Teachers: Primary Source Sets

Political cartoons paired with other historical documents let students explore the ways that cartoonists try to persuade their audience. Includes “Join or Die,” created by Benjamin Franklin during the French and Indian War, as well as cartoons about World War I, child labor and presidential candidates in 1912.

Teacher's Guides and Analysis Tool: Examining primary sources gives students a powerful sense of history and the complexity of the past. Helping students analyze primary sources can also guide them toward higher-order thinking and better critical thinking and analysis skills. Free tools and guides are ready to use in the classroom. Library of Congress Educational Outreach.

Lincoln’s rise in national politics. Includes Lincoln’s student sum book, speeches, correspondence with Stephen Douglas and others, campaign materials, and a map documenting the free and slave states in 1856.

A selection of Library of Congress primary sources exploring the topic of American authors in the nineteenth century, including Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Edgar Allan Poe. This set also includes a Teacher's Guide with historical context and teaching suggestions.

Indian boarding schools and their efforts to assimilate Native Americans through education. Features photos, early film footage, federal government reports, cartoons and maps.

Baseball, the American national pastime that crosses social boundaries. Sheet music, an early Edison film, baseball trading cards, and photographs show Americans from different backgrounds embracing the sport.

Children’s labor, education, and play around the year 1900. Includes images, films, and books. Especially suitable for early grades.

Conflict between abolition and slavery marked the 1850s, preceding the election of 1860 and the attack on Fort Sumter that started the Civil War. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, Dred Scott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown, and secession in maps, newspapers, political cartoons and song sheets.

Explores the Civil War and the role of music during wartime.

A selection of Library of Congress primary sources exploring the Civil War portraits in the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs from the Library of Congress. This set also includes a Teacher's Guide with historical context and teaching suggestions.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights from early drafts into twentieth century interpretations of these founding documents. Includes newspaper articles, notes, and original documents, speeches and song lyrics.

The Dust Bowl devastated the Great Plains and sent many families on the road in search of a better life. Recorded music, song lyrics and photographs, including Dorothea Lange’s "Migrant Mother", document the daily ordeals of rural migrant families during a decade marked by both the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.

Create poems using words and phrases selected from primary source texts to retell the historical content. Includes text and images on topics as diverse as Helen Keller, Walt Whitman, women’s suffrage, and the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance left an artistic and literary legacy documented by photographs, authors’ drafts, sheet music, and newspaper articles. Features James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston.

The role of Spanish explorers in the discovery, exploration, and development of America. Documents Columbus, Cortes, and Ponce de Leon, and how they were represented in later years. Features songs, maps, drawings, paintings, and written documents.

The immigrant experience in America. Includes photographs and an Edison film of immigrants landing at Ellis Island, political cartoons, maps of immigration patterns, official documents, sheet music, and a song recording.