Comprehensive Sources

• AccuNet/AP Photo Archive (UMich Only)
  • About 700,000 current and historical photographs from the Associated Press
  • Searchable by subject, place, and date

• America: History and Life (UMich Only)
  Index and abstracts of 2000 journals in U.S. and Canadian history

• American Memory Collection (Library of Congress)
  • Selected documents, maps, photographs and motion pictures of American history
  • Subjects range from the Continental Congress to railroad maps to dance manuals
  • Searchable by title, subject, or library division
  • Entries often include illustrations, background information, and links to further resources
  • Today in History
    • Summary of major historical events for each day with links to the collection of digitized books, maps, and illustrations
    • Searchable by subject and day

• Archives Portal (UNESCO)
  • Directory of national, state, and local archives with web links
  • Also includes subject lists, such as parliamentary, diplomatic or family archives
  • No annotations; project under development as of 2000

• Archives USA (UMich Only)
  • Index to holdings of 4400 archives and 100,000 archival collections in the United States
  • Searchable and browsable by keyword, collection name, city and state
  • Information includes a description of the collection, hours, and a link to the repository's web site
  • Includes National Archives as well as numerous other public and private archives

• Avalon Project (Yale)
  • Full text of historic legal and political documents for the U.S., Western Europe, and the Middle East
  • Includes the Mayflower Compact of 1620, Louisiana Purchase, U-2 Incident, inaugural addresses, World War II documents, and numerous treaties

• Basic Readings in U.S. Democracy (USIA)
  • Declarations, court cases, literature, and speeches illustrating democratic ideals
  • Northwest Ordinance, Gettysburg Address, Seneca Falls Declaration
  • Martin Luther King, censure of Joe McCarthy

• Capitol Project (UVa)
  • Web sites uses landmarks in Washington, D.C. as organizing principle for American culture
  • Links to museums and maps
  • Web sites include Education of Henry Adams, Pocahontas, and the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago) of 1893

• Cases and Materials on American Federalism (Amber/Purdue)
  • Extensive course materials provide primary documents on political theory and American history with sections on the founding fathers, three branches of government and civil rights issues
  • Texts include Magna Carta, Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu
  • Various drafts of the Constitution, excerpts from the Federalist, numerous court cases
  • Section on the Electoral College includes list of faithless electors, presidents who won by plurality rather than majority, and four cases where winners of the popular vote lost the election

• Declassified Documents (UMich)
  • Over 70,000 confidential, secret and top secret documents declassified under the Freedom of Information Act and deposited in Presidential Libraries
  • Material includes White House, CIA, FBI, Defense Department, National Security Council, Atomic Energy Commission, NATO, United Nations and others
  • Most are dated 1946-68
  • Searchable by keyword with an advanced search that includes keyword, agency, classification level, sanitation level, date declassified and issue date
  • PDF format for the original plus a more easily-read text format with the search keywords highlighted in red
  • The corresponding microfiche is located in Serials Services and Microforms; the retrospective fiche is MICRO-F397; the current fiche is MICRO-F X194

• Declassified Documents and Other Sources for Secrets (Michigan State University)
  • Descriptive background on document declassification
  • Links to federal web sites with declassified material
  • Annotated links to non-government web sites

• Digital National Security Archive (UMich Only)
  • Full text of declassified federal documents issued during the Cold War period
  • Many of the documents issued by the State Department, Defense Department, and Central Intelligence Agency
  • Subjects include:

• Searchable by a combination of collection, subject, keyword, creator, recipient, classification, document type, and date
• Text in pdf or gif format
• The National Security Archive at George Washington University contributes to DNSA but has a broader list of subjects
• Digital National Security Archive Presidential Directives
  • Full text of available presidential and national security directives, Truman through Clinton
  • Some of the Truman through Reagan material has been excised due to classification; most of the George Bush Sr. and Clinton materials are still classified as of September 2001
  • Searchable by keyword, date, author, and date

• Directory of Digitized Collections (UNESCO/IFLA)
  • Index to web sites, primarily on historical and artistic subjects around the world
  • Samples include Connecticut history, Hungarian electronic library, North American slave narratives, Gulliver's travels
  • Index if browsable and search
  • Entries provide good annotations and links to the web site

• Famous American Trials (Linder/UMo-Kansas City)
  • Excerpted trial transcripts, speeches, and points of law from famous trials
  • Leopold and Loeb, Scopes Monkey, Rosenbergs, Amistad, Bill Haywood, Salem Witchcraft, My Lai Courts Martial, Scottsboro, Dakota Conflict, Mississippi Burning, Chicago Seven, and Johnson Impeachment
  • Links to other American trials include Aaron Burr, John Brown, Lincoln Assassination, Lizzie Borden, Sacco-Vanetti, Lindbergh, Alger Hiss, Charles Manson, Patty Hearst, John Hinckley, Rodney King, and O.J. Simpson
  • Among the international trials: Jesus, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther, Gandhi, Adolph Eichman, Nelson Mandela

• Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers
  • Full text of declassified diplomatic documents and correspondence
  • Complete version in Graduate Library stacks (JX 233 .A3) begins 1861
  • Web version has selected text, 1945-68
  • Additional Volumes added during the Bush Administration
  • University of Wisconsin has digitized the Historical Volumes, 1861-1958

• Gateway to African American History (USIA)
  • Annotated links to black history web sites
  • Materials from President Clinton's Initiative on Race were originally on this web site but moved to the National Archives
  • Speeches and documents celebrating the 50th anniversary of Little Rock, Arkansas school integration
  • Black History month postage stamps

• HarpWeek - 19th Century
  • Select illustrations and articles from this popular 19th Century periodical
  • Sections on the Johnson Impeachment, Black History, American West
  • Some advertising

• Historic Documents (University of Kansas)
  • The full text of over 100 documents from the Seventeenth Century to 1993
  • Presidential speeches, legal publications, reports arranged chronologically

• Historic Places
  • Historic American Buildings Survey (Library of Congress)
    • Catalog of photographic prints and drawings of historic buildings
    • Searchable by subject, keyword, and geographic area
    • Digitization of prints and drawings in progress
  • History Wired (Smithsonian Institution)
    • On-line exhibit of historical artifacts in art, politics, the military, and culture
    • Time frame ranges 1400-2000
  • Internet Moving Images Archive
    • Approximately 750 short films (about 15-20 minutes) documenting American culture
    • Most from the 1940s and 1950s
    • Includes World War I and atomic fallout films
    • Download in .mpg format (200-400 MB per film) and use with Windows Media Player
  • National Register of Historic Places (NPS)
    • Search 66,000 historic places
    • Requires special software downloadable from site

• Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (UMich Only)
  • Tables are time series on population, prices, foreign trade, government budgets, roughly 1789-1970
  • Most tables are national in scope
  • Excellent notes indicate when the statistic was first taken and cite sources
  • Unfortunately the tables from the CD-ROM version can not be downloaded from the server
  • Historical Statistics in pdf and the historical pdf versions of Statistical Abstract, from which the data was compiled, are available from the Census Bureau web site for 1878-1929, 1953-58, and 1995+
  • Instructions for Using on CITRIX

• History Universe (UMich Only)
  • Index to an extensive microfilm collection of U.S. political and social history issued by University Publications of America
  • Topics include: African American Studies, American Civil War, Immigration Studies, International Studies, Jurisprudence, Labor Studies, Military History and War, Native American Studies, Political History, Southern History, Western U.S. History, Women's Studies
  • Sample collections: the FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy Office Files; Lyndon Johnson National Security Files; Immigration and Naturalization Service correspondence from the early 20th Century; pacification in Vietnam; William Westmoreland Vietnam files; Confederate military records
  • Browsing by topic or title yields the guide to the microform collection (HTML or PDF format)
  • Search for individual entries in a single or all microform collections by keyword and date
  • Resulting entries refer to microfilm collection location
  • Search MIRLYN by title for the University of Michigan microfilm call number; contact Inter-Library Loan those collections not available at the University

• Images of American Political History
  • Collection of 500 public domain images (black and white and color) of American history since colonial days
  • Includes Presidents, maps of Presidential election results, slavery and civil rights
  • Searchable or browsable by time period and subject category

• Information Please Year-by-Year
  • Chronology for 1900 to present
  • Detailed information for the 20th century includes annual list of key worldwide and U.S. events, economics, music, sports, movies, deaths, and popular culture trends
  • Links to chronologies beginning with ancient history

• Jewish-American History on the Web
  • Biographies and primary documents of Jewish-Americans involved in the Civil War and taming of the West

• Making of America
  • On-line texts of American social history, 1850-1900
  • Searchable by author, title, subject and keyword
  • Books and journals about government rather than by government
  • University of Michigan/Cornell project funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation

• Archival Research Catalog (National Archives)
  • Bibliographic data base with many digitized images of federal documents
  • Includes declassified Presidential material
  • Rich source for President John F. Kennedy with speeches and foreign relations memoes
  • Numerous search capabilities, including limitation to full text materials available on the web
  • Preliminary Inventories

• Native American Geneaology Links
  • Extensive list of geneaology and history links arranged by North American Tribe
  • Includes biographies, literature, culture, photographs and Indian rolls

• Nineteenth Century United States Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies Online (Washington State University)
  • Text of historic documents, speeches, and writings beginning with the colonial era through 1899
  • Presidential papers, American Revolution and Civil War documents, American Indian and women's history, books on social concerns
  • Links to maps and cartoons

• 19th Century Masterfile (Formerly Poole's Plus)
  • Index to popular American and British journals, 1802-1906
  • Browsable by journal; searchable by keyword, author
  • Cites periodical, date and author

• Picturing the Century: One Hundred Years of Photography from the National Archives
  • Classic black and white photographs of the 20th Century
  • Wright Brothers, Great Depression, both world wars

• Presidents of the United States (IPL/Summers)
  • Extensive web site with pages for each President, Washington to Clinton
  • Picture, biographies, election results, first ladies, cabinets, highlights of administration, historical documents, and links to related Internet sites
  • Special attention paid to links describing historical events and biographies of cabinet members

