U.S. History

19th c. Primary Sources

This is a guide to scholarly research and primary source collections related to United States history. Subpages include Boston history, Indigenous people's histories, Caribbean history, as well as African American History.

Researching the 19th Century

What's on This Page

Broad Digital Collections

JSTOR Images
Includes more than 1.3 million digital images. It covers many time periods and cultures and represent architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, etc. You must create a personal account to access this database off campus.

Canadiana
"The Canadiana Collections contain content created over five centuries that tell an incomplete, oftentimes distorted and, sometimes harmful, story of Canada."
Open Access.

Colonial America (Adam Matthew)
Modules 1-5, covering "Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries," "Towards Revolution," "The American Revolution, " "Legislation and Politics in the Colonies," and "Growth, Trade and Development." Collection will eventually include the full 1,450 volumes of documents from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. Full-text searching across all manuscript documents using Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR).
Colonial State Papers
Papers concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies, 16th-18th centuries.
Digital Public Library of America
Aggregates digital collections from around the U.S. and offers excellent tools to discover and explore them. Contributing institutions provide access to photographs, government documents, newspaper clippings, books, and other forms of ephemera. Focuses on 17th to 21st centuries.
Eight Centuries
Full text documents focused on the United States from the 17th to the 20th centuries from the Library of Congress (Making of America), the British Library, Harvard Libraries, and more. These documents include scholarship (journal articles), music, law, and more.

Gallica
Interface in English and French (and other major, European languages). Majority of the content in French.
France's fantastic digital library from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Digitized periodicals, images, recordings, and more. Covers two millenia with particular strength from 1500 to the present.
Open Access.

HathiTrust
A digital repository for the nation's research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the digitized book and serial collections of major universities and other partner institutions, a significant portion of which is in the public domain and available full text. Boston College's status as a partner makes it possible for members of the Boston College community to download any of the out-of-copyright items as PDFs.

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Digitized collections from the Library of Congress, includes manuscripts, books, photos, maps, audio recordings, and more.
Smithsonian Institution's Digital Collections
Search over 16 million records of museum objects, archives and library materials including more than 5.1 million online images, audio & videos and blog posts.

World Digital Library
The World Digital Library is a Library of Congress project sponsored by UNESCO. Items in this digital library, including books, manuscripts, photographs, maps and sound recordings, are individually described and searchable in seven languages. Most countries and regions around the world are represented.

Sources: Books and Manuscripts

Making of America
Primary source digital library of American social history from antebellum period through reconstruction. Arranged into collections at Cornell and the University of Michigan.
Documenting the American South
Texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. From UNC.

Sources: Data and Statistics

Economic History (EH) Association: Databasess
Mostly historical US datasets, some. European, including "U.S. Customs House Data, 1854-59" and "Cole monthly commodity prices, 1700-1861" and others.

Historical Statistics of the United States
Historical Statistics of the United States presents the numerical history of the United States. More than 37,000 annual time series of quantitative historical information covering virtually every quantifiable dimension of American history: population, work and welfare, economic structure and performance, governance, and international relations, all from the earliest times to the present.
Immigration: Records of the INS, 1880-1930
Covers the investigations made by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) during the immigration wave of 1880-1930, including immigration to the U.S. by Asians, Mexicans and Europeans, as well as extensive files on the INS's regulation of prostitution and white slavery and on suppression of radical aliens

To access additional data sets, visit BC Libraries' Historical Data & Statistics page.

Sources: Emphemera - Advertisements and Broadsides

Harris Broadsides [Brown]
Broadsides are single-sheet publications, often issued as ephemera or announcements. The Harris Broadsides Collection is a comprehensive collection of American poetry published in broadside format from colonial times to the present. The collection offers materials covering a broad spectrum of American life, and includes poetry of every description: 18th and 19th century ballads, verse describing newsworthy events, poetic effusions of sentimentality and patriotism, comic verse, and much more. When completed, this digital project will include over 20,000 titles.

For additional posters, postcards, political cartoons, and other ephemera, visit BC Libraries' Primary Sources research page.

