Primary Document Collections in Civil War History
Even though ID Weeks Library has a relatively strong collection in Civil War history, one can never have enough primary sources. Students writing research papers for HIST455 Civil War & Reconstruction may consult the web sites listed below. Remember, the documents listed on these sites may be transcriptions, not digital images. Use them with appropriate caution. This list is by no means exhaustive. If you find a good web site that you think belongs here, please let me know.
- AmDocs: Documents for the Study of American History
- American Memory Collection from the Library of Congress - Highlights include Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 (contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves), A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: US Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1875, the US Serial Set (selected), the House Journal, the Senate Journal, the Senate Executive Journal, the Congressional Globe, the Congressional Record, and Civil War Maps, 1861-1865
- The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record - The thousand images in this collection have been selected from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period of slavery.
- Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States - Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data.
- The Avalon Project at Yale Law School. Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
- Best Information on the Net: History. From St. Ambrose University
- Documenting the American South
- Documents of Diplomatic History
- Documents in Military History
- Gilmer Civil War Maps Collection - The Gilmer maps are an extensive group of Civil War maps, including both manuscript maps and printed maps with manuscript annotations and engineers' drawings of military construction.
- Government Documents on 19th Century US History - A useful links page to digitized and non-digitized sources.
- Historical Text Archive
- History on the Web - University of Washington Libraries
- Making of America at the University of Michigan - This collection contains images of 8500 books and over 50,000 articles with 19th century imprints. The site has a powerful search engine that lets you search the text of all of the books and articles. This site focuses on monographs in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, science and technology, and religion, although there are many articles available as well.
- Making of America at Cornell University - This collection provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.The site has a powerful search engine that lets you search the text of all of the books and articles. This site focuses on the major journal literature of the period, ranging from general interest publications to those with more targeted audiences (such as agriculture). Highlights include The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies and the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion
- 19th Century Books from the Perseus Digital Library at Tufts - primarily Civil War-related books
- University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service - DLPS provides access to over 200 text, image, and finding aid collections that collectively provide access to over a million digital objects. Some are restricted to University of Michigan users but many are public. Some highlights: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Basler edition), the Digital General Collection (books from the University of Michigan collection, scanned for preservation purposes), the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, the Transportation History Collection: Railroads, and The United States and Its Territories: 1870-1925: The Age of Imperialism, which contains the full text of monographs and government documents published in the United States, Spain, and the Philippines between 1870 and 1925. The primary focus of the material is the Spanish-American war and subsequent American governance (approximately 1898-1910).
- University of Wisconsin Digital Collections - Offers a wide array of digitized materials. SELECTED highlights include Foreign Relations of the United States - selected volumes and the Great Lakes Maritime History Project
- The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
- William T. Sherman Papers at the University of Notre Dame - The William Tecumseh Sherman Family Papers, as they were deposited in the University of Notre Dame Archives by Miss Eleanor Sherman Fitch, the granddaughter of General Sherman, prior to her death in 1959, consisted of correspondence, clippings, photographs, scrapbooks, diaries, various legal papers and documents, cancelled checks, bankbooks, financial ledgers, drafts for and copies of articles, speeches and military orders, and explanatory notations -- sometimes on the items themselves and sometimes on separated sheets. This material ranged from the year 1808 to the year 1959 and consisted of originals, photostats, microfilm, typewritten copies and handwritten copies. The nucleus of the collections had been gathered and preserved by Philemon Tecumseh Sherman followed the death of the father, General Sherman. It was subsequently augmented by Miss Fitch, Philemon's niece, who added items in her own possession, typewritten copies which she had made of various items in the collections itself, items or copies of items which she was able to acquire from the others, and her own explanatory notes.
Newspapers
- Brooklyn Daily Eagle - The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was published from 1841 to 1955, then revived for a short time from 1960 to 1963. This site covers the period from October 26, 1841 to December 31, 1902, representing half of the Eagle's years of publication. This period includes all of the years for which there is no index as well as the eleven years during which an index was published. Approximately 147,000 pages of newspaper in various digital formats are contained in this online repository. Access can be gained either by date of issue or by keyword searching.
- California Digital Newspaper Collection
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers - Library of Congress project that allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
- Digital Library of Georgia Historic Newspapers
- FultonHistory - Started as a repository of New York newspapers (see below) but has expanded beyond New York. To browse, and for instructions, go to http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton_New_help.html.
- Jacksonville (AL) Republican newspaper
- Minnesota Digital Newspaper Project
- Missouri Digital Newspaper Project
- Newspaper Archives of Cedar Rapids Public Library
- Newspaperarchive.com - Contains tens of millions of newspaper pages from 1759 to present. Every newspaper in the archive is fully searchable by keyword and date, making it easy to quickly explore historical content.
- New Orleans Bee
- The New South (SC) Newspaper - Port Royal and Beaufort, SC
- New York Heritage New York Newspaper Project
- New York State Newspapers - From the Fulton NY project. Not particularly elegant, but access to a LOT of newspapers. Keyword searches can be made at http://www.fultonhistory.com/fulton.html.
- Quincy (IL) Historical Newspaper Archive
- Richmond Daily Dispatch - Transcriptions of articles from the Richmond Daily Dispatch. There are currently 1384 issues of the paper available online, ranging in date from November 1860 through December 1865.
- Suffolk (NY) Historic Newspapers
- Texas Digital Newspaper Program
- The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War (contains newspapers within the site)
- Winona Newspaper Project