enthusiastically supported the treaty and the League of Nations it created, the U.S. Senate felt differently and after fierce debate, voted down ratification. Instead, the United States made a separate peace with Germany and its allies.
Immigration Act (1924)
Passed on May 26, 1924, the Immigration Act stemmed the massive tide of immigration that had been flowing into the United States since the mid-19th century. Of particular concern was the high number of nonwhite and Eastern European immigrants which had been coming into the country by the hundreds of thousands for decades. The law established a quota system for immigration that highly favored Northern Europeans over all others and set the standard for U.S. immigration policy until the 1960s.
John Maynard Keynes: "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" article (1919)
n 1919, British economist John Maynard Keynes attended the Paris Peace Conference to settle World War I as a representative of the British treasury.
Woodrow Wilson: League of Nations speech (1919)
On July 10, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson presented to the U.S. Senate the results of several months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to draft a treaty that would end World War I.
Benito Mussolini: “The Doctrine of Fascism” 1932
Italy’s leader and head of the Fascist Party, Benito Mussolini, had always resisted attempts to codify Fascism. Yet when the Enciclopedia Italiana required an article defining Fascism, it became necessary to publish something that would give an appearance of thought and process behind what was essentially a constantly changing way of running the country. The result was Mussolini’s article “The Doctrine of Fascism,” published in 1932.

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)

Where can I find some primary sources online?

Search the National Archives for collections of documents that are important to American History.

Historic Newspapers - Enhanced access to America's historic newspapers through the Chronicling America project.
Historic Sound Recordings - The National Jukebox features over 10,000 78rpm disc sides
Prints and Photographs - Catalog of about half of the Library's pictorial holdings with over 1 million digital images.
Veterans History Project - Experience first-person stories of wartime service through personal artifacts, audio and video interviews.

Avalon Project - Documents in Law, Diplomacy, and History from Yale Law School
Yale Law School’s Avalon Project provides a database of documents such as laws, treaties, declarations, constitutions, speeches and statements from ancient history to the 21st century. Documents are organized by time period and by topic.
British Pathe
About British Pathé – Who We Are
British Pathé is considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world and is a treasure trove of 85,000 films unrivalled in their historical and cultural significance. Spanning the years from 1896 to 1978, the collection includes footage from around the globe of major events, famous faces, fashion trends, travel, science and culture.
Digital Public Library of America
Discover 34,090,282 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States
Digital Public Library Source Sets
Primary source collections exploring topics in history, literature, and culture developed by educators — complete with teaching guides for class use.
Euro Docs
EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History
Selected Transcriptions, Facsimiles and Translations
Internet Archive
A non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
The Library of Congress: American Memory
American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Explore 749,089 items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections. This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more.
Pew Research Center
The Pew Research Center provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.