LibGuides: Primary Sources for United States History: 19th Century

19th Century

American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection This link opens in a new window
What's included?
1. Contains resources related to all aspects of American history and culture before the 20th century.
2. Date coverage: 1684-1912.
American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*This collection contains diaries, letters and memoirs.
Early Encounters in North America This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. *Personal accounts from traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women
Gilded Age This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Access to resources related to the Gilded Age (1870's through 1890's) in American history
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, & Oral Histories This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Access to primary resources from immigrants to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950
Records of Union Generals and the Union Army & Confederate Military Manuscripts This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Records of the Union Army and the Confederate Army
*Papers of spies, scouts, guides, and detectives
*Information on Allan Pinkerton
*Records on military discipline from courts-martial, courts of inquiry, and investigations by military commissions
*Records of the U.S. Colored Troops

Collections on the Web:

Digital Public Library of America
"The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America's libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world."
HathiTrust Digital Library
HathiTrust is a fully digital library of more than 17 million items, mostly books, from academic and research libraries. All books in the public domain are 100% viewable.
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930
"Documenting voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the start of the Great Depression." From Harvard University.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
"The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office."
Making of America
"The Cornell University Library Making of America Collection is comprised of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction."
Making of America (University of Michigan)
This digital library of primary sources in American social history contains books and journal articles from the antebellum period through reconstruction, covering subjects in education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. Making of America is a collaborative effort between Cornell University and the University of Michigan and houses primary source material from both institutions.
Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
From the 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" dating from the 17th century to the present.

Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Collection of covering 250 years of non-fiction writings by American Black leaders

Collections on the Web:

African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
From the New York Public Library, this site "includes a digital collection of published works by 19th-century black women writers, biographies for each author, citations, and much more."
Black Abolitionist Archive
From the University of Detroit Mercy, the Black Abolitionist Archive collects speeches and editorials by Black abolitionists from the antebellum period.
Harriet Tubman: A Resource Guide
"A runaway slave from Maryland, Harriet Tubman became known as the 'Moses of her people.' This guide provides access to digital materials related to Tubman at the Library of Congress, as well as links to external websites and a selected print bibliography."
James Birney Collection of Anti-Slavery Pamphlets
"The collection contains materials gathered by James Birney in the course of his anti-slavery labors, and items gathered by William Birney while preparing a biography of his father. Over the years the collection has been augmented and now includes both anti- and pro-slavery material; printed speeches; African colonization; politics and campaign biographies; and black education."
North American Slave Narratives
From the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, "'North American Slave Narratives' collects books and articles that document the individual and collective story of Black people struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of self-emancipated and formerly enslaved people published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920."
Sojourner Truth: A Resource Guide
"African-American activist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth was born into slavery but escaped to freedom in 1826. This guide provides access to Library of Congress digitized materials, links to external websites, and a selected print bibliography."
Umbra Search
Umbra Search is a database that "brings together hundreds of thousands digitized materials from over 1,000 libraries and archives across the country" to make "African American history more broadly accessible."

Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 1 This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Access to resources related to U.S. Hispanic history, literature, and culture from colonial times until 1960
*This resource is indexed and searchable in Spanish and English
Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 2 This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Contains primary resources related to Hispanic-American civil rights, religion, and women’s rights from the 18th to the 20th centuries

Collections on the Web:

Hispanic Reading Room (Library of Congress)
The Library of Congress's Hispanic Reading Room collects digital exhibits and primary sources related to Latinx history in the U.S.
Historic Mexican and Mexican-American Press
"The Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection documents and showcases historic Mexican and Mexican American publications published in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico from the mid-1800s to the 1970s." From the University of Arizona.

