American History and Culture 

• America.gov
  "This site delivers information about current U.S. foreign policy and about American life and culture. It is produced by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs."
• The American West
  "Explore the history of the American West in Web sites and television episodes from American Experience."
• America's Stone Age Explorers
  Companion website to NOVA program about the earliest Americans.
• American Cultural History - 19th Century
  American Cultural History - 20th Century
  "The purpose of these pages is to present a series of web guides on the decades of the (nineteenth and) twentieth century." Areas covered include art, fashion, education, music, theatre, and other aspects of popular culture.
• The American Founders Online
  "An Annotated Guide to Their Papers and Publications" from the Library of Congress.
• American Icons
  Free mp3 files of the radio show about American cultural icons.
• American Journeys
  "American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later."
• American Memory
  From the Library of Congress; over 100 "multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound, moving pictures, and text". Includes a 'Today in History' section.
• American Radio Works
  Special reports on American historical and social topics with online slideshows and Realaudio files.
• Biography of America
  "A telecourse and video series that presents American history as a living narrative. ... For each program you'll find an interactive feature .... In addition, you'll find a listing of key events of the period, a map relevant to the period, the transcript of the video program, and a 'Webliography' - a set of annotated web links."
• Creating the United States
  "This exhibition offers a remarkable opportunity to learn in a fresh new way how the founding documents that emerged from this period were forged out of insight, invention, and creativity, as well as collaboration and much compromise."
• Digital History
  "Digital History is committed to providing high-quality historical resources for teachers and students for free and without advertising." Includes documents, sheet music, interactive guides, American history exhibition, an online American history textbook, and more.
• Documenting the American South
  "Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture."
• Freedom: A History of the U.S.
  "Come along on an exciting journey through Joy Hakim's story of freedom in America." (Companion to the PBS series.)
• From Revolution to Reconstruction: Outlines
  Online version of An Outline of American History. Site also offers "Outlines" of American Government, Literature, Economy, and Geography. History Outline includes coverage through the late 20th century.
• History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web
  "Designed for high school and college teachers and students, History Matters serves as a gateway to web resources and offers other useful materials for teaching U.S. history."
• Images of American Political History
  "A collection of over 500 public domain images of American Political History."
• Information USA
  From the U.S. State Department, "information about official U.S. policies, American society, culture, and political processes".
• Library of Congress
  An excellent source for American history and government information as well as other material.
• The Making of America (Cornell), or - The Making of America (UMich)
  A collaborative effort between Cornell University and the University of Michigan, offering access to books and articles from the 1800's and 1900's.
• National Museum of American History
  Virtual Exhibitions online cover topics from the founding of the United States onward, with a timeline, a music room, and information about the museum and its collections.
• Prayer in America
  "PRAYER IN AMERICA (inspired by and companion to the book One Nation Under God: The History of Prayer in America...) asks the question, What role has prayer played in shaping the development and history of America"
• Religion and the Founding of the American Republic
  From the Library of Congress, a look at the role of religion in 17th and 18th century America.
• Talking History
  Based at SUNY Albany, this project's "mission is to provide ... as broad and outstanding a collection of audio documentaries, speeches, debates, oral histories, conference sessions, commentaries, archival audio sources, and other aural history resources as is available anywhere."
• U.S. History.org
  From the Independence Hall Association in Philadelphia. Features virtual tours of historical sites in Phili, facts, timelines, documents, and links.

 American Civil War 

• CivilWar@Smithsonian
  Archives, images, and links about the American Civil War from the Smithsonian Museum.
• Civil War Maps
  "Civil War Maps brings together materials from three premier collections: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia....all available for the first time in one place."
• Civil War Web Unit
  Subject-organized set of links for students to pages about the U.S. Civil War. Includes some wonderful sites!
• National Geographic: Interactive Civil War Map
  "Explore our interactive map of over 5,200 U.S. Civil War battlefields and historic sites. Get detailed descriptions of 384 major battlefields, and view the 25 sites most in danger of being lost."
• US Civil War: Selected Resources
  Text, maps, and photos from the Library of Congress.
• The Valley of the Shadow
  "The Valley Project details life in two American communities, one Northern and one Southern, from the time of John Brown's Raid through the era of Reconstruction. In this digital archive you may thousands of original letters and diaries, newspapers and speeches, census and church records...."