Librarian for History and African American Studies
Steven Knowlton
Contact:
A-17-H-2 Firestone Library
609-258-0496
steven.knowlton@princeton.edu
Make an Appointment
steven-knowlton.scholar.princeton.edu
609-258-0496
steven.knowlton@princeton.edu
Make an Appointment
steven-knowlton.scholar.princeton.edu
Subjects: African American, African American Studies, Asian American, Asian American Studies, Canadian, Economic, Government Documents, Hispanic American, History, History, United States, Indigenous Studies, Labor, Military, Native American, Newspapers & Magazines, North American History, Personal Papers, Political & Diplomatic, Radio, Television, & Film, Slavery & Anti-slavery, Social, Women
The source-driven junior paper
Often, the best work arises from close engagement with a primary source. As you read, you'll think of questions or begin to shape an argument. The hard part is to find a primary source that addresses the broad general area of interest. Here are some strategies for finding primary sources:
- Check the footnotes, endnotes and bibliography of a good academic book on your topic.
- Use the word sources as a keyword when searching the Main Catalog.
- Consult the subject guides at http://libguides.princeton.edu
- Search the finding aids for collections in Special Collections and Mudd Manuscript Library.
Other resources to locate primary sources
- Princeton University Library Finding Aids This link opens in a new windowProvides access to finding aids or descriptive inventories for archival records and manuscript collections held within the University Library. Approximately 1,300 finding aids from the Department of Special Collections are now available online and include the Manuscripts Division, Public Policy Papers, and University Archives.
- Archive Finder This link opens in a new windowContains the entire holdings in the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC). Current directory of thousands of repositories and over 220,000 collections of primary source materials across the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland. 1959+
- ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new windowIndex to finding aids and other descriptive information about the holdings of manuscript and archival collections in libraries and research institutions throughout the world.
Selected Electronic Databases with Primary Sources
- Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, 1620-1970 This link opens in a new windowContains digitized and searchable copies of over 300 years of legal primary sources, such as early U.S. state codes, city charters, constitutional conventions and compilations, and other documents.
- Making of Modern Law (Trials 1600-1926) This link opens in a new windowSearchable digital archive of trial transcripts, and popular and scholarly accounts of both famous and non-famous historic trials.
- History Vault This link opens in a new windowThe module Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War has records focused on the Slave trade and other legal issues pertaining to slavery;a module on the Civil War entitled "Confederate Military Manuscripts and Records of Union Generals and the Union Army"; and Reconstruction and Military Government after the Civil War; and petitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867.
The module American Indians and the American West has collections from the 19th Century focused on Indian Removal from 1832-1840, and the U.S. Army and American Indians in the years from the 1850s-1890s. - Archives Unbound This link opens in a new windowSee the module Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the enforcement of federal law in the South, 1871-1884
- Freedom: a Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 byISBN: 1469611082Publication Date: 2014-06-24Land and Labor, 1865 examines the transition from slavery to free labor during the tumultuous first months after the Civil War. Letters and testimony by the participants--former slaves, former slaveholders, Freedmen's Bureau agents, and others--reveal the connection between developments in workplaces across the South and an intensifying political contest over the meaning of freedom and the terms of national reunification. Essays by the editors place the documents in interpretive context and illuminate the major themes. In the tense and often violent aftermath of emancipation, former slaves seeking to ground their liberty in economic independence came into conflict with former owners determined to keep them dependent and subordinate. Overseeing that conflict were northern officials with their own notions of freedom, labor, and social order. This volume of Freedom depicts the dramatic events that ensued--the eradication of bondage and the contest over restoring land to ex-Confederates; the introduction of labor contracts and the day-to-day struggles that engulfed the region's plantations, farms, and other workplaces; the achievements of those freedpeople who attained a measure of independence; and rumors of a year-end insurrection in which ex-slaves would seize the land they had been denied and exact revenge for past oppression.
- Freedom: a Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867ISBN: 1469611090Publication Date: 2014-06-24Land and Labor, 1866-1867 examines the remaking of the South's labor system in the tumultuous aftermath of emancipation. Using documents selected from the National Archives, this volume of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation depicts the struggle of unenfranchised and impoverished ex-slaves to control their own labor, establish their families as viable economic units, and secure independent possession of land. Among the topics addressed are the dispossession of settlers in the Sherman reserve, the reordering of labor on plantation and farm, nonagricultural labor, new relations of credit and debt, long-distance labor migration, and the efforts of former slaves to rent, purchase, and homestead land. The documents--many of them in the freedpeople's own words--speak eloquently for themselves, while the editors' interpretive essays provide context and illuminate major themes.
- Hein Online Library This link opens in a new windowSee the modules State Statutes: A Historical Archive; Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law
- Women Working, 1800-1930: Women's Bureau Bulletins This link opens in a new windowExplores women's roles in the United States economy between 1800 and the Great Depression.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States This link opens in a new windowCollection of full-text primary and secondary sources.
- Everyday Life & Women in America, c1800-1920 This link opens in a new windowComprises rare books, periodicals, pamphlets, tracts, and broadsides concerning such areas as American home life, 1800-1920, the history of women, and the history of childhood.
- Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online This link opens in a new windowSearches thousands of private writings and personal narratives ranging from the 1550’s to the 21st century. Includes material found in the collections North American Women's Letters and Diaries; British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries; North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories; The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries; Black Thought and Culture; Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries from the American Antiquarian Society. 1550+
- America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new windowSearchable full-text of historical newspapers including titles from all 50 states. Now includes select coverage of some major papers after 1922 through the mid 1990s.