American Indians and the American West, 1809-1971 This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Focuses on American Indians in the first half of the 20th century
*Contains records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and from the Major Council Meetings of American Indian Tribes
*Access to collections on American Indians in the 19th century
Indian Claims Insight This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Treaties involving Native American lands, Indian removal or resettlement, or clarification of boundaries between white settlements and Indian lands
*Coverage from 1789 to the present
North American Indian Thought & Culture This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Access to resources related to North American Indians

Collections on the Web:

Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center
The Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center "aims to develop a comprehensive searchable database of Carlisle Indian School resources."
Edward E. Ayer Digital Collection
"The Newberry [Library]’s Edward E. Ayer Collection is one of the strongest collections on American Indian and Indigenous Studies in the world." The growing digital collection features a selection of digitized images and texts.
National Museum of the American Indian
Images of artifacts from the museum's collection. The National Museum of the American Indian is part of the Smithsonian Institution.
Native Northeast Portal
"Native Northeast Portal contains primary source materials by, on, or about Northeast Indians from repositories around the world. Documents are digitized, transcribed, annotated, reviewed by the appropriate contemporary descendant community representatives, and brought together with scholarly annotations and academic/community commentary into one edited interactive digital collection."

Immigration: Records of the INS, 1880-1930 This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Files covering Asian immigration, especially Japanese and Chinese migration, to California, Hawaii, and other states
*Files on Mexican immigration to the U.S. from 1906-1930
*Files on the INS’s regulation of prostitution, white slavery, and on suppression of radical aliens

Collections on the Web:

Asian Voices
This page, part of the Digital History website hosted by the University of Houston, links significant primary source documents from 19th- and 20th-century Asian American history.
Chinese Exclusion Act: Primary Documents
"On May 6, 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law, prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years. This guide compiles Library of Congress digital materials, external websites, and a print bibliography."
Chinese Historical Society of America: Online Exhibits
"CHSA has produced these online exhibits to make the social, cultural and political history and contributions of the Chinese in America more widely available to the general public."

For additional databases and resources related to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, visit the WGSS Resources Guide here: https://library.augustana.edu/wgssresources.

Manuscript Women's Letters & Diaries This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Personal writings of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries
North American Women's Letters & Diaries This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Access to 1,300+ women's diaries and letters
Struggle for Women's Rights, Organizational Records, 1880-1990 This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Records of the National Woman’s Party
*Records of the League of Women Voters
*Records of the Women’s Action Alliance
*Coverage from 1880 to 1990
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Resources related to women's studies In the United States between 1600 and 2000
Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
What's included?
*Full coverage of women’s magazines, dating from the 19th century through to the 21st century.
*Collection contains:
1. Better Homes & Gardens
2. Chatelaine
3. Company
4. Cosmopolitan
5. Essence
6. Good Housekeeping
7. Ladies' Home Journal
8. Parents
9. Prima
10. Redbook
11. Seventeen
12. She
13. Town and Country
14. Woman's Day
15. Women's International Network News

Collections on the Web:

American Women's History Museum
" To create a more equitable America, the Smithsonian is researching, disseminating, and amplifying the histories of American women through its American Women’s History Initiative in preparation for the future Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum." With this goal in mind and "with a digital-first mission and focus, the Smithsonian amplifies a diversity of women’s voices in a new museum and throughout the Smithsonian’s museums, research centers, cultural heritage affiliates, and anywhere people are online."
Digital Transgender Archive
"The purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world." Based at Northeastern University.
Discovering American Women's History Online
Maintained by Middle Tennessee State University's Walker Library, the Discovering American Women's History Online database
"provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States."
Iowa Women's Archive
"The Iowa Women’s Archives holds more than 1200 manuscript collections that chronicle the lives and work of Iowa women, their families, and their communities. These personal papers and organizational records date from the nineteenth century to the present. Together with oral histories, they document the activities of Iowa women throughout the state and beyond its borders. The Iowa Women’s Archives is open to the public."
Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute
"The Schlesinger Library illuminates the lives of American women past and present through its collections, research support, public programming, and exhibitions, all while advancing Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s commitment to women, gender, and society."