The Illinois Historical Digitization Projects, sponsored by Northern Illinois University, has tons of information on Illinois history . This website has taken primary documents on the history of Illinois, and put them online in a data base. It has information about Illinois including information about Lincoln, the Civil War, the Guiled Age, and the Mexican-American War, as well as sections about prairie life. Most of the sources on the website are primary sources, like the Mexican-American War has 129 primary sources about the war, and the Mark Twain's Mississippi has 120. These sources can be searched by author, title, or year, and can be browsed to find appropriate ones for students. The website concentrates in Illinois's involvement in history, but does address world events. For example, the information on the Mexican-American War is broad enough to teach it anywhere, but it does have a specific section devoted to the role that Illinois played.
My favorite part of the website is the section Illinois Civil War Newspapers. It has 1469 newspaper articles about the Civil War that can be navigated. All of the papers are written by Illinois Newspapers, but cover more than just what occurred in Illinois. I think this site would be very helpful in making a unit about the Civil War, because there are newspaper articles that cover the entire stretch of the war. It is also useful, because with such a large variety, it would be possible to find suitable ones for every reading level.
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