Dr. Kurt Hackemer

Primary Document Collections in American Military History

ID Weeks Library has a relatively strong collection in American Military history, but much of that collection consists of secondary sources. When writing a research paper, of course, one can never have enough primary sources. Students writing research papers for HIST460: American Military History may find the web sites listed below useful. Remember, the documents listed on these sites may be transcriptions, not digital images. Use them with appropriate caution. This list is by no means exhaustive. If you find a good web site that you think belongs here, please let me know.
Depending on your project, you may also find period newspapers helpful. If so, please consult my list of Historic Newspapers.
Digitized

• The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives - Provides access 5.5 million photographs taken over occupied Western Europe by the Allies during World War II.
• American Memory Collection from the Library of Congress - Highlights include Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 (contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves), A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: US Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1875, Journals of the Continental Congress, Letters of Delegates to Congress, Elliot's Debates: The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Farrand's Debates: The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Bills and Resolutions, Statutes at Large, the American State Papers, the US Serial Set (selected), the House Journal, the Senate Journal, the Senate Executive Journal, Maclay's Journal: Journal of William Maclay, United States Senator from Pennsylvania, 1789-1791, the Annals of Congress, the Register of Debates, the Congressional Globe, the Congressional Record, Civil War Maps, 1861-1865, the Newspaper and Current Periodicals Reading Room, Newspaper Pictorials: WWI Rotogravures, The Nineteenth Century in Print: The Making of America in Books and Periodicals, and Stars and Stripes February 8, 1918, to June 13, 1919
• The Atlantic Civil War Photographs
• Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States - Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data.
• Brown University Center for Digital Initiatives - Contains several collections that include manuscripts, images, broadsides, newspapers, sheet music and other objects.
• Center of Military History Online Bookshelves
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers - Library of Congress project that allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
• Combined Arms Research Library (CARL) Digital Library - Digital images of documents from the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.
• Digital Archive: International History Declassified - The Digital Archive contains once-secret documents from governments all across the globe, uncovering new sources and providing fresh insights into the history of international relations and diplomacy. It collects the research of three Wilson Center projects which focus on the interrelated histories of the Cold War, Korea, and Nuclear Proliferation.
• Dr. Seuss Went to War: A Catalog of Political Cartoons by Dr. Seuss
• FamilySearch: U.S. Civil War Era Records - Provides a quick overview of the vast array of historic records and aids for those researching casualties and veterans of the Civil War. Collections include: Union and Confederate pension, prisoner of war, cemetery, National Soldier Home, and census records.
• Fold3 - Paid access site containing American military records.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Digital Archives
• Gilmer Civil War Maps Collection - The Gilmer maps are an extensive group of Civil War maps, including both manuscript maps and printed maps with manuscript annotations and engineers' drawings of military construction.
• Historic Government Publications from World War II
• History of the Cold War: Selected Resources at the Mudd Manuscript Library - The Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library holds papers for architects of the Cold War strategy and those who fought the battles. Significant collections include the papers of James Baker, George Ball, Allen Dulles, John Foster Dulles, James Forrestal, George Kennan, George McGovern and Adlai Stevenson and the records of the Council on Foreign Relations.
• Letters from World War One and Two - Primary source website dedicated to databasing as much mail from soldiers of World War One and Two as possible and making them freely available online. Site contains hundreds of letters, envelopes, stamps, photos and miscellanous items.
• Lewis & Clark: A Journey - Celebrates the bicentennial of the expedition by providing resources for education and research from the collections of the University of Cincinnati Libraries and beyond.
• Library of American Political History Images
• The Library of Virginia Digital Library Program - The Digital Library Program transfers rare and unique Virginia materials into an integrated, user-friendly electronic research environment. Since its inception in 1995, the Program has digitized more than 2.2 million original documents, photographs, and maps, and produced more than 80 fully-searchable databases, indexes, and electronic finding aids.
