The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 website covers precisely what it sounds as if it would—the famed debates between senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.

Navigation is simple, divided into sections by primary source type. Debate Text from Nicolay and Hay< includes "transcriptions" of the debates recreated by two of Lincoln's secretaries circa 1894, as well as debate-related publications by the same two individuals. The transcriptions are based on Lincoln's own writings and newspaper accounts of the debates. Debate Text from Newspapers provides links to newspaper versions of the debate. The website notes that newspapers were affiliated with a political party, and that it can be intriguing to compare Democratic and Republican accounts of the same speech. Debate Commentary from Newspapers is similar to the newspaper debate text section except that it covers period observations on the debates rather than the words spoken.

Additional sections contain video commentary on the debates, maps, relevant images, and two lesson plans. Note that the lesson plans do not specify appropriate grade levels.

This website serves as an accompaniment to and location to showcase the PBS American Experience documentary Freedom Riders, which originally aired in May 2011. The Freedom Riders were young white and African American individuals who rode busses and trains in the South during 1961 as a form of peaceful protest against the Jim Crow laws. At the time, they met with threats, violence, and incarceration.

Follow along with an interactive timeline and an interactive map. Each leg of the journey is summarized with a couple of sentences of text, and cities where major events took place can be selected for a quick overview. You can also read brief biographies of key figures—riders, politicians, movement leaders, and more—or information on the issues of the day from Jim Crow laws to Vietnam War protests.

View short film clips or the entire documentary here. The full documentary transcript is also available for download. The Teachers' Domain, although it sounds appealing, contains only the same film clips. The difference is that in this section the video clips are all marked as being for 6th through 12th grade.

Finally, the most "teacher-targeted" material on the site is a downloadable teacher's guide for use when viewing the documentary.

The Center on Congress, led by former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton, exists to help the public better understand the role of Congress and the public's relationship to it. Their audience includes the general public, teachers, and journalists.

Your first thought as an educator may be to click on Teacher Resources. However, this section is more of a gateway to content in Learn About Congress than a section unto itself. That said, Classroom Resources does include a tool for paring down the site's educational materials to the appropriate grade level and topic, as well as best practices videos of lessons in action.

Learning About Congress has the widest variety of content useful to the K-12 educator. Resources include approximately 8 interactive modules, more than 20 short animated videos, a collection of live-action video clips of "insider views," more than 30 brief audio presentations on issues ranging from disaster relief to bilingual education, and a variety of relevant reading material. The spoken narration on the interactive modules tends to be dry, and would more than likely only be of use in the higher grades. However, the animated videos are enthusiastically narrated, making them more appropriate for a wider range of viewers. A free Citizen's Guide helps to connect daily life to the actions of Congress. The guide is not unlike a textbook in terms of language and graphic design. As such, its format should be readily accessible and familiar to the average student.

Depending on your computer access and comfort with online activities, you may also be interested in the Virtual Congress where your students can create members of Congress, move their avatars through digital recreations of key locations, and participate in a "multi-player" setting proposing legislation. Another option is Teaching with Primary Sources, a joint effort between the Center on Congress and the Library of Congress, providing separate entry points for teachers and students. These offerings require free registration.

Other items of interest on the site include results of public and political scientists' surveys on Congress' function, beginning in 2002; a blog concerning topics relevant to current Congressional issues; and Congressional FAQs. Teachers can also apply for the American Civic Education Teacher Awards.

The Presidential Timeline curates and presents primary sources drawn from twelve Presidential Libraries and Museums, institutions housing and presenting archival materials for the presidents from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton. Under "Interactive Timeline," you can choose any of the 12 presidents—Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, or William Jefferson Clinton—and explore his life.

Timelines consist of at least two sections: "Early Life and Career" and "Presidency." All timelines except Roosevelt's, Kennedy's, and Clinton's also include a "Post-Presidency" section. Marks on the timeline indicate events of interest in the president's life and career; click on a mark to read a brief summary of the event, and to view primary sources (a + sign in the mark indicates primary sources are available).

Browse "Exhibits," also under "Interactive Timeline," for more than 30 collections of short essays, accompanied by 2–6 primary sources per essay, covering major events and topics related to the presidents' lives and careers. Topics covered stretch from "The Stock Market Crash, October 1929" to "William J. Clinton and the Supreme Court, 1993-2001."

Try the "Gallery" to search more than 1,500 primary sources (including artifacts, maps and charts, video, photographs, sounds recordings, and documents) by keyword, library of origin, date, or source type.

The "Educators" section includes 14 ready-to-go activities, on topics ranging from Pearl Harbor to the Iran Hostage Crisis to Bill Clinton's visit to Little Rock Central High School. Students and teachers can view pre-selected primary sources online in each activity, with suggested rubrics, applicable standards, and links to related sources also included. "Resources" links out to 16 websites recommended for history and primary sources, education, and technology, while "Multimedia" rounds up more than 50 audio and video primary source clips for download.

If you can't access the interactive Flash version of the timeline, try the HTML "Text Version" that includes the same primary sources.

In 2008, the Smithsonian launched History Explorer, in partnership with Verizon's Thinkfinity. Designed as a portal into the National Museum of American History's online resources, the site lets users search or browse the museum's resources. Use the keyword search to look up artifacts, interactives/media, lessons/activities, primary sources, reviewed websites, reference materials, and worksheets; narrow the search by selecting grade levels, historical era, resource type (artifact, lesson, worksheet, etc.), and/or cross-curricular connection.

