Illinois During the Gilded Age

Image
Annotation

Focused on the Gilded Age in Illinois, this website offers 287 primary source documents. These include political speeches, pamphlets, songs, audio recordings, and maps that deal with such issues as politics, farming, law, labor, religion, and economic development. Visitors can browse all 287 items or search by author, title, date, theme, or genre. Visitors can search text documents, images, or audio files separately. The site also offers 26 video lectures from college professors interpreting the major issues of the period. Lecture topics include John Dewey, Dwight Moody, Chicago Gilded Age culture, women's suffrage, government and reform, the People's Party, William Jennings Bryan, William Mckinley, and the election of 1896.

The site can also be explored through eight historical themes, each with an interpretive essay, a bibliography, a search feature for related primary documents, and a list of related video lectures. The themes are: economic development and labor, labor, law and society, political development, race and ethnicity, religion and culture, settlement and immigration, and women's experience and gender roles. In addition, eight essays cover important periods: 1866-1868 (war's aftermath), 1869-1872 (the Chicago Fire), 1873-1876 (the Panic of 1873), 1877 (The Great Strike), 1878-1884 (Immigration, Labor, and Politics), 1884-1891 (Haymarket and Hull House), 1892-1895 (1893 Chicago's World Fair), and 1896 (The Cross of Gold). The "Teacher's Parlor" has nine lesson plans, including the WCTU and the lynching controversy, civil service reform, bimetallism, and free trade.

Historic Missouri Newspaper Project

Image
Annotation

This website provides a searchable archive of 14 historic Missouri newspapers. The newspapers available are The Columbia Missourian (1929, 1966-1985), Palladium (April 1907), the The Missouri Republican (July 1865), the St. Louis Christian Advicate (1857-1858, 1860, 1866-1870, 1874-1879), the St. Louis Globe Democrat (1875), the Daily Evening Herald (1835), The Far West (1836), the Liberty Weekly Tribune (1846-1848, 1850-1883), The Liberty Banner (March 1844, one issue), The Phelps County New Era (1875-1880), The Rolla Express (1860-1863, 1865, 1868, 1872-1873), The Rolla New era (1880-1897), the M.S.U. Independent (1894-1905), and The Hannibal Courier (October 1935; January and August 1988).

For many of the newspapers only several months of the years indicated are available. The full text of all available newspaper issues is searchable, and a range of keyword search options are offered. The user can search an individual publication or all newspapers in the archive. All content can be searched or the user can limit the search to articles, pictures, or advertisements. Newspapers are displayed by page and a rollover feature highlights individual articles that can then be read in a separate window. This archive is a useful resource for those researching the history of Missouri in the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Wright on the Web

Image
Annotation

This website offers "a virtual look at the works of Frank Lloyd Wright" through more than 170 images of the buildings he designed and short overviews of each period of his career. There are seven presentations: "The Early Years," "Prairie Style," "Non-Residential Works, 1900-1920," "The Twenties," "The Thirties," "The Forties," and "The Fifties." Each presentation includes a brief overview and images of the buildings he designed in that period. Most of the images are available through links to other websites. Additionally, the site includes a feature on 17 buildings by Wright that have been designated by the American Institute of Architects as examples of his architectural contribution to American culture. The site also offers links to more than 50 collections, directories, and miscellaneous resources on Wright and his architectural works. There is no search capability available, but the site is a good starting point for exploring the history of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture.

Dolley Madison Digital Edition

Image
Annotation

This website presents all known correspondence of the wife of James Madison, containing roughly 2,000 letters. Although many letters are thank-you notes or polite responses to social invitations, others offer rich insights into the personality and experiences of the First Lady, especially those exchanged with her sisters. The letters are organized into five periods: birth and youth; the years as wife of the secretary of state; the years as first lady; retirement; and widowhood. Users can search by name, date, topic, or place. A table of contents lists the letters by date, author, and recipient.

Additional features include a biographical sketch; "Crosslinks" listing all names (including nicknames, middle, and maiden) appearing in each letter, in order of appearance; a different color font to highlight unclear or missing characters or words; and a summary of the contents of each letter. Although the site is gated, a free trial option is accessible to all.

Getting the Message Out! National Political Campaign Materials, 1840-1860

Image
Annotation

After property qualifications for voting were eliminated in the 1830s, the American electorate expanded from 1.5 million to 2.4 million. As abolition, the extension of slavery, the Mexican War, and the Dred Scott decision dominated the national debate, songs, parades, and barbecues became increasingly important campaign tools to reach out to new voters. This type of political material culture is highlighted through this website, presenting 1,200 documents, more than 650 images, 100 songs, and interactive country-wide Presidential election maps for all six Presidential elections between 1840 and 1860. Detailed contextual information is available on a wide range of subjects, such as political campaigns, political parties, and major national events. Five short videos by well-known scholars address political culture, the second party system, politics as popular entertainment, and women's roles in antebellum politics. The detailed lesson plan in the "Teacher's Podium" challenges students to assess changing campaign strategies through song lyrics.

Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819

Image
Annotation

This database is the most essential collection of written materials for historical research in American history from 1801-1819. It provides full-text access to nearly 4.5 million pages of 36,000 books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints published in the U.S. during this period. Gazetteers, almanacs, juvenile literature, chapbooks, hymnals, campaign literature, novels, slave narratives, spelling books, school readers, treaties, maps, atlases, advertisements, diaries, autobiographies, and much more are all included. Most of these materials were originally detailed in the bibliography compiled by Ralph Shaw and Richard Shoemaker. This collection, long available on microfiche, is made available here as a digital, fully searchable online database. It complements Readex's other Early American Imprints series of material from the period of 1639-1800.

Life After the Holocaust: Stories of Holocaust Survivors After The War

Image
Annotation

This website presents the stories of six Holocaust survivors—three men, three women; five born in Poland and one in Czechoslovakia—who immigrated to the United States after World War II. Visitors can either listen to the six 30-minute interviews in their entirety, or listen to interview clips surrounding six themes: "starting over," "arriving in New York," "living with the past," "speaking out," "faith, guilt, and responsibility," and "telling their children." Many of the survivors begin by talking about their experiences before the war, and proceed to explain the complexities of starting over in the United States after the war.

Each interview is interspersed with narration and accompanied by photographs and other personal memorabilia, helping visitors better contextualize the narrators' stories. Audio files and interview transcripts are downloadable, making this website's resources useful in classroom settings, as well as to a broader public interested in understanding the aftermath of the Holocaust through deeply personal accounts.

The Lincoln Institute

Image
Annotation

This extensive website offers five projects on Abraham Lincoln's life and political career along with teacher and student resources. Each section offers essays on the persons discussed. "Mr. Lincoln's White House" explores the people and events related to the White House in Mr. Lincoln's time, including a look at nearby areas of the city, and a section on visitors' impressions of Lincoln. "Mr. Lincoln and the Founders" includes an essay on Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence, a background essay, observations by Lincoln scholars, and a bibliography. "Mr. Lincoln and Freedom," explores Lincoln and the issue of slavery. Additional topics include "Mr. Lincoln and Friends" and "Mr. Lincoln and New York."

The "Teacher Assistance" page includes links to 13 lesson plans. The site also offers a link to "Abraham Lincoln's Classroom" with resources for students and teachers, including quizzes, quotes, featured commentary, and links to maps. This site is an outstanding resource for material on teaching about Lincoln and the events of his presidency, as well as an excellent starting point for research on the Lincoln presidency and the politics and people of the Civil War era.

Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage

Image
Annotation

The cultural heritage of Maryland is readily accessible here through thousands of digitized documents, maps, and images arranged into more than 40 collections and two exhibits. Baltimore's native son and prominent early 20th-century journalist H.L. Mencken is featured through a collection of 19 portraits, artifacts, and letters. Edgar Allen Poe, who lived in Baltimore late in his life, can be glimpsed through 18 portraits, drafts, and letters. Another collection offers digital copies of primary sources from the War of 1812, including an original draft of the "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Other collections include photographs of African American life, a selection of sports-related items, photographs and watercolor paintings of old houses and churches in Queen Anne's County, vintage photographs of Baltimore streets and street cars, and a series of photographs awaiting identification from collection users. Ample historical context, including library donation information, is provided for all collections. The website's blog will be useful for those interested in library sciences, preservation, and digital archiving.

The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti

Image
Annotation

Felix Frankfurter's 18,000-word article about the prosecution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian-born anarchists charged with murder and robbery in 1920 and put to death in 1927, is presented here. The piece reflects doubts entertained by many intellectuals about the highly controversial trial. Appearing in the March 1927 edition of the Atlantic Monthly magazine, it provided background as well as a careful analysis of the legal questions involved. Frankfurter concluded that "every reasonable probability points away from Sacco and Vanzetti."

The site includes links to seven additional Atlantic Monthly articles: two on the trial—Katherine Anne Porter's "The Never-Ending Wrong" and "Vanzetti's Last Statement: A Record" by W. G. Thompson, the lawyer for the accused—and five dealing more broadly with the American criminal justice system. The site, while limited, is useful for studying radicalism, the red scare, and 1920s America.