Primary Sources for History

A collection of historic and current congressional information. This database includes the full text of congressional publications, a bill tracking service, public laws, regulations, news and social media, nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports, hearings, and historical context summaries. Coverage also includes information about Congress, including member biographical and committee assignment information, voting records, and financial data.

Complete online collection of full opinions from Supreme Court argued cases, including per decision, dockets, oral arguments, joint appendices and amicus briefs.

Database of texts from the bound, sequentially numbered volumes of all the reports, documents, and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Texts constitute a rich source of primary source material on all aspects of American history.

Search and browse legislative and executive documents of the first 14 U.S. Congresses. This collection covers such historical events as Lewis and Clark’s expedition, Burr’s conspiracy and arrest, and the Treaty of the Creek Indians made
by Andrew Jackson, as well as speeches and messages of Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison, battles with the Seminole Indians, the capture of the British Fleet on Lake Champlain, depredations committed by Mounted Riflemen, exploration of the Pacific Ocean, free negroes in North Carolina, land for female academies, protection of the western frontier, and trade with China.

Provides access to previously classified federal records in the 20th and 21st centuries. The collection brings together the most sensitive documents from all the presidential libraries and numerous executive agencies in a single, searchable database, including: intelligence studies, policy papers, diplomatic correspondence, cabinet meeting minutes, briefing materials, and domestic surveillance and military reports. The interface allows for filtering search results by document type, issue date, source institution, classification level, and date declassified as well as other document characteristics.

Declassified government documents covering U.S. policy toward critical world events – including their military, intelligence, diplomatic and human rights dimensions – from 1945 to the present.

Quantitative data of America's history. Data topics include: population, work and welfare, economic structure and performance, economic sectors, and governance and international relations. Users can search, download, and create customizable graphs and tables of data.

Comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. 

Claims presented to Congress and/or brought before the Court of Claims or the Indian Claims Commission, as well as important Supreme Court decisions; and maps

Case documents and primary sources relating to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1912-1990.

A digital archive of American legal history, this collection includes the published records of the American colonies, documents published by state constitutional conventions, state and territorial codes, municipal codes, city charters, law dictionaries, digests, and more. Note that the term "primary sources" is used not in the historian's sense of a manuscript, letter or diary, but rather in the legal sense of a case, statute or regulation.

A full-text collection of documents from Anglo-American trials. In addition to works pertaining to English-speaking jurisdictions such as the United States, Britain, Ireland, and Canada, this digital archive also contains English-language titles about trials in other jurisdictions, such as France. Included are published trial transcripts; popular printed accounts of sensational trials for murder, adultery, and other scandalous crimes; unofficially published accounts of trials, briefs, arguments, and other trial documents that were printed as separate publications; official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings, and arbitration sessions (domestic and international); and books encompassing multiple trials as well as books and pamphlets about a single trial.

A collection of Anglo-American legal treatises. This archive covers nearly every aspect of American and British law and encompasses an array of the analytical, theoretical, and practical literature for research in U.S. and British legal history. It includes casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches, and other works from influential writers and legal thinkers of the time.

A collection of records and briefs brought before the nation's highest court by leading legal practitioners. It includes transcripts, applications for review, motions, petitions, supplements, and other official papers of the most-studied and talked-about cases, including many that resulted in landmark decisions. It covers every aspect of law, including civil rights law, constitutional law, corporate law, environmental law, gender law, labor law, legal history and legal theory, property law, taxation, and trademark and intellectual property law.

During World War II and the first decade and a half of the Cold War, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the State Department assigned leading scholars to write special, classified reports about Asia, Europe, the Soviet Union, Latin America, and Africa. At the time, the reports helped to shape U.S. foreign policy decisions, and, now, provide an excellent source for studying the major areas of the World during the period from 1941 to 1961. These reports are not contained in the State Department's foreign relations series or the armed forces' official histories.