Or browse by content type, using the tabs at the top of the page—"Lessons and Activities" contains more than 300 resources designed for teacher presentation; "Interactives and Media" contains more than 100 resources including audio, video, or interactive components; and "Museum Artifacts" contains more than 300 artifacts suitable for object-based learning. All individual entries list related content and relevant National History Standards and teaching strategies.

"Themes" offers collections of resources for major U.S. history topics such as immigration and civil rights; "Books" lists synopses for nearly 300 books suitable for reading levels varying from preschool to adult; and "Teacher Resources" includes information on teaching with primary sources, webinars, and joining the Thinkfinity Community. Check "Web Links" for links out to more than 100 history websites, chosen for design, usability, and content.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and making accessible historical and contemporary radio and television content, as well as artifacts and images documenting the history of broadcasting. To that end, it has amassed a collection of more than 25,000 television programs, 5,000 radio programs, and 12,000 commercials totaling close to 100,000 hours, as well as 1,800 objects and artifacts and 3,500 images from broadcasting history—all of which is available at its Chicago, IL location.

This website presents the more than 7,000 programs and commercials that have been digitized, as well as the entire collection of images, and selected artifacts. These materials include radio programs dating to the 1920s and television programming from the 1940s to the present. All materials are keyword searchable and browseable by select categories.

Those interested in the history of advertising, for example, can browse commercials by 23 categories, including automotive, alcoholic drinks, cosmetics, and leisure and hobbies. Radio and TV can both be browsed by program type, such as adventure, drama, dance, soap opera, and news. Images include headshots, publicity photos, scenes from the sets of television programs, and much more. Users must complete a simple registration process before searching the collections.

Established by Ronald Reagan, the Reagan Foundation preserves Presidential history and is "dedicated to the promotion of individual liberty, economic opportunity, global democracy, and national pride." Its online presence provides both primary and secondary sources on the life and presidency of Reagan.

Visitors can follow a timeline of Reagan's life in Life and Times, and read five short essays (800–1,000 words) on his domestic, foreign, and economic polices, Mikhail Gorbachev, and "Reagan the Man" in The Presidency. Search or browse Reagan's speeches, with both transcripts and video recordings and search or browse quotes drawn from his speaking in Reagan Quotes and Speeches. The entries of his White House Diary from 1981–1989 may also be browsed, and a separate subsection on Nancy Reagan provides a timeline of her life and brief essays on her relationship with Ronald Reagan and her political causes.

The Reagan Foundation's Archives make only a fraction of their holdings available online. However, visitors can access fast facts on Reagan and his presidency; browse a selection of photos of the President and the First Lady, organized by topic; or search or browse (by month) the Public Papers of President Ronald W. Reagan, which includes statements, speeches, and papers released by the Office of the Press from 1981–1989.

The Archives' For Educators section includes several document-based lesson plans, as well as curriculum based on current museum exhibits.

Useful for educators looking for both introductory material to Reagan and his presidency and more specific primary sources.

The Metal Trades Council Union alliance in Seattle shut down the shipyards on February 6, 1919, in hopes of forcing a promised pay increase following the strict price controls set during World War I. After the Metal Trades Council obtained the support of Seattle's Central Labor Alliance, more than 65,000 Seattle workers staged a sympathy walkout, creating what has come to be known as the first "general strike" in U.S. history, and laying the foundation for labor unrest in the nation's steel, coal, and meatpacking industries in the years that followed.

This website documents the history of this strike through a large collection of primary and secondary source materials.

A four-minute video introduction, containing original film footage from 1919, is a useful place to begin for those unfamiliar with Seattle's labor history.

The website also includes contemporary and more recent newspaper articles, including more than 180 articles from Seattle's major newspapers covering the February 1919 events; 15 oral histories; more than 30 photographs of labor activity in Seattle, prominent union members, and strike activities; as well as research reports on the strike by history students at the University of Washington.

This website presents 65 moving images from 1915 through the 21st century. These include home movies, industrial films, news coverage, and documentaries, and cover a wide variety of topics, with a special focus on life in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

Several home videos capture the experience of attending the 1962 Seattle World's Fair—riding the monorail or looking at the Space Needle.

Visitors can also watch as U.S. Presidents made history in this region, including John F. Kennedy's groundbreaking of the N-reactor at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and President Truman awarding the Congressional Medal of Honor to Bud Hawk.

A four-minute video captures a traditional Eskimo dance in Point Barrow, AK, in the early 1940s.

All movies can be browsed by year or by subject (e.g. trash, wildlife, workers, football, hiking, poverty, fisheries, laboratories, Rainier), and are keyword searchable.

In September 1901, President William McKinley was attacked while visiting the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He eventually died of his wounds. This Library of Congress American Memory site features 28 films, drawn from the Paper Print Collection of the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, depicting scenes from the Exposition and McKinley's visit to Buffalo. Produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company from March to November, 1901, the films include footage of President McKinley at his second inauguration; the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo; President McKinley at the Exposition; and McKinley's funeral. The site also includes a roughly 500-word introductory essay about the exposition and McKinley's assassination; a 1000-word essay describing America at the turn of the 20th century; a 250-word introduction to the Library's Paper Print Collection; a 23-work selected bibliography on McKinley and the Pan-American Exposition; and a 15-work bibliography on the history of motion pictures. A "Learn More About It" page lists seven other Library of Congress special presentations and related collections and exhibits for those interested in further exploring the era. There is an alphabetical listing of the films, as well as a keyword search engine. Though the online exhibit is limited in scope and nature of sources, it is a good resource for those interested in early-20th-century expositions, American presidents, and William McKinley.