• Web Chronology Project/United States (North Park University)
  • Detailed chronologies of political events
  • Selected links to summaries of the event
  • Summaries provide bibliographic references for further research

• Words and Deeds (Library of Congress)
  • Images of Library of Congress manuscripts, 1692-1965
  • Includes selected Presidential documents, witch hunt petitions, Jack Ruby's statement, etc.
  • Searchable and browsable

African American History

• Chronology of the History of Slavery
  • Detailed chronology of American slavery, 1619-1990s
  • Summaries by year include considerable detail and statistics
  • Links to primary sources and documents

• Dred Scott Digital Project (Washington University)
  • Eighty-five documents surround Dred and Harriet Scott's petition to the St. Louis Circuit Court for emancipation from slavery
  • Case lasted between 1846 and 1857; court affirmed slavery status; led in part to the Civil War

• From Slavery to Freedom: The African American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909 (Library of Congress)
  • Approximately 400 pamphlets written by African Americans on slavery, reconstruction, colonization
  • Personal accounts and orations
  • Browsable by author, subject, and title; searchable by keyword

• See also Amistad, Civil War, and Martin Luther King

American Revolution

• American Colonist's Library
  • Chronological list of primary sources influencing the American colonies and revolution
  • Arranged by time periods beginning with 500 B.C>
  • Authors include Christopher Columbus, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, John Smith, George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin
  • Numerous religious texts, diaries, and charters of the colonies
  • Acts of Parliament concerning the colonies
  • American Revolution military documents and battle accounts

• Declaration of Independence
  • Declaration of Independence
    • Full text of 1776 document
  • Declaration of Independence (US History.Org)
    • Thomas Jefferson's account with commentary
    • Biographies of the signers
    • Links to several related sites at the Library of Congress
  • Interpreting the Declaration of Independence by Translation (George Mason University)
    • Text of Declaration of Independence in several languages: Polish, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, German, Hebrew
    • Essays on the interpretation

• Documents from the Continental Congress
  • Includes Constitutional Convention
  • Approximately 500 broadsides preserved by the Library of Congress
  • Searchable and browsable
  • May be slow to retrieve

• Founding Fathers: Delegates to the Constitutional Convention (Natl Archives)
  • Extensive biographies and pictures of the founding fathers

• Journals of the Continental Congress: Selected Documents, 1774-1789
  • Articles of Association (1774)
  • Articles of War (1775)
  • Petitions to the King, instructions to General Washington, letter to Canada, peace plans

• Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (Library of Congress)
  • Includes letters of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, among others
  • Information on the treaties at the conclusion of the war

• Spy Letters of the American Revolution (UMich)
  • Images of letters from British and American spies held at the Clements Library
  • Background written by School of Information students
  • Includes information on spy techniques, maps, a timeline, and biographies

• See also Comprehensive Sources

Amistad

• Amistad Case
  • Revolt on Spanish slave ship in 1839
  • Supreme Court permitted captured slaves their freedom on March 9, 1841
  • The movie Amistad, directed by Steven Spielberg of Dreamworks, opened on December 10, 1997
  • Barbara Chase-Riboud sued Dreamworks for violating her copyright on a book entitled Echo of Lions
• Amistad Case (Cornell Law School)
  • Historical background of the Amistad revolt and links to related sites
  • Legal filings of the Chase-Riboud v. Dreamworks case
  • Description of the movies, list of actors, and movie reviews
• Amistad Case (National Archives)
  • Text of 1841 and related Supreme Court filings
  • Teaching activities and questions to be answered by the primary documents
• Amistad Revolt (State Department)
  • History of the Amistad Revolt and U.S. relations with Sierra Leone
  • Includes bibliography of printed and web products
• Amistad Trial (Linder/UMo-Kansas City)
  • Chronology, maps, newspaper accounts
  • Trial transcripts, Supreme Court decisions, letters and diaries
• John Quincy Adams (Internet Public Library)
  • Former President Adams argued the case on behalf of the slaves to the Supreme Court
  • Election results, inaugural addresses
  • Brief biography and links to more extensive biographies

Civil Rights

• Civil Rights Commission Documents (Thurgood Marshall Law School)
  • Full text of U.S. Civil Rights Commission documents since 1957
  • Browsable by title, date, SUDOCS number and subjectd
  • Many publications beginning 1999 are also on the Civil Rights Commission web site

Civil War

• American Civil War Homepage (UTK)
  • Extensive unannotated lists of primary documents, diaries, state civil war web pages, and military unit rosters
• Andersonville Trial (UMo/Kansas City)
  • Trial of Captain Henry Wirz as a war criminal of deaths in Andersonville Prison, a Confederate facility in Georgia
  • Biographies of participants
  • Description of prison and the number of deaths per day
  • Trial excerpts
  • Long-term implications
• Been Here So Long - American Slave Narratives
  • Transcripts of interviews with 17 former slaves conducted in the 1930s by the Federal Writers Project
• Black Dispatches: Black American Contributions to Union Intelligence During the Civil War (CIA)
  • Brief history on Negro reports on Confederate troops to the Union Army
  • Bibliography of books and archival materials
• Civil War (Yahoo)
  • Extensive list of Union and Confederate sources
  • Muster rolls, accounts, primary documents, state histories, underground railroad
• Civil War Maps (Library of Congress)
  • Approximately 2400 Civil War maps
  • Searchable by keyword, geography, title, subject, and creator
• Documents in Military History (Hillsdale College)
  • Over 300 documents on warfare from Ancient History through the 19th Century
  • Includes battle accounts and treaties
  • Laws of War for the Union Army during the American Civil War
• Harper's Weekly - 1865
  • Digital images and text of popular newsmagazine
  • Heavy coverage of the end of the Civil War

