Manifest Destiny:
HistoryTeacher.net: Manifest Destiny This quality website provides links to a vast amount of both primary and secondary sources for history.
Cultural and Regional:
Digital Schomberg This website offers digitized documents from the well-renowned Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.
Documenting the American South. The University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sponsors this rich collection of materials primarily from its southern holdings.
Primary sources are created by people who are experiencing an event first-hand and may include speeches, diaries, letters, photographs, government documents, and memoirs.
Secondary sources are created by people who are at least one step removed from the event in question and analyze or interpret the event and its effects. Books and journal articles are examples of secondary sources.
The Emanicpation Proclamation (image from the Library of Congress) is an example of a primary source issued by Abraham Lincoln in 1862.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation by Allen C. Guelzo was published in 2004 and is a secondary source. It is written over 100 years after Lincoln's proclamation and analyzes and interprets the effect of the primary source on American history.
For more information about primary sources:
Searching for primary sources on your topic:
Add primary source types (charters, letters, correspondence, interviews, speeches, personal narratives, etc) to your topic to search the library catalog.
Looking for a book that contains speeches by President Franklin Roosevelt?
In the Library catalog, Words(Anywhere) type: Roosevelt speeches. Here is a book you will find:
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. Selected speeches, messages, press conferences, and letters. Edited with an
introduction by Basil Rauch. Library call number: E 807.R6483
Or, you wish to find letters written by President Lincoln. In the Library catalog, Words(Anywhere) type:
Lincoln letters.
Lincoln, Abraham. The wit and wisdom of Abraham Lincoln, as reflected in his briefer letters and
speeches, edited by H. Jack Lang Library call number: E 497.42 1941
Are you looking for diaries of American slaves? In the Library catalog, Words(Anywhere) type: slaves diaries
Ward, Andrew. The slaves’ war : the Civil War in the words of former slaves / Andrew Ward
Library call number: E464 .W29 2008
How about a search to find letters about any era in US History? In the Library catalog, Words(Anywhere) type:
United States history letters
Legacy: treasures of Black history/ edited by Thomas C. Battle and Donna M. Wells ; preface by John Hope
Franklin Library call number: E185.53.W3 M66 2006
Posterity : letters of great Americans to their children / Dorie McCullough Lawson Library call number:
E173 .P77 2004
Debating the Issues in Colonial Newspapers by 
Milestone Documents in American History by 
Documents of American History by 
Race Relations in America: A Reference Guide with Primary Documents by 
The Revolutionary Era : primary documents on events from 1776 to 1800 by New York State Historic Newspapers This is a digital collection of various New York State newspapers ranging from 1803-2013.