Historical research involves not only reading books, but using documents written by the eye witnesses to the events that make up history. Fortunately, most of these documents are collected and stored in archives. And even more fortunate is that many of these archives are now accessible on the World Wide Web. You can begin your examination of these archives by adopting a "top down" or a "bottom up" approach; that is going first to the most general sites (top down) and working down to the less general or to the most specific site (bottom up)and working up to the more general.

However before digging into the archives, you would benefit by having in hand a few "tools of the trade" so to speak since reading primary documents is not the same as reading a text or general history. A minute or two spent at the web site created by the National Archives and Records Administration, History in the Raw, will be a good starting point in getting these tools. How to Read A Primary Source, courtesy of Bowdoin College is your next stop. Northpark University's Using Historical Sources should follow. Finally, a most excellent site will enable you to Read a 200-Year-Old Document which is considered indispensable. After that, find those documents.

In the Washington, D.C. area is the largest repository of public documents in the country, The National Archives which houses the records of the Federal Government. There among other leads, you will find a helpful "Took Kit" with definitions, background information and aids for the researcher posted. Similarly, the State of Maryland has an archive for its public records, as does The State of Pennsylvania. In addition to the legislative collection, these archives contain deeds, wills, census reports, military and pension files as well aas genealogical links.Archives and Manuscript Repositories in Maryland lists county and local archival sites as well as local historical associations maintaining source material.
Eddie Becker's Chronology On The History Of Slavery, 1619-1789 not only presents a chronological overview of the subject, but citations to secondary works easily accessible. Africans in America provides a collection of images, stories, documents and commentaties together with links to further sites, while African Heritage Month focuses upon the free black experience in Canada. Black Facts Online! offers a search engine for its library of names, dates, events and personalities. The African-American Mosaic Exhibition (Library of Congress) provides a resource guide to the study of Black history and culture, including numerous narratives by ex-slaves set down by the WPA during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Many Web sites feature collections devoted to one subject or aspect of African-American history in which primary documents have been culled, permitting the student immediate access to those which are relevant to the subject. The Debate in the 1831-32 Virginia Assembly on the Abolition of Slavery is one such site, developed by a University of Virginia student in 1995. Materials include images of the major participants in the debate; a county-based map of the state as of 1831; the text of a speech by Delegate John A. Chandler; and five background essays of approximately 500 words each written by the site's author. This site also offers a bibliography and links to related sites. Note: this site may be down at time or under construction.

Part of the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress offers African-American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907, consisting of some 350 pamphlets written by African-Americans during the period. According to the introduction, these works provide "a panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture and feature works by Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, Emanuel Love and other first generations of freed African-Americans. A search engine is included in the site.

The social history of this first generation of freed African-Americans can also be gleaned through music and cultural artifacts. The Archives of African-American Music and Culture is an excellent starting place providing a "Selected List of Internet Resources for African American Music" dealing with classical, religious, and popular music.

Steven Mintz of the University of Houston has a most valuable site featuring Excerpts from Slave Narratives, some 46 slave narratives arranged in eleven chronological and thematic categories ranging from descriptions of 17th-century bondage to 20th-century sharecropping and touching upon religious practices, family life and childhood experiences of slaves throughout the antebellum period. It is a very ueful collection of primary materials.

Bruce Fort at the University of Virginia has a user-friendly site American Slave Narratives, featuring selections from interviews with former slaves conducted in the 1930s by journalists associated with the Works Project Administration. Each is accompanied by a biographical sketch of the interviewee, a photograph taken at the time and occasionally an audio component. It also includes a valuable guideline for reading slave narratives and links to related sites.

Another Web source in the same vein is Third Person, First Person: Slave Voices from the library of Duke University. It provides 33 primary documents designed, in the words of its editor "to tell memorable and engaging stories about African Americans during the slavery period; and to promote courses that focus on slavery and African Americans."

The library of Duke University also offers a site on African American Women comprised of primary materials relating to four African-American women of the 19th century: Elizabeth Johnson Harris, a Georgia women whose parents had been slaves; Vile Lester, a North Carolinia slave, Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson, slaves on an Abingdon, Virginia plantation. The primary documents are accompanied by background essays, images, biographies and links to additional resources.

Another site offering primary documents between the years 1861 and 1867 relating directly to emancipation are contained in the Freedmen and Southern Society Project. This includes a letter by General William T. sherman explaining why he refused to return fugitive slaves to their owners; an 1864 letter from Annie Davis, a Maryland slave, to President Abraham Lincoln, a decription of the Battle at Milliken's Bend, Louisiana where a brigade of black soldiers fought. Each document is accompanied by a brief annotation and a chronology of events leading to legal emancipation. Enlargement of the materials found here is anticipated as this site is part of an effort underway to publish a multivolume, print documentary history of emancipation.

Providing a broader selection of primary documents in the University of North Carolina's Documenting the American South, which features more than 300 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Three database projects are featured, "First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920," concentrating on women, blacks, workers and American Indians, "North-American Slave Narratives," and the "Library of Southern Literature."A fourth project based on Confederate imprints will soon be forthcoming.

Students who enjoyed the recent Hollywood film, Exploring Amistad will find a most valuable array of primary documents relating to the 1839 revolt of slaves on board the schooner with related material dealing with "Race and the Boundaries of Freedom in Maritime Antebellum America." This site features almost 500 documents, including items from personal papers, legal decisions and arguments presented in court, newspaper articles and editorials, a timeline, links to other related resources and a most imaginative "living the history" component which encourages user feedback and participation. Highly recommended as an attractive, well-conceived site.

Another well conceive site, a bit out of the ordinary, is one relating to the deaths of William Robinson and two other black men on the British colony of Salt Spring Island (British Columbia) between 1867 and 1868. Entitled Who Killed William Robinson?: Race, Justice, and Settling the Land, the student is invited to peruse the murder through trail records, newspaper accounts, diary entries, maps, artist's depictions and private correspondence. Satisfy your desire to play detective and solve a real-world crime. More broadly, relations between whites, blacks and aboriginal peoples are revealed.

Valley of the Shadow: Living the Civil War in Pennsylvania and Virginia, offers a massive, but searchable archive of thousands of pages of maps, images, letter, diaries, newspaper, church, agricultural and public records relating to just tow communities: Staunton, Virginia and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, before, during and immediately after the Civil War. It also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and other materials intended to foster primary-source research.

Another vast collection, but one which offers distinct categories of documents is The African-American Experience in Ohio. This site furnishes photographs of local community leaaders, buildings, and advertisements. It also offers letters and personal accounts by politicians, soldiers, free blacks, slave holders, and abolitions along with selections from various Ohio newspapers, including "The Palladium of Liberty," the earliest black newspaper in the state. Materials are searchable by keyword. Upon completion, this site will hold more than 30,000 pages of primary documents.

Ever since the publication of Alex Haley's "Roots," the general public has become increasingly aware of the tremendous potential of researching genealogical records. Tracing one's family tree is now so popular that commercial software and sites for a mass audience now exists. Those in doubt may want to pay a visit to Cyndi's List which contains about 65,000 links and recently celebrated the ten millionth visitor to the site. A more modest, but still copious commercial site is