Explore three new collections that the Library of Congress has recently placed online: the papers of Andrew Johnson, Chester Alan Arthur and William McKinley.
Reading labels as historical objects and applying historical thinking strategies can help students discover what these sometimes-overlooked objects can communicate with us in the present day.
Where can you look if you think you’ve run out of information about a person or place? How can we encourage students to be persistent researching in the face of a “dead end”? And how do we equip students with the knowledge of databases and archives, so that when they run into a historical dead end, they know where to keep looking?
My hope is that my work to create source materials on Civil War nurses situates nurses in the heart of the Civil War and proves their importance in the growing war historiography.
The Library of Congress houses the largest archival collection of Walt Whitman materials in the world, all of which have are now available online. Seeing portions of Whitman's poems in various stages of composition reveals both his very active creative mind and his innovative ways of seeing the world and crafting poetic expressions.
In the January-February 2019 issue of Social Education, the journal of the National Council for the Social Studies, our “Sources and Strategies” article discusses the Life of Omar ibn Said, the only known extant narrative written in Arabic by an enslaved person in the United States. Analyzing this unique manuscript provides students with an opportunity to expand their understanding of some of the people who were brought to the United States from Africa to be enslaved. How educated were they? What did they believe?
In 1866, William O. Bourne organized a unique left-handed penmanship contest for Union veterans who had lost the use of their right hand. Veterans were encouraged to submit a letter they had written using their left hand and a total prize money of $1000.00 was offered. The Library of Congress holds the many of the entrants’ letters and other information on Bourne and the contest.