Sources: Gov. Docs. and Law

American State Papers, 1789-1838
Search every legislative and executive document of the first through fourteenth U.S. Congresses; also contains Executive Department materials. Covers political, social and military history, as well as cultural, ethnic and international studies. This database is the seminal set of U.S. government publications and a rich source of primary material
Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution
This landmark work in historical and legal scholarship draws upon thousands of sources to trace the Constitution's progress through each of the thirteen states' conventions. The digital edition allows users to search the complete contents by date, title, author, recipient, or state affiliation and preserves the copious annotations of the print edition.
Hein Online

HeinOnline is an image-based legal research database with over 50 million pages of legal information in fully-searchable PDF format, comprising over 30 separate collections including Law Journal Library, Legal Classics, U.S. Supreme Court Library, U.S. Federal Legislative History Library, U.S. Congressional Documents, Treaties and Agreements Library and many others. Additional titles and years are added regularly.
ProQuest Congressional
Provides access to hearings, published and unpublished from 1824 to the present, congressional committee reports, bills, public laws, selected committee prints, congressional documents, the Congressional Record from the 99th Congress forward, Federal Register from 1980 forward, the current Code of Federal Regulations, and the current US Code.
Senate Executive Journals, Series 1, 1789-1866
The United States Senate has maintained a record of its proceedings in executive session since its inception. This database captures matters related to confirming presidential nominees, consent to the making of treaties and much more.
Slavery and the Law
Includes petitions related to race and slavery to state legislatures and to southern county courts, as well as state slavery statutes from 1789-1865.
US Congressional Serial Set
A full text searchable collection of sources on all aspects of U.S. history compiled by Congress in numbered sequence (hence its name the Serial Set), including government reports, journals, hearings, messages, petitions, resolutions, monographs, treaties, presidential communications, maps and so forth from 1817 to 1980. Also includes the full text of the American State Papers (1789-1838).

For other Legal History Resources, visit BC Law School's Legal History Resources Page.

Sources: Maps

BnF Gallica: Maps
Thousands of maps from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Heavy emphasis on Europe but includes excellent global coverage (including 3d globes).
LOC Maps
More than 37,000 maps available through the US Library of Congress with collection focus between 1600 and the present.
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection: Historical Maps
Hosted by the University of Texas Libraries, this collection includes global and regional maps across multiple centuries.

Serial Set Maps
The maps published as part of U.S. Congressional Serial Set publications.

UM Clark Library Digital Maps
This collection contains images of maps from the Stephen S. Clark Library for Maps, Government Information and Data Services' map collection. 1317 images/descriptions are openly available with excellent metadata.

For more maps, visit BC Libraries' Historical Maps page.

Sources: Newspapers and Periodicals

American Antiquarian Society (AAS) History Periodicals Collection (all 50 subsets)
The American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals database includes digitized images from American magazines and journals from 1684 - 1912. Detailing American history and culture, these specialized collections cover advertising, health, women's issues, science, the history of slavery, industry and professions, religious issues, culture and the arts, and much more.
American Periodicals
Full text of popular periodicals published between 1740 and 1940 in the United States, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines. Now updated with labor, trade, literary, scientific, and photographic periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries.
ProQuest Historical U.S. Newspapers
Combined searching of the historical New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Constitution, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, NY Amsterdam News, and Chicago Defender.

For historical newspapers and television, visit BC Libraries' Historical News page.

Sources: Personal Papers

Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers (LOC)
The collection contains over 145,000 items. The online version contains 4,695 items (equaling about 51,500 images), consists of correspondence, scientific notebooks, journals, blueprints, articles, and photographs documenting Bell's invention of the telephone and his involvement in the first telephone company, his family life, his interest in the education of the deaf, and his aeronautical and other scientific research. Dates span from 1862 to 1939.

Black Abolitionist Papers
This collection documents the efforts of African American activists in their international effort to abolish slavery in the United States. Covering the period 1830-1865, the 15,000-item collection records the full impact of African American efforts to oppose slavery by displaying the writings and publications of the activists themselves.

Clara Barton Papers
The papers of nurse, educator, philanthropist, and lecturer Clara Barton (1821-1912) consist of 62,000 items (81,608 images), most of which were digitized from 123 reels of previously produced microfilm.

Dolley Madison Digital Edition
Containing over 1,300 letters, with another thousand letters to follow in periodic updates, this archive will constitute the first complete edition of all of her known correspondence. The letters may be accessed directly through a sortable list or read in chronological order. Proper names link to a glossary that identifies over 2,500 people and places, providing a unique biographical view on the elites of the early Republic.

