Thirty-five of the most important documents in the early history of the United States are presented here, accompanied by ample contextualization from the Library of Congress's vast collections. In addition to the "founding documents," the collection includes George Washington's Commission as Commander in Chief (1775), the Federalist Papers (1787–1788), the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Missouri Compromise (1820), the Indian Removal Act (1830), Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) case, the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Each document is annotated and accompanied by a related primary source image. Links to American Memory collections and Library of Congress Exhibitions containing additional contextual documents and other secondary source interpretations are also provided, as are links to external websites and a selected bibliography.

Bringing together a wide range of material on the public communications of American presidents, as well as election data and statistical information on presidency, this website presents the public messages, statements, speeches, and news conference remarks of presidents from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush. Materials can be browsed or searched by month and year. Visitors can also view transcripts of all inaugural addresses and State of the Union messages, convention speeches of presidential candidates from 1960 to 2004, and all the presidential debates.

The site offers major party platforms from 1840 to 2004 and transcripts of various events from the 2001 presidential transition. Transcripts from the "Presidential Candidates Debates" from the 1960 through the 2004 election are presented. A media archive contains various audio and video clips from the late 19th century to the present. A map shows electoral votes and popular vote totals and percentages by state from 1828 to 2004.

Thomas Jefferson outlined three motivating factors in his instructions to Lewis and Clark: a search for navigable rivers to span the continent; a quest for Edenic beauty and riches; and the competitive desire to acquire a continental empire. These 180 documents and artifacts interpret 19th-century westward exploration from this perspective. The range of materials is striking. In addition to maps, plans, and charts, the site offers images (sketches, watercolors, etchings, and engravings), texts (letters, diaries, speeches, newspapers, and books), and tools (surveying and medical instruments, cooking utensils, armaments). The exhibit opens with an examination of the "imperial mentality" common to Virginia's aristocratic class in the late 18th century and then focuses on the Lewis and Clark journey. It ends with the subsequent expeditions of Zebulon Pike, Stephen H. Long, Charles Wilkes, John Charles Fremont, and the mid-19th century transcontinental railroad plan that supplanted the search for a water route.

This eclectic collection of more than 2,200 items spans the 17th to the 20th centuries. Visitors can search material from nine sections and visit 14 exhibitions. "A Crisis of the Union" presents 224 pamphlets, broadsides, clippings, paintings, and maps on the Civil War. A collection devoted to Theodore Dreiser presents correspondence, various editions of the novel Sister Carrie, an early manuscript for Jennie Gerhardt, and scholarly essays. Approximately 4,000 photographs from singer Marian Anderson's papers are complemented by more than 40 audio and video recordings. A collection on the history of chemistry emphasizes the pre-1850 period with monographs and more than 3,000 images of scientists, laboratories, and scientific apparatus while another exhibit emphasizes the ENIAC computer. Other collections on the birth of the University of Pennsylvania, early sheet music, and Jewish music and history are also available. See also "Cultural Readings: Colonization and Print in the Americas" [ID].

More than 100 published materials on legal aspects of slavery are available on this website. These include 8,700 pages of court decisions and arguments, reports, proceedings, journals, and a letter. Most of the pamphlets and books pertain to American cases in the 19th century. Additional documents address the slave trade, slave codes, the Fugitive Slave Law, and slave insurrections as well as presenting courtroom proceedings from famous trials such as the 18th-century Somerset v. Stewart case in England, the Amistad case, the Denmark Vesey conspiracy trial, and trials of noted abolitionists John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison. A special presentation discusses the slave code in the District of Columbia. Searchable by keyword, subject, author, and title, this site is valuable for studying legal history, African American history, and 19th-century American history.

Created to honor Studs Terkel, the noted oral historian, radio host, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, this website makes available more than 400 audio clips of interviews Terkel conducted over 50 years. The seven galleries explore a variety of subjects, including organized labor, the 1929 stock market crash, New Deal programs, World War II, Hiroshima, folk music, race relations, politics, and urban life in Chicago.

The interviews present well-known figures as well as ordinary voices, such as people traveling by train to the March on Washington in 1963. Complementing these interviews is a 55-minute video interview with Terkel in which he emphasizes the importance of accurate knowledge about the past. An educational section addresses the use of oral history in the classroom. This well-designed site is valuable for studying the Great Depression, World War II, race relations, and labor issues.

Created by a nonprofit group interested in "open debate on federal, state, and international tax policy," this site furnishes an eclectic range of primary and secondary resources on the history of American taxation. "Tax History Museum" currently offers a 23,000-word narrative in eight chronological segments summarizing tax policy and politics from 1660 to 1900, supplemented with 70 images and links to related documents. The 20th-century portion is in development. "The Price of Civilization" makes available 14 posters and more than 6,500 pages of federal documents—primarily Treasury Department reports—on the development of the current tax system during the Great Depression and World War II. "Presidential Tax Returns" includes returns of recent presidents and Vice President Cheney. "Taxing Federalism" features nine Federalist Papers, and "Image Gallery" offers 15 political cartoons from the turn of the century to 1947, many by Washington Star cartoonist Clifford Berryman. The site also offers a bibliography and four sound clips of federal officials discussing tax policy.

The Dred Scott case began in 1846 when slaves Dred and Harriet Scott sued for their freedom, basing their argument on the fact that they had lived in non-slave territories for a number of years. The case ended with the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1857 that not only denied Scott both citizenship and the right to sue in federal court, but ruled that he never had been free and that Congress did not have the right to prohibit slavery in the territories. The decision sparked increased sectional tensions in the years leading to the Civil War. Facsimiles and transcriptions of 85 legal documents relating to the Dred Scott case are provided on this website. The site also provides a chronology and links to 301 Freedom Suits—legal petitions for freedom filed by or on behalf of slaves—in St. Louis courts from 1814 to 1860.

The long history of struggle for equal rights by various ethnic groups in Seattle, including Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, African, and Native Americans; Jews; and Latinos is documented on this website. Primary and secondary sources integrate labor rights movements with struggles for political rights, as is evident in the "special sections," that highlight the Chicano/a movement, the Black Panther Party, Filipino Cannery Unionism, the United Construction Workers Association, Communism, and the United Farm Workers. Each section brings together oral histories, documents, newspapers, and photographs that are accompanied by written and video commentary to provide historical context. The collection of more than 70 oral histories of activists is especially useful for understanding the lived experience of racism and its especially subtle workings in the Pacific Northwest. Together, these resources provide important national context for the civil rights struggle, too often understood as a solely southern phenomenon.

Each year since 1972, CQ Press has published a book of 100 significant documents in U.S. history accompanied by detailed annotations. The entire collection is available on this website, allowing for detailed keyword searching. Documents include U.S presidential speeches, government and international organization publications, legal decisions, scientific findings, and cultural discussions. The documents are grouped by year and by topic. Topics include the economy, defense, the environment, health care, international affairs, and life in America. A "Favorite Documents" feature allows users to mark and collect documents of interest, and a "CiteNow!" feature provides citations on demand. Though the depth of documents on any one topic is minimal, this website provides an overview of important events in a given year as well as U.S. perception of and response to topics over time.