Q. Can you help me find primary and secondary sources on Abraham Lincoln?

We have some great sources in our American History 1860-1877, Civil War & Reconstruction guide. There is a page for Primary sources.

When you want a primary source on a specific person you can search OneSearch or our databases.  If you do a search in American History Online for Lincoln, when you get your results list, there will be the words Primary Sources at the top of your result list that will be primary sources to review.

OneSearch
In OneSearch you can put  the specific persons name and search to see if we have anything written by them. These would be primary sources. Books written about them would be secondary source. 

 Primary sources include:

• journals
• papers
• correspondence
• autobiography
• documents
• oral history(speeches)
• eyewitness accounts
• first hand account
• archives

Secondary sources: are documents written after an event has occurred, providing secondhand accounts of that event, person, or topic. Unlike primary sources, which provide first-hand accounts, secondary sources offer different perspectives, analysis, and conclusions of those accounts. 

• biography
• textbooks
• articles
• criticisms
• commentaries
• encyclopedias