• The LOUISiana Digital Library - Click the "Collections" link to see everything that is available. Contains several searchable collections, including "The American Missionary Association and the Promise of a Multicultural America: 1839-1954," "French Colonization of Louisiana and Louisiana Purchase Map Collection," "From Diversity, Strength: A People's History of Louisiana, 1800-1815," "Siege of Port Hudson Louisiana 1863," "John H. Randolph and Family Letters," and "Norman (E. B. and N. Philip) Collection of Steamboat Photographs."
• Lyndon B. Johnson Oral History Project - Provided by the Scripps Library at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. A collection of over 1,150 interview transcripts from the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, may be viewed online in .pdf format. Each interview is fully searchable.
• Making of America at the University of Michigan - This collection contains images of 8500 books and over 50,000 articles with 19th century imprints. The site has a powerful search engine that lets you search the text of all of the books and articles. This site focuses on monographs in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, science and technology, and religion, although there are many articles available as well.
• Making of America at Cornell University - This collection provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.The site has a powerful search engine that lets you search the text of all of the books and articles. This site focuses on the major journal literature of the period, ranging from general interest publications to those with more targeted audiences (such as agriculture). Highlights include The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies and the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion
• National Archives - Researchers should start with the Archival Research Catalog (ARC), the gateway to searching digital and non-digital records at the National Archives. You might also find Films available through Google Video to be useful.
• National Security Agency/Central Security Service Declassification Initiatives - NSA/CSS periodically releases declassified documents or indexes to these documents to the public. Specific initiatives provide documents on the Gulf of Tonkin, USS Liberty, VENONA, Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis, John F. Kennedy Assassination and the Truman Memorandum.
• The National Security Archive at The George Washington University - National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Books provide online access to critical declassified records on issues including U.S. national security, foreign policy, diplomatic and military history, intelligence policy, and more.
• New York Public Library Digital Gallery - NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.
• 19th Century Books from the Perseus Digital Library at Tufts - primarily Civil War-related books
• The Nuremberg Trials Project: A Digital Document Collection
• The Online Archive of California - Brings together historical materials from a variety of California institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives. Over 120,000 images; 50,000 pages of documents, letters, and oral histories; and 8,000 guides to collections are available.
• Online Collections from the Manuscript Reading Room of the Library of Congress - Includes the Abraham Lincoln Papers, Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929, The Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress, The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers, 1862-1939, African American Odyssey exhibition (digital images), The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920, The George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s, Poet at Work: Recovered Notebooks from the Thomas Biggs Harned Walt Whitman Collection, and Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years.
• The Open Library - The Open Library website was created by the Internet Archive to demonstrate a way that books can be represented online. The vision is to create free web access to important book collections from around the world. Books are scanned and then offered in an easy-to-use interface for free reading online. If they're in the public domain, the books can be downloaded, shared and printed for free. They can also be printed for a nominal fee by a third party, who will bind and mail the book to you. The books are always FREE to read at the Open Library website.
• Papers of the War Department, 1784-1800 - Fire destroyed the War Department office in 1800. For decades historians believed that its files, and the window they provide into the early federal government, had been lost forever. This collection unites copies of the lost files in a digital archive that reconstitutes this invaluable historical resource.
• Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University - Digitized collections posted here include, Medicine and Madison Avenue; Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920; William Gedney Photographs and Writings; Ad*Access, Historic American Sheet Music; Emma Spaulding Bryant Letters; The Urban Landscape Digital Image Access Project; Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement; George Percival Scriven: An American in Bohol, The Philippines, 1899-1901; African-American Women; Civil War Women; Duke Papyrus.
• Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842 - From the Digital Library of Georgia
• Truman Presidential Library Digital Archives - Includes materials on the Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb, Recognition of Israel, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, Desegregation of the Armed Forces, the 1948 Campaign, the Korean War, the Berlin Airlift, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
• United States Military Academy History Department Map Library - Digital representations from the six atlases and nearly one thousand maps in the History Department's collection, encompassing not only America's wars but global conflicts as well.
