Primary Sources
February 10, 2014
What is it?
The first primary source that I happened to stumble upon is a map of D.C. from the year, 1851. The map can be seen by clicking here. The major streets of D.C. are labeled, and so are the addresses of what appears to be pretty much every building in the capital at the time.
The second primary source is the agreement the United States made to pay France for the Louisiana Purchase. The digital copy of the document can be found here.
Analysis
The first primary source is indeed valuable in the right context. It brings in great insight to 1851 Washington, D.C.; with its illustrations of what were deemed important buildings in D.C. to the geographical location of the Potomac River. One can learn that D.C. has changed in the territory that it possesses. This becomes obvious when looking at a current map of D.C., the shape and the amount of land within its borders is distinctly different than 1851 D.C. Something to take note of is the White House is referred to as the “President’s House”. The map even features a census of D.C. (shown below) that is broken down by ward, white population, colored population, and slave population.
When it comes to actual historical facts about Washington D.C., other than population facts, the map obviously falls short. There is only so much that a person can draw from a map, but that is not saying that a map is scarce of information because that is just not that case.
The second primary source is a great example of why everything should not be digitized. The digital version of the document seems to make the difficulty of reading the old document immensely harder. The document is illegible, making the source pretty much unusable. In this case, a translation to a new, online, document would be exponentially more useful than the original document in digitized form. It is very difficult to think of any positive ways to use this source. The only reason I believe there is one is because someone must have thought so because they took the time to upload it to the internet. Nonetheless, the reason escapes me and my ultimate judgement is that this digital primary source is useless.