Mark Twain Project
TEI encoded critical editions of Twain's letters and major works. The ultimate aim is to encode & make available the entire corpus of Twain's work.
Horace Mann Bond Papers (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Hall Family Papers and Sugar Plantation Records (UCSD)
Family papers and sugar plantation records (1709-1835) of the Hall family of England and Jamaica. The collection contains primary source material on 18th and early 19th century Jamaican plantation economy and culture. Creation Date: 1709-1892.

Topics: Civil and Social Rights

Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 1
Presents a digital collection of historical content pertaining to U.S. Hispanic history, literature and culture in its written form since colonial times until 1960 through key aspects of the "Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project," including original books, a microfilm collection of historical newspapers, religious books in microfilm and digitized form, archival and manuscript collections, a collection of photographs, an extensive authority list, and reprinted historical books in scholarly editions. EBSCO collection.
Black Studies Center
Black Studies Center brings together essential historical and current material for researching the past, present and future of African-Americans, the wider African Diaspora, and Africa itself. It is comprised of the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, the International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), The Chicago Defender, ProQuest Dissertations for Black Studies, and the Black Literature Index.
Oxford African American Studies Center
OAASC database is a comprehensive compendium focusing on the "lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture". The database includes encyclopedias, biographies, primary sources, images and more to support research in African and African Diaspora Studies.

For additional primary source collections related to Civil Rights movements in the U.S. between Reconstruction and the 21st century, see the corresponding BC Libraries' Research Guide.

Topics: Civil War

American Civil War Letters and Diaries
First-person accounts by over 2000 authors, both famous and obscure, of events in the U.S. Civil War.

For additional primary source collections on the U.S. Civil War, see the corresponding BC Libraries' Research Guide.

Topics: Slavery & Abolition

American Slavery Collection
A range of materials, including books, pamphlets, graphic materials, and ephemera, from the American Antiquarian Society's holdings of slavery and abolition materials. Published over the course of 100 years, topics include, for example, the Missouri Compromise and the founding of Liberia; the first National Anti-Slavery Society Convention in 1837 and the Compromise of 1850; the Emancipation Proclamation and the establishment of Redeemer state governments; the birth of Jim Crow and the expansion of segregation through the early 1920s.
Black Abolitionist Papers
This collection documents the efforts of African American activists in their international effort to abolish slavery in the United States. Covering the period 1830-1865, the 15,000-item collection records the full impact of African American efforts to oppose slavery by displaying the writings and publications of the activists themselves.
Slavery and the Law
Includes petitions related to race and slavery to state legislatures and to southern county courts, as well as state slavery statutes from 1789-1865.

For additional collections on slavery and abolition, see BC Libraries' Research Guide for Abolitionist Movements page.

Topics: Spanish-American War

The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures
68 motion pictures, produced between 1898 and 1901, of the Spanish-American War and the subsequent Philippine Revolution. The Spanish-American War was the first U.S. war in which the motion picture camera played a role.
Clara Barton Papers (LOC)
The papers of nurse, educator, philanthropist, and lecturer Clara Barton (1821-1912) consist of 62,000 items (81,608 images). Includes Letterbooks, 1876-1911 covering the Spanish-American war.

Topics: U.S. Overseas

American Colony in Jerusalem, 1870-2006
This electronic presentation features selected materials from the physical American Colony in Jerusalem Collection. The full collection in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress represents well over 16,600 items stemming from the history of the American Colony, a non-denominational utopian Christian community founded by a small group of American expatriates in Ottoman Palestine in 1881.

Caption: Gannett, Henry. “Map of the United States Showing Progress in Preparation and Engraving of Topographic Maps.” Map. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1884. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017586275/.

Databases A-Z

O'Neill Library

Bapst Library

Burns Library

Educational Resource Center

Law Library

Social Work Library

Theology & Ministry Library

O'Connor Library

Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies

U.S. History

19th c. Primary Sources

Researching the 19th Century

What's on This Page

Broad Digital Collections

Sources: Books and Manuscripts

Sources: Data and Statistics

Sources: Emphemera - Advertisements and Broadsides

Sources: Gov. Docs. and Law

Sources: Maps

Sources: Newspapers and Periodicals

Sources: Personal Papers

Topics: Civil and Social Rights

Topics: Civil War

Topics: Slavery & Abolition

Topics: Spanish-American War

Topics: U.S. Overseas