1.11 Using original documents on the mexican american war

What are these texts?

These texts are digitized versions of documents found in Rice University’s Woodson Research Center. Theyare part of several hundred documents that comprise Rice’s Americas Archive. The small selection of texts used in this Connexionsmodule all relate to the Mexican American War. I refer to a couple of the documents throughout the module but you may wish to browse through all six of the documents listed in the upper left corner. They would all be of use to someone writing a research paper on the Mexican American War.

The documents discussed in this module include a letter , a piece of currency , a message from U.S President Polk , and government documents regarding the Independence of Texas , the annexation of Texas, and the slave trade .

Why use these texts?

Many of the texts found in this archive were purchased by Rice University from private collections. They havenot been used in scholarly studies before. In looking at the documents – either on-line here or by going to Fondren Library’sWoodson Research Center and viewing them in person - you are tapping into new materials in the field of Hemispheric Studies. Byincluding information you find in them in research papers, you are contributing new ideas to the field.

What am I looking at when I click on the links to these documents?

The links on the left sidebar take you to a page that describes the document in detail. For example, the page for the Independence of Texas document says that it was written by the US Congress House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1837. There are several key terms that are associated with the document and a paragraph that gives some historical background on its creation. There's also a link to this research module, a link to a module that contains more in-depth background information, and a link to the Americas Digital Archive home page. From the Americas Digital Archive home page, you can access many other documents and learn more about the collection.

At the bottom of the page, there are two links to the document. I recommend accessing the document via the top button that says "Full text with images." (The other option is not very reader-friendly.) This button takes you to a page with an easy-to-read transcription of the Independence of Texas and small images of the corresponding pages of the actual document. If you click on the small images, a new screen will open with a large image of the document page.

Is there an advantage to looking at the actual document instead of the digitized version?

If you can, I'd recommend using both the digitized and the actual document. It's exciting to get to see and hold important historical documents. You can feel the quality of the paper on which they were written, examine how they were bound, and look at their comparative sizes. The documents themselves are truly historical artifacts.