• Making of America
  • On-line texts of American social history, 1850-1900
  • Searchable by author, title, subject and keyword
  • Contemporary books and journals include numerous references to the Civil War
• Mr. Lincoln's Virtual Library
  • Illustrated drafts of the Emancipation Proclamation and a brief time line of the Civil War
• Nineteenth Century Documents Project (Furman University)
  • Original texts relating to secession, slavery, the Civil War, and post-war period
  • Focus on South Carolina
  • Statistical almanac includes presidential votes by state, 1844-60, and survivability of slaves by age
• Pictures of the Civil War (National Archives)
  • Still photographs in JPG format arranged by subject
• United States Civil War Center
  • Thousands of unannotated links to Civil War web sites, including military statistics and state government information
  • Browsable and searchable
• War for Southern Independence (Williams)
  • Provides extensive primary sources
  • Inaugural addresses of the Presidents, Crittendon and Missouri Compromises
  • Lincoln's House Divided speech
  • Declaration of Causes of Seceding States, Confederate Constitution, Jefferson Davis speeches, Lee's farewell address
  • Full text of 1895 book on the Civil War
• War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
  • Digital version of official government document issued 1880 ff.
  • Searchable and browsable
• See also Comprehensive Sources

Cold War

• At Cold War's End: U.S. Intelligence on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1989-1991 (CIA)
  • Text explaining intelligence operations during the collapse of the Soviet Union
  • Full text of intelligence documents in pdf format

• Berlin Airlift - 1948 (Truman Library)
  • Declassified documents, including cabinet and National Security Council minutes, State Department materials, Presidential papers
  • Book excerpts and photos

• Cold War (CNN)
  • Year-long television series on politics, 1946-91
  • Chronologies, biographies, and full-text primary documents from U.S. and Russian archives
  • Information available after a program has aired

• Cold War International History Project
  • Primary documents and articles on the history of the Cold War
  • Includes the arms race, policies of leaders, book reviews
  • Lengthy sections on Stalin and Khrushchev
  • Searchable by keyword, subject tree, type of document

• Concrete Curtain: The Life and Death of the Berlin Wall
  • History of the Berlin Wall from the partition of Germany to the demolition of the wall in November 1991
  • Text enriched with photographs, maps and bibliography

• Corona Satellite Images (Federation of American Scientists
  • Declassified satellite images of Russian nuclear storage and production facilities, 1960-72
  • Considerable background information and documentation

• Did NATO Win the Cold War? (Vojtech Mastny)
  • Twenty-three declassified documents on the history of the Cold war from U.S. and NATO archives
  • Supplements article in the May-June 1999 issue of Foreign Affairs

• Government Views of the Rosenberg Spy Case (City College of New York)
  • Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed on June 19, 1953 in a Soviet atomic spy case
  • Annotated of webliography of government reports, declassified documents and trial transcripts of the Rosenberg case
  • Includes the Venona Project and key players
  • Scholarly; well done

• Historic Nuclear Weapons Test Films (DOE)
  • Films of 75 nuclear weapons tests, 1945-1970s
  • View with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player

• NRO Declassified (National Security Archives)
  • Text of 23 previously-classified documents on establishment and operations of the National Reconnaissance Office, 1961-96
  • Office handled satellite surveillance after the capture of Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union

• Nuclear Weapon Locations
  • History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 through September 1977
    • Classified document prepared by the Defense Department in 1978 and partially released under the Freedom of Information Act
    • Includes an appendix with deployments by country and date
  • Where They Were
    • Article describes storage of about 12,000 atomic and nuclear weapons abroad, 1945-77
    • Host countries did not always know they were there
    • Lists country or territory, type of missile, year imported, and year withdrawn
    • Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov/Dec. 1999, p. 26+

• McCarthy Hearings
  • Testimony and interrogation of 395 Americans investigated for communist activities in 1953-54
  • These were Executive (secret) Sessions of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Government Operations Committee, chaired by Joe McCarthy
  • Hearings divided into five files, text and pdf formats
  • Issued as Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Print 107-84 in 2003

• RedFiles (PBS)
  • Accompanies a television series about Soviet intelligence, sports, propaganda, and a secret mission to the moon
  • Transcripts and pictures from program
  • Text of interviews and searchable access to an English version of the Russian archives

• Truman Diary - 1947
  • Digitized text of President Harry Truman's diary from 1947

