Civil War Primary Sources Online

 

Looking for free online resources about the American Civil War?  Number of excellent websites with primary source material are highlighted in an article by Susan Birkenseer in the May 2015 issue of College and Research Libraries News.  Here is a list of featured resources.

Newspapers

• Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1841-1955)

http://bklyn.newspapers.com/title_1890/the_brooklyn_daily_eagle/

• Chronicling America

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/#tab=tab_newspapers

• Harper’s Weekly

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/the-civil-war.htm

• Richmond Daily Dispatch (1860-1865)

http://dlxs.richmond.edu/d/ddr/index.html

• Secession-Era Editorials

http://history.furman.edu/editorials/see.py

Maps and Photographs

• Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/civwar/

• Civil War Maps

http://www.loc.gov/collection/civil-war-maps/about-this-collection

• Pictures of the Civil War

http://www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war/photos/index.html

Diaries and Letters

• Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/malhome.html

• The Civil War Archive: Letters Home from the Civil War

http://www.civilwararchive.com/LETTERS/letters.htm

• The Civil War Collection at Michigan State University

http://civilwar.archives.msu.edu/

• The Civil War Collection at Penn State

http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/digital/civilwar.html

• Civil War Diaries and Letters

http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cwd/

• Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1855-1865

http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/

• The Civil War: Women and the Homefront

http://guides.library.duke.edu/content.php?pid=41224&sid=303304

• First Person Narratives of the American South

http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/index.html

• Manuscripts of the American Civil War

http://www.rarebooks.nd.edu/digital/civil_war/diaries_journals/

• Saint Mary’s College of California Special Collections

http://www.stmarys-ca.edu/library/about-the-library/special-collections

• South Carolina and the Civil War

http://library.sc.edu/digital/collections/civilwar.html

• Valley of the Shadow

http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/

• Virginia Military Institute Archives

http://www.vmi.edu/Archives/Civil_War/Civil_War_Resources_Home/

• Wisconsin Goes to War: Our Civil War Experience

http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/WI/WIWar

Dispatches and Battles

• Antietam on the Web

http://antietam.aotw.org/index.php

• Making of America: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies

http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/m/moawar/ofre.html

• Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library

http://digital.library.msstate.edu/cdm/usgrantcollection

Slavery and Abolitionism

• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html

• Frederick Douglass Papers

http://www.loc.gov/collection/frederick-douglass-papers/about-this-collectoin/

• North American Slave Narratives

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/index.html

• Slavery and Abolition in the U.S.: Select Publications of the 1800s

http://deila.dickinson.edu/slaveryandabolition/index.html

• Slaves and the Courts 1740-1860

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml/

Confederacy

• The Papers of Jefferson Davis

http://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/documentslist.aspx

 

Adapted from:

Birkenseer, S. (2015). The American Civil War: A collection of free
      online primary sources.  College and Research Libraries
      News, 76(5), 269-273.