Research Guides: #History: HIST 1301: US History to 1877

HIST 1301 Course Info

A survey of U.S. history from Pre-Contact Societies through Reconstruction. Themes to be developed include westward expansion and globalization, slavery, Native Americans, and religious and social changes. An additional purpose of this course is to introduce students to the skills and practices of history.

Create an argument through the use of historical evidence.
Analyze & interpret primary & secondary sources.
Analyze the effects of historical, social, political, economic, cultural, & global forces on this period of United States history.

Early America

Early Americas Digital Archive
- This link opens in a new window
EADA is a collection of electronic texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820.
more...less...
Published and supported by the University of Maryland Libraries’ e-Publishing Initiative, and was originally developed with the support of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH)
Living in the Atlantic World (1450-1800)
American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement,
American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.
National Humanities Center: American Beginnings 1492-1690
Chronological collection of primary source texts.
Digital History: The First Americans
Online text with primary source documents and insights into events, people, and culture.

Colonial & Revolution

Colonial North American Project at Harvard University
When complete, the project will make available to the world digitized images of all known archival and manuscript materials in the Harvard Library that relate to 17th and 18th century North America. In addition to reflecting the origins of the United States, the digitized materials also document aspects of life and work in Great Britain, France, Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico.

Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England by Jenny Hale Pulsipher As power within New England shifted, Indians appealed outside the region—to other Indian nations, competing European colonies, and the English crown itself—for aid in resisting the overbearing authority of such rapidly expanding societies as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Thus Indians were at the center—and not always on the losing end—of a contest for authority that spanned the Atlantic world.
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Collection: Ebook Central

Founders Online
George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Over 180,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the authoritative Founding Fathers Papers projects.
Colonial Williamsburg Digital Library
Access to the Virginia Gazette Newspaper 1730-1780. Also provides access to York County Probate Records (17th/18th century,) transcripts and images of selected historical documents, as well as Research Reports "documenting the study of the eighteenth-century town since the establishment of the Foundation. "
The Plymouth Colony Archive Project
This Plymouth Colony Archive presents a collection of fully searchable texts, including: court records, colony laws, seventeenth century journals and memoirs, probate inventories, wills, town plans, maps, and fort plans; research and seminar analyses of numerous topics; biographical profiles of selected colonists; and architectural, archaeological and material culture studies
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Extensive information about slave trade voyages from 1514 onward.
AmericanRevolution.org
Collection of content and links contextualizing the revolutionary period in America.

Early Republic, Westward Expansion

The A to Z of the Early American Republic by Richard Buel
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Published: 2009
The A to Z of the Early American Republic recounts the achievements and the failures, the progress and the backsliding, and the high and low points of our forefathers. First traced in the chronology and then explained in the introduction, the history of our nation's formative years is laid out in great detail. The several hundred dictionary entries describe the more eminent persons, the evolving institutions, and the crucial events that our young country faced.
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Collection: Ebook Central
Account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812.
Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic by Matthew Mason
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Collection: Ebook Central
Matthew Mason challenges the common contention that slavery held little political significance in America until the Missouri Crisis of 1819. Mason demonstrates that slavery and politics were enmeshed in the creation of the nation, and in fact there was never a time between the Revolution and the Civil War in which slavery went uncontested.

History of the American West (photograph collection)
The Denver Public Library’s Western History/Genealogy Department collection of digitized photographs (formerly Photoswest) chronicles the people, places and events that shaped the settlement and growth of the Western United States.
more...less...
Subjects include Native Americans, pioneers, railroads, mining, Denver and Colorado towns, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and the 10th Mountain Division ski troops.
Perry-Castañeda Library: Map Collection Historical Maps of the United States
Link goes to portion of page depicting early American maps, including territorial growth and military campaigns.
Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920
Over 3,300 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.

Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic by Jeffrey L. Pasley (Editor); Andrew W. Robertson (Editor); David Waldstreicher (Editor) In ways formal and informal, symbolic and tactile, this political world encompassed blacks, women, entrepreneurs, and Native Americans, as well as the Adamses, Jeffersons, and Jacksons, all struggling in their own ways to shape the new nation and express their ideas of American democracy. Taking inspiration from the new cultural and social histories, these political historians show that the early history of the United States was not just the product of a few "founding fathers," but was also marked by widespread and passionate popular involvement; print media more politically potent than that of later eras; and political conflicts and influences that crossed lines of race, gender, and class.
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Collection: Ebook Central
One Nation Divided by Slavery: Remembering the American Revolution While Marching Toward the Civil War by Michael F. Conlin Conlin investigates the different ways antebellum Americans celebrated civic holidays, read the Declaration of Independence, and commemorated Revolutionary War battles, revealing much about their contrasting views of American nationalism. While antebellum Americans agreed on many elements of national identity—in particular that their republic was the special abode of liberty on earth—they disagreed on the role of slavery.
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Collection: Ebook Central

Civil War & Reconstruction

Lens of War: Exploring Iconic Photographs of the Civil War by J. Matthew Gallman (Editor)
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Collection: Ebook Central
The essays describe a wide array of photographs and present an eclectic approach to the assignment, organized by topic: Leaders, Soldiers, Civilians, Victims, and Places
The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory by Bradley R. Clampitt (Editor)
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Collection: Ebook Central
Collected essays which examine the military front and the home front; the experiences of the Five Nations and those of the agency tribes in the western portion of the territory; the severe conflicts between Native Americans and the federal government and between Indian nations and their former slaves during and beyond the Reconstruction years; and the concept of memory as viewed through the lenses of Native American oral traditions and the modern evolution of public history.

NYTimes Topics: American Civil War (1861-1865)
News about American Civil War, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.
Digital History: Civil War
Explains major events plus details music, people, and images of the era.
eHISTORY: Civil War
Open Yale Courses: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
- This link opens in a new window
Essential Civil War Curriculum (Virginia Tech)

Video

American History in Video Collection
- This link opens in a new window
Part of Alexander Street Press Academic Video Online. Search or browse by historic event to find documentaries and newsreel footage.