This Library of Congress exhibit focuses upon the Age of Exploration, when the Western Hemisphere was linked with Europe and Africa. The exhibition examines the first sustained contacts between American people and European explorers, conquerors and settlers from 1492 to 1600. During this period, in the wake of Columbus's voyages, Africans also arrived in the hemisphere, usually as slaves. All of these encounters, some brutal and traumatic, others more gradual, irreversibly changed the way in which peoples in the Americas led their lives. Illustrating its text with maps, drawings, and other artifacts, the exhibit seeks to answer the following questions: What was life like in those areas before 1492? What spurred European expansion? How did European, African and American peoples react to each other? What were some of the immediate results of these contacts?
SALEM WITCHCRAFT TRIALS http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/Ftrials/salem/salem.htm
A comprehensive (almost exhaustive) compilation of information relating the the Salem witchcraft trials, including biographical sketches of the major participants, trial testimony, petitions and warrants, etc.
ARCHIVING EARLY AMERICA http://earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/index.html
Site includes maps of colonial America, portraits of famous people, newspaper articles from the period, a selection of books (including Franklin's autobiography), and copies of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
LIBERTY! THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
http://www.pbs.org/ktca/liberty/
This web site accompanies the PBS video series on the American Revolution. It is highly interactive and fun to explore–with sections on daily life in the colonies, military perspectives, information about Revolutionary War battles (cleverly written as newspaper articles)–but it does not provide a great deal of in-depth information or interpretation of the war.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
http://revolution.h-net.msu.edu/
This site was created by H-Net, Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine to serve as a complement to the official companion site to PBS's LIBERTY! documentary series. It offers scholarly essays, a bibliography, connections to related web sites, and discussions pertaining to the Revolution, its social and intellectual context, and the framing and ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
THE TRAIL OF TEARS
http://128.192.30.16:2001/slide/jimmyweb/tears.html
This web site appears to be designed for public school students, but it is still a useful general background to the Trail of Tears–and by moving forward and/or backward from the Trail of Tears page, a visitor can gain additional information about the Cherokee, the Creek, and the other Native American tribes forced to relocate further west in the early nineteenth century.
HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL PAINTINGS
http://www.northnet.org/hildreth/ish_pic.htm
This web site is devoted to a personal exploration of the reasons for the popularity American landscape paintings beginning in the 1820s. The site creator has included a number of Hudson River School paintings and her reactions to the paintings and to the region which inspired the works make compelling reading.
WOMEN'S HISTORY WORKSHOP
http://www.assumption.edu/WHW/
There are a number of excellent web sites pertaining to nineteenth-century women's issues, but this one is perhaps the most comprehensive. It provides transcripts of speeches given at the Woman's Rights Convention held in Worcester in 1850 as well as newspapers accounts of the convention. It also includes archival material relating to nineteenth-century popular music, fashion and dress reform, children's literature, and advice books.
AMERICA'S FIRST LOOK INTO THE
CAMERA: DAGUERREOTYPE PORTRAITS AND VIEWS, 1839-1864
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/daghtml/daghome.html
The Library of Congress 's on-line daguerreotype collection consists of more than 650 photographs dating from 1839 to 1864. Portrait daguerreotypes produced by the Mathew Brady studio make up the major portion of the collection. The collection also includes early architectural views by John Plumbe, several Philadelphia street scenes, early portraits by pioneering daguerreotypist Robert Cornelius, and copies of painted portraits.
FIVE POINTS SITE
http://r2.gsa.gov/fivept/fphome.htm
Archaeologists and historians rediscover a famous nineteenth-century
New York neighborhood, tracing its development from its eighteenth-century
origins as a tannery district to its late-nineteenth-century evolution
into sweatshops operated by recent immigrants.
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW: LIVING
THE CIVIL WAR IN PENNSYLVANIA AND VIRGINIA
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow/vshadow.html
This project interweaves the histories of two communities
on either side of the Mason-Dixon line during the era of the American Civil
War. It also combines a narrative and an electronic archive of the sources
on which the narrative is based.
SELECTED CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHS
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphome.html
This Library of Congress collection contains over one
thousand photographs. Most of the images were made under the supervision
of Mathew B. Brady, and include scenes of military personnel, preparations
for battle, and battle after-effects. The collection also includes portraits
of both Confederate and Union officers, and a selection of enlisted men.
"WE'LL SING TO ABE OUR SONG!":
SHEET MUSIC ABOUT LINCOLN, EMANCIPATION,
& THE CIVIL WAR
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/scsmhtml/scsmhome.html
This Library of Congress collection includes more than two hundred sheet-music compositions that represent Lincoln and the war as reflected in popular music. The collection spans the years from Lincoln's presidential campaign in 1859 through the centenary of Lincoln's birth in 1909.