History: Primary Sources

Includes papers of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Dolley Madison, James Madison, George Washington, and the series Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.

The database contains a large variety of collections from the U.S. National Archives, a series of collections from the Chicago History Museum, as well as selected first-hand accounts on Indian Wars and westward migration.

Sources include nearly every document from Messages and Papers of the Presidents of the United States and The Public Papers of the Presidents.

Digital archive covering foreign perspectives of American racial issues in the mid-20th century, containing unique primary source documents on racial justice from around the world and providing insight into many important historical events and movements. Built from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports and the Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS).

International survey of the effects of apartheid on South Africa and the world with a digitized collection of primary source documents related to apartheid. Built from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports and the Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS).

From Yale law school. It includes digital documents relevant to law, history, government, etc from ancient times to the present.

Digital reproductions of organizational and personal papers and federal government records, including the papers of Mary McLeod Bethune and Claude A. Barnett, records of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, government records on African-Americans in the military, black workers in the era of the Great Migration, files on surveillance of African-Americans, and FBI Files.

International primary source documents on the Cold War, built from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports and the Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS).

Full text of "CO 1" from the British National Archives: Privy Council and Related Bodies: America and West Indies and bibliographic information with extracts from Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739. 16th-18th centuries.

Provides access to relevant sources relating to the composition and structure of Article III Courts, as well as documents prepared by various Congresses relating to the purpose, formation, organization and restructuring of the federal government. Features William H. Manz's Congress and the Courts: A Legislative History 1787-2010, and also includes Federal Judicial Center publications, links to various scholarly articles, CFR Title 28 (Judicial Administration), and other related works.

Searches the full text of U.S. Senate, House, joint or special committee hearings published by the U.S. Government Printing Office; updated monthly. This resource has been developed by the OU Libraries and supports user accounts which may be utilized to collect individual search results for statistical analyses. To request a user account, contact Tara Carlisle, Digital Scholarship Specialist. (tara.carlisle@ou.edu)

Full text of the American State Papers, Serial Set (House and Senate Reports and Documents), Congressional Record and older congressional digests, legislative information (hearings, bills, and laws), Congressional Research Service reports and Executive Documents, 1789-1931. See http://guides.ou.edu/Congressional for more information.

Started in 2010, CourtListener is a core project of the Free Law Project, a federally-recognized 501(c)(3) public charity and a California non-profit public benefit corporation. Free Law Project seeks to provide free access to primary legal materials, develop legal research tools, and support academic research on legal corpora.

Provides access to federal and state case law, statutes, regulation, constitutions, and court rules. Full text available.

Full text of U.S. government translations of foreign broadcasts, publications, and government statements. See http://guides.ou.edu/fbis for more information.

Official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity.

From the National Archives. Correspondence and writings of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Over 150,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the authoritative Founding Fathers Papers projects.

Full text of legal documents including English Reports, Full Reprint, 1220-1867 (this section also includes Statutes of the Realm); Foreign Relations of the United States; World Trials Library; U.S. Presidential Library - including Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Public Papers of the Presidents, etc.

Digital archive covering all aspects of 20th-century human migration, including first-hand reports and global analysis. Built from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports and the Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS).

Full text of English translations of foreign language materials from regions throughout the world. Includes monographs, reports, serials, journal and newspaper articles, and radio and television broadcasts. See http://guides.ou.edu/fbis for more information.

(ProQuest) - Contains fully searchable PDF images of full-text publications generated in the course of congressional lawmaking. Content includes the Public Law text, all versions of enacted and related bills, Congressional Record excerpts, and committee hearings, reports and documents. (Full text) See http://guides.ou.edu/Legislative for more information.

Provides full text access to documents related to the U.S. Federal Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches.

Digital archive spanning 19 countries and four decades, built from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports and the Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS).

Founded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive combines a unique range of functions: investigative journalism center, research institute on international affairs, library and archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times), leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information, global advocate of open government, and indexer and publisher of former secrets.

A collection of databases covering a wide range of news, business, legal, medical, and reference databases. Some full text available.

Electronic version of the 21-volume publication; covers Eisenhower's career before and during World War II and through his presidency.

References to federal, state, local and international public documents, 1789-present. See http://guides.ou.edu/publicdocumentsmasterfile for more information.

Brings together, for the first time, all known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world, including more than 1,000 books and pamphlets.

TRAIL identifies, acquires, catalogs, digitizes and provides unrestricted access to U.S. government agency technical reports.

Provides access to all U.S. treaties, whether currently in –force, expired, or not yet officially published.

Features the complete Congressional Record bound version (PDF), as well as the daily version back to 1980 (updated daily). Also includes the following predecessor titles: Journals of the Continental Congress (1774-1789), Annals of Congress (1789-1824), Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873), as well as Congressional Hearings (1927-2012) and other important congressional material.

Full text of previously classified U.S. government documents; ca. 1905-present. See http://guides.ou.edu/declassified for more information on the database.

From Yale law school. It includes digital documents relevant to law, history, government, etc from ancient times to the present.

Digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.

Most of the material is free, but some is not. See http://www.british-history.ac.uk/subscribe.aspx for a list of material that is NOT free. We have access to some of that subscription material in the database State Papers Online, see below.

Records of the senior ministers of the British government.

Full text of "CO 1" from the British National Archives: Privy Council and Related Bodies: America and West Indies and bibliographic information with extracts from Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739. 16th-18th centuries.

This catalogue currently contains descriptions and some digitised images of material dating from the reigns of George III to William IV, including personal letters, diaries, account books and records of the Royal Household. Please note this is not yet a complete catalogue of the Georgian Papers in the Royal Archives and Royal Library. The project is due for completion in 2020.

Full text of legal documents. Statutes of the Realm also available in different database, below.

A fully searchable edition of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.

Searching is free but there may be a fee to download records.

Parliamentary debates (often referred to as Hansard) are records of what is said in Parliament. Only since 1909 has Hansard been a verbatim report and official publication; before then, publications were based on secondary sources such as newspaper accounts.

Full text of the rolls of parliament (translated and in the original Latin, Anglo-Norman or Middle English). The rolls were the official records of the meetings of the English parliament from the reign of Edward I (1272) until the reign of Henry VII (1509).

Contains 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.

Full text of British government materials, including State Papers, Domestic and Foreign. Click here for more information on State Papers.

Great Britain's laws and statutes, from the Magna Carta to the end of the reign of Queen Ann. Statutes of the Realm also available in the Hein Online database, see above.