• United States Military Academy Library Digital Collections - The U.S. Military Academy Library maintains extensive documentation of the history of West Point, the U.S. Military Academy, and Academy alumni in its Special Collections and Archives. These rich historical collections include extensive book, manuscript, and photograph holdings among other formats.
• University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service - DLPS provides access to over 200 text, image, and finding aid collections that collectively provide access to over a million digital objects. Some are restricted to University of Michigan users but many are public. Some highlights: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Basler edition), the Digital General Collection (books from the University of Michigan collection, scanned for preservation purposes), the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, the Transportation History Collection: Railroads, and The United States and Its Territories: 1870-1925: The Age of Imperialism, which contains the full text of monographs and government documents published in the United States, Spain, and the Philippines between 1870 and 1925. The primary focus of the material is the Spanish-American war and subsequent American governance (approximately 1898-1910).
• University of Washington Library Digital Collections
• University of Wisconsin Digital Collections - Offers a wide array of digitized materials. SELECTED highlights include Foreign Relations of the United States - selected volumes and the Great Lakes Maritime History Project
• University of Utah Digital Collections
• William T. Sherman Papers at the University of Notre Dame - The William Tecumseh Sherman Family Papers, as they were deposited in the University of Notre Dame Archives by Miss Eleanor Sherman Fitch, the granddaughter of General Sherman, prior to her death in 1959, consisted of correspondence, clippings, photographs, scrapbooks, diaries, various legal papers and documents, cancelled checks, bankbooks, financial ledgers, drafts for and copies of articles, speeches and military orders, and explanatory notations -- sometimes on the items themselves and sometimes on separated sheets. This material ranged from the year 1808 to the year 1959 and consisted of originals, photostats, microfilm, typewritten copies and handwritten copies. The nucleus of the collections had been gathered and preserved by Philemon Tecumseh Sherman followed the death of the father, General Sherman. It was subsequently augmented by Miss Fitch, Philemon's niece, who added items in her own possession, typewritten copies which she had made of various items in the collections itself, items or copies of items which she was able to acquire from the others, and her own explanatory notes.
• World War II Field Manuals - Presented as downloadable PDF files.

• 1885 South Dakota Civil War Veteran's Census
• AmDocs: Documents for the Study of American History
• The Avalon Project at Yale Law School. Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy - an outstanding collection of documents from all eras.
• Cold War International History Project - Documents from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• Combating Terrorism Center at West Point - Documents from the Harmony database in English and Arabic.
• Davis Diaries - Emilie Davis started keeping a diary on January 1, 1863, the day the Emancipation Proclamation became official. Short, intimate diary entries give extraordinary insight into how a young woman of color responded to the momentous events of the U. S. Civil War.  Emilie Davis's experiences and observations lay bare the fissures and cracks that rent northern communities during the war.
• Documenting the American South
• Documents in Military History
• Foreign Relations of the United States
• Founders Online - Offers free access to the papers of six of the most important figures from America’s founding era: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Over 119,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the authoritative, federally funded Founding Fathers Papers projects.
• From Revolution to Reconstruction... And What Happened Afterwards
• Government Documents on 19th Century US History - A useful links page to digitized and non-digitized sources.
• Historical Census Browser - Examine state and county topics for individual census years or over time.
• Historical Text Archive
• History on the Web - University of Washington Libraries
• The Mexican-American War and the Media, 1845-1848 - Provides links to transcriptions of newspaper articles, indexes, images, bibliographies, timelines, and official documents related to the 1846-1848 war between the United States and Mexico.
• Navy Department Library Online Reading Room - Publications and Documents
• Operational Leadership Experiences Project - The Operational Leadership Experiences Project is an oral history venture by the Combat Studies Institute which collects, transcribes and displays the firsthand recollections of the soldiers, service members, government personnel and civilians who have planned, participated in, observed and supported operations in the Global War on Terrorism.
• Presidential Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower
• Primary Documents Relating to World War II
• Public Papers of the Presidents
• University of Oklahoma College of Law: A Chronology of US Historical Documents
• The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
• The Vietnam Archive
• White House Tapes: The President Calling
• The World War I Document Archive