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American Revolution Digital Learning (New York Historical Society)
This website combines exhibitions, documents, and objects for exploring the American Revolution. The site offers four online exhibitions: "Independence and Its Enemies in New York," "Revolutionary Dresscode," "Road to the American Revolution," and "Women During the American Revolutionary War" (including women on the homefront, camp followers, and famous women). "Object Browser" offers images of more than 1,900 museum objects in more than 30 categories, including clothing and fashion, tools and equipment (artist, military, household), silver, and toys. "Document Browser" offers more than 1,400 documents, that can be browsed in their entirety or through more than 60 pre-selected categories, including broadsides, letters, muster sheets and payrolls, newspapers, petitions, and political cartoons. It also includes more than 350 prints and more than 220 maps. Visitors can search by keyword. "Ask the Historian" offers two video lectures and six essays by scholars of the American Revolution and the early republic. Finally, "Educators" includes teacher worksheets on how to guide students through the process of reading various types of primary documents, eight lesson plans, and 10 guides to student activities. The site also includes an index of short biographies, a glossary, and 17 links to related sites.
Liberty! The American Revolution (PBS)
Sponsored by Norwest Corporation, this is the companion site to the 1997 PBS documentary series Liberty: The American Revolution. The site is divided into five categories. "The Chronicle of the Revolution" provides six descriptions of key events during the Revolutionary era, such as the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Saratoga. Also offers a timeline of the Revolution and links to descriptions of related topics, a bibliography of 29 scholarly works on the Revolutionary period, and links to 45 other sites of interest. "Perspectives on Liberty" is a creative section that provides images linked to information about related places or objects. For example, a painting of a farmhouse provides information on everyday life in Revolutionary America. "Liberty Today" is a photograph essay that offers 12 images of a recent naturalization ceremony in Minnesota, in which 22 immigrants were sworn in as U.S. citizens. There are 50-word captions describing each image. "Liberty, the Series" provides episode descriptions, text interviews on the making of the series, and brief, 25-word biographies of the scholars involved in creating the series. Finally, "The Road to Revolution" is an interactive trivia game with audio of specific people, speeches, and events. There are 15 images and 2 maps in this section. This site is ideal particularly for younger students who wish to learn more about America during the Revolution.
Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention (Library of Congress, American Memory Project)
This archive offers 274 documents relating to the work of the Continental Congress and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, including manuscript annotations. The collection includes extracts of the journals of Congress, resolutions, proclamations, committee reports, treaties, documents relating to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, extracts of proceedings of state assemblies and conventions relating to the ratification of the Constitution, several essays on ratification of the Constitution, and early printed versions of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. It includes 253 titles dating from 1774 to 1788 relating to the Constitutional Congress and 21 titles dating from 1786 to 1789 relating to the Constitutional Convention. The collection can be browsed through an alphabetical list of subjects or searched using keywords. An advanced search is also available. Additionally, two timelines that together cover the period 1764 to 1789 and an essay entitled "To Form a More Perfect Union" provide historical context for the documents through an overview of the main events of the era of the Revolution. A useful resource for studying the history of the revolutionary era, Constitutional history.
The Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606-1827 (Library of Congress)
The complete Thomas Jefferson Papers from the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress consists of approximately 27,000 documents. This is the largest collection of original Jefferson documents in the world. Document types in the collection as a whole include correspondence, commonplace books, financial account books, and manuscript volumes. The collection is organized into ten series or groupings, ranging in date from 1606 to 1827. Correspondence, memoranda, notes, and drafts of documents make up two-thirds of the Papers and document Jefferson's activities as a delegate to the second Continental Congress; his drafting of the Declaration of Independence, June-July 1776; his position as governor of Virginia, 1779-81; his return to Congress as a representative, 1783-84; and his appointment as minister plenipotentiary in Europe and then minister to the Court of Louis XVI, succeeding Benjamin Franklin, 1784-89. Well documented are his two administrations as president from 1801 through 1809, when he engineered the purchase of the Louisiana territory and maintained American neutrality in the conflict between France and Great Britain that led to the War of 1812. Correspondence, drawings, maps, and notes document the building of Washington, D.C. The broad range of Jefferson's intellectual and political interests is represented by his legal and literary commonplace books, miscellaneous bound volumes of notes and extracts, and manuscript volumes relating to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Virginia history, some of which were part of the personal library he sold to Congress in 1815. In its online presentation, the Thomas Jefferson Papers comprises approximately 83,000 images. This project is funded by Reuters America, Inc., and The Reuters Foundation.
Thomas Jefferson (Library of Congress)
This exhibition focuses on the extraordinary legacy of Thomas Jefferson--founding father, farmer, architect, inventor, slaveholder, book collector, scholar, diplomat, and the third president of the United States. It traces Jefferson's intellectual development from his earliest days in the Piedmont to an ever-expanding realm of influence in republican Virginia, the American Revolutionary government, the creation of the American nation, and the revolution in individual rights in America and the world.