Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. They include such objects as letters, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, photographs, and audio and video recordings. Here are three major online collections of primary sources that relate to American history: 

Library of Congress American Memory Collection www.memory.loc.gov 

National Archives 100 Milestone Documents in American History www.ourdocuments.gov • 

University of Michigan Making of America Library  http://moa.umdl.umich.edu

Primary source document:

Excerpt from “What is an American?: Letters from an American Farmer, Letter III (1782)” 

by J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur.


In 1755, a French man named Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur arrived in the United States as a soldier during the French and Indian War. After the conclusion of the war, he decided to settle in the United States, moving to a farm in New York. Years later, he reflected on what it meant to be an American, and what he saw as the essential characteristics Americans shared. Writing under the pen name J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, he wrote a series of letters about the essence of America:

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“America is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess every thing, and of a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very visible one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, no great refinements of luxury. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe....Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great change in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry, which began long since in the East; they will finish the great circle. The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which have ever appeared, and which will hereafter become distinct by the power of the different climates they inhabit....The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and

form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labour, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. This is an American.”