Colonial America

• American Colonist's Library
  • Chronological list of primary sources influencing the American colonies and revolution
  • Arranged by time periods beginning with 500 B.C>
  • Authors include Christopher Columbus, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, John Smith, George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin
  • Numerous religious texts, diaries, and charters of the colonies
  • Acts of Parliament concerning the colonies
  • American Revolution military documents and battle accounts

• Plymouth Colony Archive Project (UVa)
  • Primary documents, 1620-91
  • Probate inventories of decedents (e.g. belongings of Myles Standish)
  • Selected biographies and wills
  • Description and pictures of homes and archaeological finds

Congress

• Century of American Lawmaking (Library of Congress)
  • TIFF images of the
    • Journals of the Continental Congress (1774-93)
    • Annals of Congress (1789-1824)
    • Register of Debates (1824-1837)
    • Congressional Globe (1833-1873)
    • House and Senate Journals (1789-1873)
    • Senate Executive Journal (1789-1873)
    • Journal of William Maclay (1789-91)
    • Statutes at Large (1789-1873)
    • Serial Set (1789-1835, 1899, and 1904-05), selected Senate Documents on indian affairs
  • Individual issues browsable; search engine for entire collection rather than individual titles

• Congressional Serial Set, 1789-1969 (UMich Only)
  • Historic Full Text section of LEXIS-NEXIS Congressional has the full text of over 333,000 documents and 50,000 maps
  • Includes all legislative reports on bills, some hearings, national commission reports, and most Executive Branch documents issued during the 19th Century
  • Source for social, military, economic, and technology history (immigration, Civil War, Treasury annual reports, lighthouses) as well as geographic explorations
  • Indexed by subject, keyword, author, geography, bill number, law number, witness name, serial number, and SUDOCS number

• Documentary History of the First Federal Congress (Univ. of So. Carolina)
  • 1789 Congressional debates on the formation of the Cabinet
  • Text of bills
  • Notes from Members of the first congress

Cuban Missile Crisis/Bay of Pigs

• CIA Electronic Documents
  • Full text of electronic documents released under the Freedom of Information Act since November 1996
  • Use Search engine and type "Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban Operations" in the title field
    • Results include two reports with over 400 pages which must be accessed page-by-page
  • Search "Cuba" or "Bay of Pigs" as a full text term for additional material

• Cuban Missile Crisis (Yale)
  • Full text of 250 official government documents, memoranda, and telegrams on the Cuban Missile Crisis
  • Browsable and searchable
  • Based on the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-63

• Fourteen Days in October
  • Multimedia presentation with timelines, photographs, and audio of Cuban missile crisis discussions
  • Includes declassified texts, biographies of the players

• Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban Operations (Natl Security Archives)
  • CIA report issued in 1961 and made available by the National Security Archives
  • Report available in text format with chapter headings and in zipped format for easy downloading
  • This is supplemented by the ultrasecret Taylor Commission Report, authorized by President Kennedy and released in May 2000
  • Newer releases appear under the National Security Archives Bay of Pigs web page

• JFK Executive Orders
  • Full text of Presidential orders issued 1961-63
  • Includes numerous security measures, including an active duty call (EO 11058) issued on October 23, 1962

• See also Cold War

Early Federal Period

• Democracy in America/DeTocqueville (UVa)
  • Full text of book documenting Alexis de Tocqueville's 1831 trip
  • Supplemented by commentaries on culture, race, women and religion
  • Interactive map

Federal Bureau of Investigation

• FBI Freedom of Information Act Archives
  • Thousands of historic records in Adobe Acrobat format
  • Includes the Rosenbergs, Lucille Ball, John Lennon, Al Capone, Roswell UFO
  • Arranged alphabetically by name or by subject category
  • Categories include: Famous Persons, Historical Interest, Espionage, Violent Crime, Gangster Era, Unusual Phenomena

Federalist Papers

• Eighty-five articles written for New Yorkers in 1787 and 1788 urging ratification of the U.S. Constitution
• Approval and rejection of constitutional provisions of all three branches of government
• Written by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison
• Text from Project Gutenberg and the Library of Congress
• For additional materials, see also Constitution

General Land Office Records

• Patents (sales) awarded for federal lands, 1820-1908
• Covers Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi,, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin
• Within state, indexed by name or description of property
• Data includes name, date of sale, property description, and a tiff image of the original patent
• Can be used for genealogical purposes

Gulf War

• Fog of War (Washington Post)
  • History of the Gulf War written in 1998
  • Air strikes, damage done, and installations rebuilt in seven years
  • Declassified documents, including National Security Directive 54 and Distinguished Flying Cross citations

