Rare Map Collection

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A collection of more than 800 maps dating from 1544 to 1939 of mostly North American locations, with an emphasis on 19th-century Georgia. Organized into nine chronological and topical divisions—New World; Colonial America; Revolutionary America; Revolutionary Georgia; Union and Expansion; American Civil War; Frontier to New South; Savannah and the Coast; and Transportation.

Includes maps of battles, American Indian nations, railroads, and roads. Useful especially for those studying military history and the development of the South.

A Curriculum of United States Labor History for Teachers

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This curriculum addresses labor politics and economics from the colonial period to the present day. Conceived and written by James D. Brown, Jr, "in cooperation with teachers from the metro Chicago area and local union members," it is divided into 11 chronological sections, each comprised of several elements: a 100–200-word overview; an inventory of major themes, episodes, and concepts; and a feature entitled "Integrating Labor History into Effective Teaching of the Period." This last portion recommends questions and lessons for students, and, for several sections, provides primary source materials. Thus "The Growth of a New Nation" outlines a lesson that asks students to compare Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence with an 1829 essay by George H. Evans—a founder of New York's Working Man's Party—entitled "The Working Men's Declaration of Independence."

The 11 sections emphasize gains achieved by organized labor and invite teachers to "highlight the stark contrast between today's working environment and the relationship between workers and owners of the past." Includes a list of 44 "Significant People in America's Labor History"; a 16-title bibliography; a link to an international news desk providing daily stories dealing with labor groups and issues; and additional material on Illinois labor history.

Some sections of the curriculum are thinner than others. More curiously, the site does not furnish any primary documents from the 20th century, and generally relies more on lists of events and issues than the sort of narrative prose that can enliven the past.

Voice of the Shuttle: Web Page for Humanities Research

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This gateway website was created by English professor Alan Liu. It contains over 70 pages of links to humanities-related resources on the internet and provides a guide to online resources in 26 subject categories, including anthropology, legal studies, history, women and gender, and minority studies.

Each link is subdivided. For example, the Minority Studies link is divided into 11 subcategories, including African American, Chicano Latino Hispanic, and Native American history. The History category is subdivided into 19 sections, such as Family History, Military History, and national and regional categories like North America, with subheadings for Canada and United States. The United States history subheading contains over 500 links to primary documents from all periods of American history.

This site contains both primary and secondary resources, and there is a History Teaching Resources link that provides resources for teachers of World History, syllabi for women and gender-related courses, and a guide to using historical places as teaching tools. The site is easy to navigate and contains a keyword search engine.

The Internet African-American History Challenge

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Features illustrated biographical sketches, each approximately 400 words in length, of 12 notable 19th-century African Americans—Alexander Crummell, Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, Harriet Tubman, Henry McNeal Turner, John Mercer Langston, Mary Elizabeth Bowser, Mary Church Terrell, Mary Ann Shadd, Nat Turner, Richard Allen, and Sojourner Truth.

Includes three interactive quizzes, based on information contained in the biographies, divided into three levels of difficulty.

Also provides guidelines for classroom use, including directions for setting up an "online grade book." The site's creators plan to add sketches and quizzes on notable 20th-century African Americans.

This user-friendly site is a useful tool for introducing African American history to young students.

Seneca Village

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An introduction to Seneca Village, a multi-ethnic community of African Americans and Irish and German immigrants destroyed by New York city officials in 1857 to clear land for Central Park.

Through a selection of materials, currently limited to maps, images, and secondary essays, the site furnishes background on both Seneca Village and Central Park more generally. Also suggests "classroom activities" and provides a list of 63 related titles.

