Yale University has an ongoing project to place in digital format many of the great historical documents. The mission statement as follows, from the Avalon site.
---------

Statement of Purpose and Document Inclusion Policy
The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. We do not intend to mount only static text but rather to add value to the text by linking to supporting documents expressly referred to in the body of the text.

The Avalon Project will no doubt contain controversial documents. Their inclusion does not indicate endorsement of their contents nor sympathy with the ideology, doctrines, or means employed by their authors. They are included for the sake of completeness and balance and because in many cases they are by our definition a supporting document.
---------
Many of the documents of this collection are pertainent to the U.S. Civil War era and provide insight to what may be, in many texts, a mere footnote.