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Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921 (Library of Congress)
This site, representing a subset of items from the Library of Congress' National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) Collection, consists of 167 books, pamphlets, handbooks, reports, speeches, and other artifacts totaling some 10,000 pages dealing with the suffrage movement in America. Much of the larger collection was donated by Carrie Chapman Catt, the Association's longtime president. Also included are works from the libraries of some of the organization's officers and members, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Alice Stone Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Smith Miller, and Mary A. Livermore. Formed in 1890, NAWSA secured the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 through a series of well-organized state campaigns. The site includes two bibliographies of related works on the suffrage campaign, a 700-word essay on Catt, a timeline entitled "One Hundred Years toward Suffrage: An Overview," and links to 11 related collections. While a special application is necessary to view reproductions of documents and illustrations, texts of documents have been scanned and are word-searchable. Also see the site's pictorial partner at . Useful for studying women in politics, female leaders, and suffrage.
Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Government (Yale University Law School)
This website, sponsored by Yale Law School with the International Relations and Security Network (ISN), is a collection of over 3,500 full-text documents relevant to the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy, and government. The documents are divided into four century categories: pre-18th, 18th, 19th, and 20th. Includes treaties, presidential papers and addresses, and colonial charters, as well as state and federal constitutional and legal documents. The documents are grouped into 64 Major Collection categories as well, such as Thomas Jefferson's papers, American diplomacy, and the Cold War. All materials can be accessed through an alphabetical list, through the Major Collections page, through the four century pages, or by a keyword search. All of the search modes are easily navigable. Though most of these documents are directly related to American history, the site also includes over 100 documents on ancient, medieval, and Renaissance history, European history, and modern diplomatic documents such as the Hamas Covenant. The site is ideal for researching American diplomacy, constitutional, political, and legal history.
Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 (Library of Congress)
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.
Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party (Library of Congress)
This combined archive and exhibit offers a selection of 448 photographs from the Library's National Woman's Party (NWP) collection that "document the National Woman's Party's push for ratification of the 19th Amendment as well as its later campaign for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment." Photographs span the years 1875 to 1938, but most date from 1913 to 1922. Visitors can browse photographs by title or subject or search the descriptive information. The site has a photo gallery of more than 50 photographs depicting NWP activists who were arrested and imprisoned for their role in suffrage protests. Additionally, the site provides a timeline of the National Woman's Party from 1912 to 1997 that places it in historical context. The site also provides three essays: on the tactics and techniques of the National Woman's Party suffrage campaign, a historical overview of the NWP, and on leaders of the NWP.
Vote: The Machinery of Democracy (National Museum of American History)
This exhibition looks at the history of voting methods in the United States, which are as varied as the individual states and their local election districts. Vote: The Machinery of Democracy explores how ballots and voting systems have evolved over the years as a response to political, social, and technological change, transforming the ways in which Americans vote.