House UnAmerican Activities Committee

• Committee investigated Communist, Nazi and Fascist propaganda in the United States, 1934-77
• Hollywood 10
  • Essay on the nine screenwriters and one director labeled as Communists to the House Unamerican Activities Committee in 1947
  • Some selected testimony from the 1947 hearings
  • Blacklist issued by the movie studios in 1948
• House Unamerican Activities Committee Hearings
  • Index, 1938-70
    • Documents Center JK 1759 .U5 A39
    • Indexed by person testifying and subject of testimony
    • Index provides lettered volume and page number (e.g. e 2407-2414)
    • Look up volume letter and pages in the table of contents to obtain Congress, title of hearing, dates, and part numbers (e.g. House UnAmerican Activities Committee, 82nd Congress, Communist Infiltration of Hollywood Motion Picture Industry, Part 7, Jan. 24-April 30, 1952
    • Look up committee and title in Documents Center catalog drawer 47 to obtain call number of hearings text (e.g. HX 61 .A2 1951-52a-c)
  • Microfiche Alternative
    • Use Congressional Universe as an alternative for the index
    • Go to section on Congressional Index, 1789-1969
    • Look for name of person testifying
    • Once you identify the hearing, identify the microfiche number for the full text (e.g. 82 H1375-6)
• HUAC Records at the National Archives
  • Brief history of the committee
  • Description of records and files at the National Archives
• Martin Dies Records
  • Brief biography of Martin Dies, the first chairperson of HUAC
  • Description of records at the Texas State Library

Impeachment

• Impeachment Documents Relating to a U.S. President (Auburn University)
  • Full text of selected government documents relating to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton
  • Includes procedures, reports, and hearings
  • Text in Adobe Acrobat format
  • Under construction as of October 1998 but considerable progress made
• Impeachment Process
  • Documents Center coverage of President Clinton's road toward impeachment
  • Court cases, Starr report and responses, Congressional resolutions and hearings

Iran-Contra Affair

• Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters
  • Report by Lawrence Walsh on U.S. sales of arms to Iran and military assistance to Nicaraguan rebels despite Congressional prohibition
  • Summarizes the cases
  • Investigation of individuals, including President Reagan and Vice President Bush
  • Concluding observations

JFK Assassination

• Assassination Records Review Commission Report
  • Full text of 1998 report
  • Committee procedure for declassifying 60,000 documents and the Zapruder film
  • Recommendations for declassifying further federal documents
  • Another Copy
• John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection
  • Finding aids to the Warren Commission, Rockefeller Commission, Executive Branch and Legislative Branch records at the National Archives
  • Searchable Data Base
  • Most records must be viewed at the National Archives or acquired via land mail

Korean War

• Korean War (Truman Library)
  • Week-by-week account of Korean War, beginning with June/July 1950
  • Each week's section provides an historical summary, the full text of memoes and documents
  • Web site maps, photographs, and links to other Korean War web sites
• Report of the No Gun Ri Review (U.S. Defense Dept.)
  • Report admits that U.S. soldiers killed an untold number of South Korean refugees during the last week of July 1950
  • Report divided into chapters and includes primary documents
  • Some chapters are 25 MB in pdf format
• State Level Casualty Lists (National Archives)
  • U.S. casualties in the Korean War, 1951-57
  • Arranged by state; subarranged by name or city of residence

Love Canal

• Love Canal Documents (SUNY/Buffalo)
  • Love Canal is a district within Niagara Falls City
  • Determined to be a federal emergency in August 1978 because it was sitting on a formal chemical dump
  • Web site provides a detailed history and chronology of the Love Canal
  • Digitized documents include testimony of residents and action plans for the cleanup
  • Index to all primary sources available in the SUNY-Buffalo Library

Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Martin Luther King Assassination
  • Civil Lawsuit Verdict (Court TV)
    • A Memphis jury decided on Dec. 8, 1999 that a conspiracy involving Loyd Jowers was involved in King's 1968 assassination
    • Court TV provides a summary of the trial and text of complaint
  • Investigation of Recent Allegations Regarding the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Dept. of Justice)
    • The 1999/2000 investigation was prompted by Martin Luther King III, who believed James Earl Ray was framed for the murder
    • Investigation found no conspiracy
    • Text in HTML format and divided into chapters
• Martin Luther King Papers (Stanford University)
  • Project to digitize papers includes several volumes
  • Most popular speeches (I Have A Dream, Mountaintop) listed separately
  • Web site includes bibliographical and biographical information

National Security Council

• Historic List of Meeting Topics, 1947-92
  • Following list was copied from President Clinton's web site
  • Truman Administration, 1947-53
  • Eisenhower Administration, 1953-61
  • Kennedy Administration, 1961-63
  • Johnson Administration, 1963-69
  • Nixon Administration, 1969-74
  • Ford Administration, 1974-77,
  • Carter Administration, 1977-81
  • Reagan Administration, 1981-89
  • Bush Administration, 1989-92

• Presidential Decisions and Directives
  • Definition
    • Presidential Directives given different names by different Presidents:

• Presidential Decisions and Directives (Federation of American Scientists)
  • List of national security directives since President Truman
  • Full text of everything that has been declassified
• Presidential Directives and Where to Find Them (Library of Congress)
  • Most are not published
  • Selected directives beginning 1993 may be searched at the White House Web Site under "Retrieve Documents via Search Index" and designating the type of document as "directive"
  • For web information about the directives search Lycos

Native Americans

• Native American Treaties
  • Kappler's Indian Affairs and Treaties (Okla.State Univ)
    • Text of U.S. treaties with Indian tribes between 1778 and 1883
    • Indexed by year, alphabetically by treaty name and tribe
    • Search engine by keyword with a relevancy ranking for search results

