Secondary Sources are secondhand sources. They were created by historians who drew their information from primary sources. The most typical types of secondary sources are books and academic journal articles.
Examples of a secondary source are: Publications such as textbooks, magazine articles, book reviews, commentaries, encyclopedias, almanacs.
Secondary sources are works that analyze, assess or interpret an historical event, era, or phenomenon, generally utilizing primary sources to do so. Secondary sources can include books, journal articles, speeches, reviews, research reports, and more.
Primary Source: The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 | United States History I.
During the war, a variety of weapons were used on both sides. These weapons include edged weapons such as knives, swords, and bayonets, firearms such as rifled muskets, breech-loaders and repeating weapons, various artillery such as field guns and siege guns and new weapons such as the early grenade and landmine.
At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor. Less than 34 hours later, Union forces surrendered. Traditionally, this event has been used to mark the beginning of the Civil War.
- Top Five Causes of the Civil War.
- Economic and social differences between the North and the South.
- States versus federal rights.
- The fight between Slave and Non-Slave State Proponents.
- Growth of the Abolition Movement.
- Dred Scott Decision.
- The election of Abraham Lincoln.
After four bloody years of conflict, the United States defeated the Confederate States. In the end, the states that were in rebellion were readmitted to the United States, and the institution of slavery was abolished nation-wide. Fact #2: Abraham Lincoln was the President of the United States during the Civil War.
10 Major Causes of the American Civil War
- #1 Economics of Cotton.
- #2 Slavery.
- #3 State's Rights.
- #4 Territorial Expansion of the United States.
- #7 Bleeding Kansas.
- #8 The Dred Scott Decision.
- #9 Election of Abraham Lincoln as the President.
- #10 Secession of the South from the Union.
“Slavery was the root cause of the Civil War,” said Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University. “It was not the only cause, but it was the underlying cause. There was a fundamental difference between the North and the South as the South feared for the future of slavery.”
A former Whig, Lincoln ran on a political platform opposed to the expansion of slavery in the territories. His election served as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1865, Lincoln was instrumental in the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which made slavery unconstitutional.
The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or simply the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting against the United States forces in order to uphold the institution of
The southern landscape was devastated. A new chapter in American history opened as the Thirteenth Amendment, passed in January of 1865, was implemented. It abolished slavery in the United States, and now, with the end of the war, four million African Americans were free.
Statistics From the War 1
| Number or Ratio | Description |
|---|
| 750,000 | Total number of deaths from the Civil War 2 |
| 504 | Deaths per day during the Civil War |
| 2.5 | Approximate percentage of the American population that died during the Civil War |
| 7,000,000 | Number of Americans lost if 2.5% of the American population died in a war today |
Primary and secondary source examples
| Primary source | Secondary source |
|---|
| Photographs of a historical event | Documentary about the historical event |
| Government documents about a new policy | Newspaper article about the new policy |
| Music recordings | Academic book about the musical style |
Primary sources refer to documents or other items that provide first-hand, eyewitness accounts of events. Historians use primary sources as the raw evidence to analyze and interpret the past. They publish secondary sources - often scholarly articles or books - that explain their interpretation.
Disadvantages: Some primary sources, such as eyewitness accounts, may be too close to the subject, lacking a critical distance. Others, such as interviews, surveys, and experiments, are time consuming to prepare, administer, and analyze.
Primary sources are the raw materials of history — original documents and objects that were created at the time under study. They are different from secondary sources, accounts that retell, analyze, or interpret events, usually at a distance of time or place.
The use of primary sources exposes students to important historical concepts. First, students become aware that all written history reflects an author's interpretation of past events. Further, as students use primary sources, they develop important analytical skills.
Primary sources help students develop knowledge, skills, and analytical abilities. When dealing directly with primary sources, students engage in asking questions, thinking critically, making intelligent inferences, and developing reasoned explanations and interpretations of events and issues in the past and present.
This guide will introduce students to three types of resources or sources of information: primary, secondary, and tertiary.
Arthur Marwick says "Primary sources are absolutely fundamental to history." Ideally, a historian will use all available primary sources that were created by the people involved at the time being studied. In practice, some sources have been destroyed, while others are not available for research.
Examples of secondary sources include:
- journal articles that comment on or analyse research.
- textbooks.
- dictionaries and encyclopaedias.
- books that interpret, analyse.
- political commentary.
- biographies.
- dissertations.
- newspaper editorial/opinion pieces.
Secondary Sources
- Bibliographies.
- Biographical works.
- Reference books, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases.
- Articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers after the event.
- Literature reviews and review articles (e.g., movie reviews, book reviews)
- History books and other popular or scholarly books.
Primary sources are original materials, regardless of format. Letters, diaries, minutes, photographs, artifacts, interviews, and sound or video recordings are examples of primary sources created as a time or event is occurring.
While primary sources are the original records created by firsthand witnesses of an event, secondary sources are documents, texts, images, and objects about an event created by someone who typically referenced the primary sources for their information. Textbooks are excellent examples of secondary sources.
In this section you will learn about the following types of information sources:
- Books.
- Encyclopedias.
- Magazines.
- Databases.
- Newspapers.
- Library Catalog.
- Internet.
Historical sources include documents, artifacts, archaeological sites, features. oral transmissions, stone inscriptions, paintings, recorded sounds, images (photographs, motion picture), and oral history. Even ancient relics and ruins, broadly speaking, are historical sources.
Using Primary Sources in Your Writing
- What is the source and what is it telling you?
- Who is the author or creator?
- What biases or assumptions may have influenced the author or creator?
- Who was the intended audience?
- What was the significance of the source at the time it was created?
Academic journal articles are probably the most reliable source of current thinking in your field. To be the most reliable they need to be peer reviewed. This means that other academics have read them before publication and checked that they are making claims that are backed up by their evidence.
Primary research is any type of research that you collect yourself. Examples include surveys, interviews, observations, and ethnographic research. A good researcher knows how to use both primary and secondary sources in their writing and to integrate them in a cohesive fashion.
In the strictest definition, primary sources are usually considered to be items like personal letters, diaries, records or other documents created during the period under study. But primary sources can also include photographs, jewelry, works of art, architecture, literature, music, clothing, and other artifacts.
