Jacksonian Web

WEB RESOURCES FOR HIST 323

The World Wide Web makes electronic copies of primary documents available to us at any time of the day, and we can spend hours fruitfully searching and reading.

Unfortunately, the WWW also houses a good deal of nonsense parading as scholarly sources.

With the links, on this page, I have provided a sampler of the useful material relevant to this course available through your web browser. (I will make reference to each of these documents as the course progresses.) Pay attention to the nature of the sites I have listed. Start to develop a sense of critical distinctions in evaluating web sources.

In addition to your papers and other concerns about the course, I am available to students (individually and in groups) for on-going discussions of separating the gold from the dross on the web.

JACKSONIAN MISCELLANIES
This is an ongoing and growing collection of material from newspapers, wills, letters, sermons, and other glimpses into
the social and cultural life of the period.

DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
This is an electronic version of the full text of the classic interpretation by the perceptive (though not always correct) French visitor,
Alexis de Tocqueville.

TOCQUEVILLE'S AMERICA: A VIRTUAL TOUR
The title says it all.

EUROPEAN TRAVELERS IN THE UNITED STATES: 1830-1840
The American Studies Program at the University of Virginia provides a variety of perspectives on Jacksonian America, gleaned from the diaries and published voyages of several other European visitors.

AN AMERICAN CHARACTER? ANTHOLOGY OF SOUTHWESTERN HUMOR
This is a collection of humorous, and sometimes hilarious, tall-tales from the Jacksonian period.