Western Carolina University

WCU is a University of North Carolina Campus

Primary Sources

In searching for primary sources, it is easy to overlook the obvious: many primary documents are published as books, or parts of books. The result is that Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings (a collection of primary documents) is on the library shelf near David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln (a secondary source). These collections of primary sources are listed in the Library Catalog, but there are tricks for finding them. Use this link for search tips.

Microform Collection in Hunter Library
A selective list of Hunter Library's microfilm/microfiche collections, which comprise a vast number of books, reports, letters, documents. Most of these are primary sources, such as the Zebulon Vance papers.

The American Colonist's Library
A Treasury of Primary Documents.

Making of America (Cornell University Library).
A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.

Making of America (University of Michigan Library).
A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.

A Chronology of US Historical Documents (Oklahoma State University)

American Memory Project (Library of Congress)
American Memory is a gateway to the Library of Congress’s vast resources of digitized American historical materials which include manuscripts, prints, photographs, posters, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, and sheet music. Collections may be browsed individually, searched individually (including full-text searching for many written items), or searched across multiple collections.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries
A collection of some 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries from women writing from Colonial times to 1950. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous. Includes some 300 biographies.

Documenting the American South
From the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this website provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture.

North American Slave Narratives
This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. It is part of the digitized primary materials from UNC Chapel Hill.

Archiving Early America
Browse through scenes and portraits of American history from original newspapers, maps, and writings.

The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School: Documents in Law, History and Government
A major online repository of primary sources from the Yale Law School.

HeritageQuest Online
Search selected records from the Revolutionary War Era Pension & Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files. (Hunter Library has the complete set of application files on microfilm.)