Based on The Park and the People—an award-winning history of Central Park by Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar—the site promises to expand significantly (but, as of October 2000 had not changed significantly from when it was launched a few years earlier). "Primary documents will include the New York State Manuscript Census for 1855; birth and death records; church registers and records; newspaper articles; political cartoons, drawings, illustrations, photographs, and maps. Many of these will be interactive, so that students can query the data directly. "

The Alexis de Tocqueville Tour: Exploring Democracy in America

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Designed to accompany a nine-month C-SPAN "road trip" in 1997–98 that retraced Alexis de Tocqueville's travels in 19th-century America, this site contains information about Tocqueville, his travels, and his writings; the full text of Democracy in America; a map of Tocqueville's trip; and selections—organized by state—from the journal he kept while in America.

Also provides a short list of references to Tocqueville by modern-day Americans ranging from President Bill Clinton to Newt Gingrich; 26 present-day photographs of Tocqueville's hometown; a 13-title bibliography; access to "A Conversation on Democracy," a two-hour video special; a preview of the book and video Traveling Tocqueville's America; links to seven sites on France; and approximately 30 lesson plans.

A useful introduction to the man and his influence.

Women's History: The 1850 Worcester Convention

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To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the First National Women's Rights Convention, held in 1850 in Worcester, MA, this site provides an archive of documents relating to the convention, including eight speeches, 15 newspaper accounts, 14 letters, and selected items from the proceedings.

Also offers three speeches from the 1851 convention, as well as a host of other resources concerning the 19th-century woman's movement more generally. Diary entries, government reports, tracts for and against suffrage, poems from Godey's Lady's Book, and the full text of several books are included, such as The Lady's Guide to Perfect Gentility (1856).

On an ongoing basis, the site presents essays about and selections by formerly well-known advocates for women's rights who since have been forgotten; currently the works of Jane Grey Swisshelm and Caroline Wells Healy Dall are featured.

Also includes links to 24 related websites.

Comprehensive with regard to the 1850 convention, and useful for more general resources devoted to the mid-19th-century women's rights movement.

The Digital Classroom

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A series of activities, primary documents, lesson plans, links, and worksheets designed to encourage "teachers of students at all levels to use archival documents in the classroom."

Includes tasks to help students understand how to use National Archives materials; 20 thematically-oriented teaching activities covering the period from the Constitutional Convention to Watergate; detailed information about National History Day, an annual educational program and competition; and 35 lessons and activities organized around constitutional issues ranging from well-known patent cases to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Many of the activities correlate to specific sections of the National History Standards and the National Standards for Civics and Government. Also contains a handful of links and material about books, workshops, and summer institutes for teachers.

A well-organized introduction to the practice of historical research.

The Five Points Site

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A virtual exhibit of a 1991 archaeological undertaking at the Foley Square Courthouse block in Lower Manhattan of the 19th-century "Five Points" area, a working-class and immigrant neighborhood infamously regarded in contemporary accounts as a "center of vice and debauchery." The site offers information on excavations of a tannery, bakery, saloon, and oyster house, as well as residences in the neighborhood--including Irish, German, Jewish, and Italian residents at various times--and makes an argument that journalistic descriptions of the period failed to adequately represent the "hard work and industry" that material culture evidence suggests. Includes eight images of the excavation sites and more than 60 photos of artifacts. The site also provides five maps, six contemporary images of the neighborhood, and a list of five recommended readings and 13 links to other websites on archaeology and history. Valuable for those studying 19th-century urban life and as a demonstration of ways that archaeology can provide a window on everyday life of earlier eras.

Third Person, First Person: Slave Voices

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An exhibit of primary source material relating to slavery from the late 18th century to emancipation in the 19th century.

It reproduces or describes 33 documents, such as a broadside announcing a reward for the return of a runaway slave, a map delineating slave labor on an indigo plantation, a New York bill of sale for the purchase of a slave in 1785, and an 85-page memoir written in 1923 by Elizabeth Johnson Harris, an African American woman from Georgia who relates stories and experiences of her parents and grandparents, who had been slaves. The site "showcases the kinds of rare materials that under scrutiny reveal the ambitions, motivations, and struggles of people often presumed mute."