LibGuides: FYW: African American Agency in the Civil War: Primary Sources

African American Primary Source Databases

American Civil War: Letters and Diaries Contains 2,009 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of diaries, letters and memoirs. Includes 4,000 pages of previously unpublished manuscripts such as the letters of Amos Wood and his wife and the diary of Maryland Planter William Claytor. Also includes biographies, an extensive bibliography of the sources in the database, and material licensed from The Civil War Day-by-Day by E.B. Long.
Black Abolitionist Papers ProQuest's Black Abolitionist Papers (1830-1865) is an extraordinary, primary source collection and the first to comprehensively detail the extensive work of African Americans to abolish slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War. Covering the period 1830-1865, the collection presents the massive, international impact of African American activism against slavery, in the writings and publications of the activists themselves. The approximately 15,000 articles, documents, correspondence, proceedings, manuscripts, and literary works of almost 300 Black abolitionists show the full range of their activities in the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Germany.
ProQuest Civil War Era‎ ProQuest Civil War Era provides comprehensive primary source materials that were previously unavailable digitally and which cover a vast range of topics including the formative economic factors and other forces that led to the abolitionist movement, the 600,000 battle casualties, and the emancipation of nearly 4 million slaves. It combines continuous runs of regional newspapers, as well as pamphlets covering a wide range of topics. It includes documents that encompass the buildup to and evolution of the war that shaped the Nation's identity, all in original article and page image. ProQuest Civil War Era focuses on the entire era, from Manifest Destiny through the end of the Civil War.
Reconstruction and Military Government after the Civil War From heart-wrenching personal letters to bills of lading for office supplies, this module offers remarkable insight into the early Reconstruction period in the American South. The correspondence of the U.S. Army's Office of Civil Affairs reveal efforts to foster democracy and rebuild communities in the divided and war-torn former Confederate states. The files include letters, petitions, court proceedings and internal documents related to elections.
Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online Package Offers keyword searching across thousands of collections freely available on the Web . Also allows users to perform in-depth fielded searches across all of the letter, diary, and oral history collections published commercially by Alexander Street Press. Of the material currently accessible through Letters and Diaries Online, full-text views of the following Alexander Street Press databases are available: North American Women's Letters and Diaries British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries Black Thought and Culture Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries from the American Antiquarian Society.
Chronicling America Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.

Historical Periodicals

American Periodicals Series Digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century. Titles range from Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine and America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository; popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal; regional and niche publications; and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure's.
1741 - 1900

Catalog Search Box

Use to find journals, diaries, autobiographies, art, fashion and other primary sources available in books in our library.