Presidents

• Abraham Lincoln
  • Abraham Lincoln Papers (Library of Congress)
    • Approximately 2200 letters written between March 1829 and June 1864
    • Browsable by date and searchable by keyword
  • Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln Assoc. and UMich)
    • Digitized version of an eight-volume set edited by Roy Basler and issued in 1953
    • Searchable by keyword and type of document (speech, memo, letter)
    • No table of contents apparent but can be found in the search result

• George Washington
  • George Washington Papers, 1741-1799 (Library of Congress)
    • Diaries, letters, military and financial papers
    • Entire collection is searchable
    • Images of pages in Washington's handwriting are not always the most legible
  • Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799 (UVa)
    • Digitized version of a 38 vol. work edited by John C. Fitzpatrick
    • Browsable and searchable by keyword, recipient, and date range
    • Text is easy to read and includes hyperlinked footnotes

• Portraits of the Presidents
  • Portraits of presidents, Washington through Clinton, in the National Portrait Gallery
  • Brief Presidential biography and background on the painting
  • Thumbnail sketch and full screen version

• Presidents of the United States (IPL/Summers)
  • Extensive web site with pages for each President, Washington to Clinton
  • Picture, biographies, election results, first ladies, cabinets, highlights of administration, historical documents, and links to related Internet sites
  • Special attention paid to links describing historical events and biographies of cabinet members

• Prosperity and Thirft: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929 (Library of Congress)
  • Book chapters on contemporary social history of the United States
  • Autobiographies of Calvin and Grace Coolidge
  • Speeches, papers, and charts
  • Keyword searching is easier than title or subject searches

• Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film (Library of Congress)
  • 104 films of Roosevelt speeches, trips, and events covering 1898 to 1919
  • Playback byQuicktime, MPEG, or RealPlayer

• Truman Presidential Library
  • Extensive library of digitized, de-classified documents, 1945-52
  • Subjects: integration of the armed forces, decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, Marshall Plan, recognition of Israel, Truman Doctrine, Berlin Airlift

• Warren Commission Report
  • Full text of 1964 report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy
  • Reviews conspiracy evidence
  • Biographical information on Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby

• White House Tapes Archive (C-Span)
  • Presidential Libraries: History Uncovered
    • Over 800 tapes including Kennedy Assassination and Warren Commission
    • Civil rights, Vietnam, elections
    • Audio uses RealPlayer

• See Federal Government/Presidents for current information

Salem Witchcraft

• Salem Witchcraft Trials, 1692 (Linder/UMo-Kansas City)
  • Chronology of events
  • Biographies of the participants, including the accuser, judges, and alleged witches
  • Petitions, a few transcripts, and information about Arthur Miller's The Crucible
• Witchcraft in Salem Village (UVa)
  • Verbatim transcripts of the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials
  • Accounts of witchcraft trials between 1648 and 1706
  • Salem Village is now Danvers, Massachusetts

Vietnamese War

• CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes 1962-1968
  • Award-winning book by Harold P. Ford
  • Analyzes intelligence provided to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson during the Vietnam War based on declassified documents
  • Focuses on distortions of intelligence, judgments on President Johnson's escalation of the war, and the Tet Offensive
  • Excerpts of primary documents and full footnotes

• Estimative Products on Vietnam, 1948-1975
  • Thirty-eight declassified documents from the CIA on the political situation in Vietnam and Cambodia before the during the South Vietnamese War
  • Assessments of North Vietnamese, Soviet, and Chinese intentions
  • Statistics, maps and letters
  • The full text of 174 documents are available on the CIA web site at http://www.foia.cia.gov/nic_vietnam_collection.asp

• Foreign Relations of the United States (State Dept)
  • Full text of declassified diplomatic documents
  • Jan-June 1965 and 1966 are available on the web as of June 1999

• Gulf of Tonkin (National Security Agency)
  • Memos, oral history interviews, intelligence reports and memoranda from the 1964 event from the National Security Agency
  • Released November 2005

• My Lai Courts Martial - 1970 (Linder/UMo-Kansas City)
  • Chronology of U.S. involvement with Vietnam and rules of war, including a 1956 Army Handbook
  • Biographies of participants
  • Excerpts from the William Calley and Ernest Medina trials
  • Public opinion polls and army chain of command

• State Level Casualty Lists (National Archives)
  • U.S. casualties in the Korean War, 1951-57 and Vietnamese War, 1957-95
  • Arranged by state; subarranged by name or city of residence

• User's Guide to the RAND Interviews in Vietnam
  • Describes and interprets project to conduct 2400 interviews with Viet Cong and those familiar with North Vietnam, 1964-68
  • Lists individual RAND reports with published interviews

• Vietnam War Documents and Photographs
  • Selected declassified documents on the end of the Vietnam War from the Gerald Ford Presidential Library
  • Includes cabinet minutes and notes, National Security Council meetings and memoranda, sample memoranda of conversations, a report by General Fred Wayand
  • Selected black and white photographs of meetings, including those discussing the Mayaguez incident
  • List of additional core holdings located at the Ford Presidential Library

