Core Document Collections

Scholar-curated collections of the documents that tell America’s history in the words of those who lived it.

Browse document collections by topic, theme, or thread.

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A scholarly project to bring America’s past to the educators of today.

About the Core Document Collections Project

When complete, the series will be comprehensive and authoritative, with texts from America’s presidents, labor leaders, farmers, philosophers, industrialists, politicians, workers, explorers, religious leaders, judges, soldiers; its slaveholders and abolitionists; its expansionists and isolationists; its reformers and stand-patters; its strict and broad constructionists; its hard-eyed realists and visionary utopians – all united in their commitment to equality and liberty, yet so often divided by their different understandings of these most fundamental American ideas.

To learn more about the scope of the CDC project, please listen to interviews with our collection editors.

Join your fellow teachers in discussing the Core Documents.

Multi-day
August 12, 2025
Mashantucket, CT
Free
Multi-day
August 13, 2025
Indianapolis, IN
Free
Webinar
August 16, 2025
Online
Free
Multi-day
August 22, 2025
Alexandria, VA
Free