Drafting the Documents of Independence

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Eight documents and prints relating to the Declaration of Independence are presented, including a June 1826 letter from Thomas Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman. Other documents include a fragment of the "earliest known draft of the Declaration of Independence"; Thomas Jefferson's "'original Rough draught'" of the Declaration with later changes made by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and others; a portion of George Washington's copy of the "'Dunlap Broadside'" of the Declaration, read to his troops in New York on July 9, 1776; and a print showing Washington's troops reacting to the reading by destroying a statue of King George III.

The site also offers a 500-word background essay and a chronology of events from June 7, 1776, to January 18, 1777. The website is well-organized to present evidence of the Declaration's development and effect.

Historic Missouri Newspaper Project

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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.

Northern Visions of Race, Region, and Reform in the Press

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This website brings together more than 200 letters, articles, official documents, and illustrations focused on issues of race and reform during and after the Civil War, including unpublished letters written by Northern women who taught freedmen in the South and letters written by their students. Many of the texts are presented in original (handwritten) format and transcription. The website is a combination exhibit, with introductory and explanatory text, and primary source archive.

Materials are available through two paths-through the "Primary Resource Index" or through three topics: "The Freedmen," "Freedmen's Education," and "At War's End" (not yet complete). Within each topic, there are four to seven subtopics, such as "The Emancipation Proclamation" and "Visions of Freedmen in Letters of Freedmen" and at least one subtopic has further subcategories. Each subtopic begins with introductory text, often several paragraphs in length, that provides background information as well as links to relevant documents. The site cautions that "some of the materials on this site are racially offensive." A search is available at the bottom of document pages, but the dedicated search page is not currently working. There are links to more than 100 additional online primary and secondary sources.

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

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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.

Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage

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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.

Red White Blue & Brimstone: New World Literature and the American Millennium

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An exhibit of 101 images with a 10,000-word essay that tracks the influence of the Book of Revelations' apocalyptic vision of history in shaping conceptions of America and its destiny for religious zealots and others from the colonial era to the present. With images primarily from published texts—covers, title pages, illustrations, and relevant pages of writing—the exhibit is divided into 14 chronological sections, each opening with a quote from Revelations and detailing its relevance in successive historical periods. The exhibit begins with the period of the English Reformation, when John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, exported to America, related contemporary political events to scripture and established a timeline that proved influential over the next 250 years. The site covers beliefs that American Indians were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel; Cotton Mather's sermons as the culmination of a century of speculation about America's place in the apocalyptic scheme; early nationalist ambitions as fulfilling prophecy; and the influence of Revelations on Thomas Jefferson. The site also looks at William Miller's numerologically-based predictions of the end of the world in 1843; millennial movements in the antebellum era; urban exposÎs that conceived of American cities as present-day incarnations of Babylon; and 20th-century anti-Semitic thought. Well organized, the exhibit provides a useful introduction to students of American religion and culture of the persistence of the power of the Book of Revelations, but exaggerates its importance with the odd claim that no other book has "produced a more profound vision of America's hopes, duties, dreams, and destiny."

Profiles in Science

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These documents, exhibits, photographs, and essays tell the history of 26 prominent 20th-century scientists, physicians, and experts in biomedical research and public health. The site is divided thematically into "Biomedical Research," "Health and Medicine," and "Fostering Science and Health." The collections include published and unpublished items, such as books, journals, pamphlets, diaries, letters, manuscripts, photographs, audiotapes, video clips, and other materials. Each exhibit includes introductory narratives and biographies of each scientist and a selection of noteworthy documents. The collections are particularly strong in cellular biology, genetics, and biochemistry, with attention to health and medical research policy, application of computers in medicine, science education, and the history of modern science.

The Jack London Online Collection

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The full-text versions of more than 40 works by Jack London (1876–1916), a prominent early 20th-century writer who was also involved in the socialist movement, are available here. Materials include famous fiction, such as The Call of the Wild (1903), and lesser-known works, such as War of the Classes (1905), a collection of speeches London delivered on behalf of socialism. The website includes 20 novels, 19 short story collections, two collections of essays, three plays, and six additional published nonfiction works. The website is keyword searchable. In addition to providing the writings of Jack London, there is plenty of biographical and historical information about London and his times. Outside resources are suggested, divided into those suitable for students and those for teachers. Combining London's original works with other contextual materials provided by the site could be valuable for studying early 20th-century American literature and journalism and its relation to radical political and social currents of the time.

Willa Cather Archive

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Willa Cather (1873–1947) wrote 12 novels and numerous works of short fiction. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 and is known for her intensive examination of life in the midwestern U.S. This extensive archive is dedicated to her life and work. At its core is a collection of all of her novels, short fiction, journalistic writing, interviews, speeches, and public letters published before 1922. All materials are fully searchable. Notably, both O Pioneers! and My Antonia are accompanied by extensive scholarly notes, historical context, and introductory material. Accompanying her published materials is a collection of 2,054 of Cather's letters (again annotated and fully searchable), more than 600 photographs of Cather and important people and places in her life, audio of Cather's Pulitzer Prize acceptance speech, and a short video clip of Cather. Several scholarly articles and a text analysis tool are also available.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875

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An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th-century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815–1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the website offers close to 3,000 texts by 1,456 authors. These include the well known, such as Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain as well as hundreds of less well-known authors. Topics include slavery, reform, education, politics, love, children, and war. Close to 800 have been fully edited and SGML-encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of content hyperlinks. The remaining texts can be read either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. The ability to perform single word and phrase searches on all material in the database—whether fully encoded or not—is powerful.