Welcome to American History Central
American History Central is an online digital encyclopedia. It has been developed as an educational resource for teachers and students. It is also a showcase for the Encyclopedia Content Management System (eCMS). The encyclopedia is currently focused on content related to the American Revolution and Civil War.
Exploring the Founders from Revolution to the Constitution
Selected biographies of Founders who were involved with the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.
American History Central Update
We are in the process of updating American History Central from the old version of eCMS to the new WordPress plugin. We have a massive backlog of articles and quick facts that have been written and will be added to the system over the next few months.
Online Digital Encyclopedia Development
Since 2005, we have been working on the design and development of online digital encyclopedias. This site was originally developed as a demo for a presentation that we gave at an annual meeting of the American Association of State and Local History.
This site was originally built with the first version of the Encyclopedia Content Management System (eCMS), a framework that we developed specifically to power online digital encyclopedias. Over time, eCMS has been used by the Ohio Historical Society, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, University of Tennessee Press and the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C.
When we first built eCMS, open-source solutions like WordPress were not mature. WordPress was not much more than a blogging platform. Over time, WordPress has matured and grown into a feature-rich content management system. Now, we are working on a new version of eCMS, which is a plugin for WordPress.
The University of South Carolina is the first to implement the WordPress version, as part of the South Carolina Encyclopedia project.
American History Central is the most recent project to use WordPress and the eCMS WP plugin.
eCMS Projects
Key Groups & Events
Selected events and groups from the American Revolution.
- Boston Tea Party
- First Continental Congress
- Declaration and Resolves of the Continental Congress
- Second Continental Congress
- Battle of Concord
- Winter at Valley Forge
- Battle of Trenton
- Burgoyne’s Campaign of 1777
- Suffolk Resolves
- Sons of Liberty
- Committees of Correspondence
- Treaty of Paris (1783)
- Boston Massacre
Coercive Acts
Our entries on the Coercive Acts, also know as the Intolerable Acts, which led to the First Continental Congress.
Civil War
Selections from our entries on the Civil War.
More Founders
Selected biographies of men and women that helped shape the principles and ideals that gave birth to America.
