Century of Lawmaking: Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873

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Image Century of Lawmaking for..: Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873
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This comprehensive set of Congressional documents covers the nation's founding through early Reconstruction. Materials are organized into four categories: Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention; Statutes and Documents; Journals of Congress; and Debates of Congress. The site provides descriptions of 16 types of documents, including bills and resolutions, American State Papers, the U.S. Serial Set, Journals of the Continental Congress, the Congressional Globe, and the Congressional Record.

A presentation addresses the making of the Constitution that introduced an 1834 compilation of Congressional debates and proceedings and a timeline presents American history as seen in Congressional documents. Special attention is directed to Revolutionary diplomatic correspondence, Indian land cessions, the Louisiana Purchase, the Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and the electoral college.

Core Historical Literature of Agriculture

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Image for Core Historical Literature of Agriculture
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Currently this website presents full-text, searchable facsimiles of 1,850 monographs and 288 journal volumes related to agriculture in the U.S. All were published between 1806 and 1989. Evaluations and 4,500 core titles are detailed in the seven volume series The Literature of the Agricultural Sciences. Fields of study covered include agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal science, forestry, nutrition, rural sociology, and soil science.

Types of materials include memoirs and transactions of early agricultural societies, newspapers, almanacs, agricultural periodicals, governmental publications, and archives of families, communities, and corporations. Users can search by author, title, subject, or keyword, then access the title page, table of contents, index, or pages of the text. These resources are valuable for studying the profound social, cultural, and economic effects of shifts in the history of American farming.

Hypertext on American History from the Colonial Period until Modern Times

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Image, Hypertext on American History from the Colonial Period until Modern Times
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With more than 375 documents related to United States history from the colonial period to the present, this site provides important historical documents and speeches. "Essays" contains more than 35 writings on various aspects of United States history. "Biographies" offers more than 200 biographies of historical figures related to American history, ranging from 350 words to 2,000 words in length. "Presidents" contains documents pertaining to each United States president, including inaugurations and State of the Union addresses.

Documents and essays are hyperlinked to four editions of the booklet An Outline of American History (1954, 1963, 1990, and 1994), a publication distributed abroad by the United States Information Service, along with similar volumes on American economy, government, literature, and geography. The site provides basic primary sources for American history survey courses.

Legacy Tobacco Documents Library

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Camel cigarettes advertisement, 1952, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library
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More than 40 million pages from more than seven million tobacco industry documents are presented on this website. Documents were made public as a stipulation of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement to settle multiple lawsuits. Index records, prepared by tobacco companies, can be searched by full-text.

Documents range from the 1930s to 2002, though most were created since the 1950s, and deal with industry concerns such as marketing, sales, advertising, research and development, manufacturing, and expansion of business to developing countries. There are 80 links to related sites and promises to include more documents in the future. This project offers an abundance of material for studying the history of smoking, advertising, and 20th-century American business practices.

Medicine and Madison Avenue

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Image, Ayds ad, Carlay Company Inc., 1953, Medicine and Madison Avenue
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Designed to help users better understand the evolution and complexity of medicinal marketing in the 20th century, this website provides more than 600 health-related advertisements printed in newspapers and magazines from 1910 to 1960. Ads are organized into six categories: Household Products; Over-the-Counter Drugs; Personal and Oral Hygiene; Vitamins and Tonics, Food, Nutrition and Diet Aids; Institutional and Pharmaceutical; and Cigarettes. Over-the-Counter Drugs; Personal and Oral Hygiene; Vitamins and Tonics, Food, Nutrition and Diet Aids provide the largest number of advertisements; the Cigarette category offers only one.

Supplementary materials, such as internal reports from marketing companies, American Medical Association reports and editorials, Federal Trade Commission archival records, transcripts of 1930s radio commercials, and medical journal articles, focus on the production and influence of health-related advertisements. A bibliography provides 80 further reading suggestions. The project highlights materials for case studies on Fleischmann's Yeast, Listerine, and Scott Tissue.

American Family Immigration History Center

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Photo,"Immigrants aboard [...],"1892, American Family Immigration History Center
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Records on the more than 25 million passengers and ship crew members who passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924 are available through this website. Most passengers came from Europe and Russia, although there are some records from Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

The website requires a free, simple registration to view detailed records that include name, residence, date of arrival, age on arrival, ethnicity, place of residence, marital status, ship of travel, place of departure, and a copy of the original ship manifest (a transcription is also available). The website includes extensive contextual information about Ellis Island, immigration, and genealogical research. "Family Histories" illuminates the genealogical research experiences of six Americans of diverse ethnic backgrounds.

The "Peopling of America" exhibit covers six periods from pre-1790 to 2000, with graphs, photographs, and immigration statistics geared to place of origin. Additional information is available for an annual fee.

Freedmen's Bureau Online

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Logo, Freedmen's Bureau Online
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The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, also known as the Freedmen's Bureau, was established by the War Department in 1865 to supervise all relief and education activities for refugees and freedmen after the Civil War. The Bureau was responsible for issuing rations, clothing, and medicine, and had custody of confiscated lands in the former Confederate states and other designated territories. This website contains an extensive collection of Freedmen's Bureau records and reports.

Included are more than 100 transcriptions of reports on murders, riots, and "outrages" (any criminal offense) that occurred in the former Confederate states from 1865 to 1868. There are also 30 links to records and indexes of labor contracts between freedmen and planters between 1865 and 1872; seven links to related sites; six links to marriage records of freedmen, 1861–1872; and more than 100 miscellaneous state record items concerning freedmen.

George Washington Papers, 1741-1799

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Image, Genl. Lafayette's departure from..., 1840-1860, George Washington Papers
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This collection of approximately 152,000 documents written by or to George Washington is the largest set of original Washington documents in the world. It includes correspondence, letterbooks, diaries, journals, account books, military records, reports, and notes from 1741 through 1799. Although the site is searchable by keyword, many documents are available only as page images rather than as transcribed text and the handwriting can be difficult to read. Transcripts, however, do exist for all diary pages and for selected documents.

The site includes a timeline with links to relevant documents; essays on Washington's diaries, letterbooks, and career as a surveyor and mapmaker; and an essay entitled "Creating the American Nation."

Our Documents

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Image, National Recovery Administration logo, Our Documents
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A cooperative effort, this online repository presents 100 milestone documents in American history. The first document is the Richard Henry Lee Resolution of June 7, 1776, proposing independence for the American colonies. The last is the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In between, visitors will find Eli Whitney's 1794 cotton gin patent, the 1862 Pacific Railway Act, and the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling.

Additional documents include the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916, and orders and addresses by several presidents, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. There is a full-page scan and transcription of each document. In addition to the chronological list of 100 documents, the site includes a "People's Vote." Of the 100 documents, Americans voted the Declaration of Independence number one, followed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia

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Supreme Court 1890. Photo by Napoleon Sarony. Courtesy Library of Congress.
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These audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions cover more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Materials include 3,000 hours of audio arguments in selected cases since 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of thirteen broad categories, such as civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions.

Cases include Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (affirmative action), and Bush v. Gore (election results). Biographies are provided for all Supreme Court justices and "The Pending Docket" provides briefs and additional materials on upcoming cases. The website also includes links to written opinions since 1893 and podcasts featuring discussions of cases starting in 1793.