• Vietnam War Era Ephemera Collection (University of Washington Library)
  • Posters, handouts and ephemera on Vietnam era protests
  • Divided into thematic areas, includings reasons for protesting the war, gay rights, women's rights, religion, the environment
  • Browsable and searchable

• Vietnam War Memorial
  • Names of U.S. personnel killed during the Vietnamese War
  • Name, rank, service branch, and hometown
  • Indexed by first letter of last name

• Virtual Vietnam War Archive (Texas Tech)
  • Over 1.5 million pages of documents, photographs, slides, audiotapes, and oral histories of the Vietnam War
  • Various indexes which can be modified by type of material (e.g. photographs of swift boats

• Wars for Vietnam, 1945-75 (Vassar College)
  • Texts for excerpts from primary documents
    • Geneva Peace Accords (1954) and Paris Accords (1973)
    • Diem legislation, Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Presidential speeches
  • Extensive annotated links to web sites on the Vietnamese War and Vietnam today

• See also
  • Digital National Security Archive
  • History Universe
  • Military Statistics

Works Progress Administration

• Background
  • Formed during the Depression to promote employment
  • States had a Federal Writers' Project to collection oral histories
  • MIRLYN Cataloging at the University of Michigan
    • United States Works Progress Administration (author)
    • United States Work Projects Administration (author)
    • Federal Writers Project (author)
    • Historical Records Survey (author)
  • Print Bibliographies
    • Index of Research Projects (HV 85 .A32)
    • Federal Writers Project: A Bibliography (Z 1247 .B741 1994)
    • Subject Index of Research Bulletins and Monographs (Z 7164 .U56 U55 1937
    • National Archives Preliminary Inventory 57 to Record Group 69 (CD 3026 .A2 no. 57)
• American Life Histories (Library of Congress)
  • Transcripts of life histories recorded by the Federal Writers Project
  • Data collected from 24 states
  • Searchable by keyword or by state
  • SGML or TIF viewer required
• Been Here So Long - American Slave Narratives
  • Transcripts of interviews with 17 former slaves conducted in the 1930s by the Federal Writers Project
• By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943 (Library of Congress)
  • Digitized posters of cultural events sponsored by the WPA
  • Also includes public health programs
• WPA Life Histories (Library of Virginia)
  • Interviews and books about Virginia social history
  • Includes slave narratives
  • Searchable by keyword, interviewee, and interviewer
  • Full text requires a TIFF viewer available from the site

Westward Expansion

• Oregon Trail (Idaho State University)
  • Diaries and memoirs of adventures on the Oregon Trail in the mid-1800s
  • Historic locations and little-known facts

World War I

• American Posters of World War I (Georgetown University)
  • Twenty-five patriotic posters, including recruitment, war bonds and red cross
  • Thumbnail sketches lead to full photograph
• World War I Documents (Brigham Young University)
  • Full text of U.S. and European documents, pre-1914 to post 1918
  • Includes conventions, official documents by country, and documents by date

World War II

• Afro-Americans and the Military, 1939-45 (UMich)
  • Books, articles, microforms, and web sites

• Final Months of the War with Japan: Signals Intelligence, U.S. Invasion Planning and the A-Bomb Decision (CIA)
  • Overview of intelligence to the federal government at the end of WWII
  • Annotated bibliography of 118 declassified original documents

• Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
  • Over 10,000 digitized documents with focus on German relations, 1933-45, the Anglo-American alliance, and the Vatican
  • Separate section of "Safe Files" includes formerly classified material on national security and the Manhattan Project
  • Additional keyword index to archival materials available in print

• German Propaganda Archive (Calvin College)
  • Nazi and East German propogana, 1933-1980
  • Includes translations of anti-semitic texts and posters

• Historic Nuclear Weapons Test Films (Department Of Energy)
  • Films of 75 nuclear weapons tests, 1945-1970s
  • View with RealPlayer or MPEG

• Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive (Calif. Digital Library)
  • Will eventually contain 20,000 pages of documents and photographs as well as oral histories of the relocation of Japanese Americans to settlement camps in U.S., 1942-45
  • As of January 29, 2001, has picture archives of the War Relocation Authority and brief descriptikons of the printed collections
  • Searchable only until further developed

• U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey
  • Summary report of European bombing in World War II
  • Report issued September 30, 1945

• Voices of the Holocaust (Illinois Institute of Technology)
  • Seventy interviews with Holocaust survivors conducted in 1946
  • Use "Gateway" for browsing or finding related links
  • Web site can also be searched
  • Summaries and full text in English

• World War II Links (Florida State University)
  • Links to oral histories, diaries, and American military units in World War II
  • Includes women's participation, Rosie the Riveter graphics, and World War II posters

• World War II Maps (Univ. of San Diego)
  • Over 100 strategic maps of World War II, beginning with 1924
  • Maps are listed chronologically, all on one page
  • Black and white thumbnail maps lead to the larger version

• World War II Posters (Northwestern University)
  • 300 color posters issued by the federal government through 1945
  • Searchable index

• See also Holocaust Assets and Nuremberg Trials

See also Federal Archives

Grace York, Coordinator, Documents Center
Kent Randell, Documents Intern
The University of Michigan Library

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/fedhis.html