Some Favorite Links (mostly Civil War)

Sources for Civil War Era primary materials

[This page is about five years old]

The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion

This is a useful web-based version of this huge compendium of official reports. It is part of “Making of America,” Cornell University’s invaluable digital collection of nineteenth century publications. This is a crucial source for all Civil War historians.

Documenting the American South Project (UNC-CH)

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supports a massive digitalization project. This link takes you to the main page.

Among the best collections in the “Documenting the American South Project” is

The Southern Home Front

Duke University’s Primary Sources on Women

Duke University has a tremendous amount of material, much of it digitized. This link takes you to the library’s page on Civil War women. You will find links to several great collections. This page also has links to other libraries.

University of Virginia: Valley of the Shadow Project

This is the product of a celebrated collaborative, and very integrated, effort to assemble data on two Civil War communities. This link will take you to personal papers, newspapers and other great material.

Wake Forest’s Confederate Broadside Collection

This site includes 250 Confederate poems and song sheets. These are great sources, and this site is really nicely organized.

Furman University’s Nineteenth Century Documents on Line

This page has been created and administered by Dr. Lloyd Benson of Furman University. It includes a treasure trove of editorials and other great material.

Penn State’s Civil War Digital Collections

This is a great and growing source for primary source materials on the Civil War Era. This page links to a series of valuable collections.

Gettysburg College Civil War Era Collection

This is an excellent, eclectic, collection. It includes lots of great visual material, including some wonderful cartoons.

Sources for Photographs and Other Images

Library of Congress: Civil War Photographs

The Library of Congress is the best place to start for Civil War photographs..

Library of Congress: Ephemera

This is another great digital collection at the LC. You’ll find obscure broadsides and other printed material here

Library of Congress: Civil War Maps
Another great source from the American Memory Collection.

National Archives: Pictures of the Civil War

Florida Memory: Photographs

A nice searchable database.

HarpWeek’s Political Cartoons from Presidential Elections

This page is part of HarpWeek. It has a huge number of political cartoons from the Civil War Era.

McAllister Collection of Civil War Era Printed Ephemera, Graphics and Manuscripts

This is a wonderful collection of materials housed at Philadelphia’s Library Company. Among other things, it includes a fabulous collection of Civil War era valentines.

Sources for Newspapers, Journals, and Novels

(UF students should note that there are several valuable collections that can only be accessed through the university library system. Proquest, for instance, has the New York Times and several other newspapers. Gale Publications has an excellent collection of “Nineteenth Century American Newspapers.” I am not linking those here because they must be accessed through the library,]

Wright American Fiction,

This is one of my favorite digital sources. The project has put a huge number of 19th Century novels on line, in easily searchable form. It is a wonderful, and still largely untapped, source for the cultural historian.

Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature

This collection, housed in Special Collections at the George A. Smathers Library, houses 93,000 volumes published in the United States and England. The Baldwin Library is also at the core of the marvelous Literature for Children funded by the NEH.

Making of America: Nineteenth Century Journals

This page takes you directly to a great array of digitalized journals from Cornell’s MOA project. I have spent hundreds of hours on this site.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

This is a huge digital collection hosted by the Library of Congress. It can be searched in all sorts of way.s

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

This is a useful newspaper from one of the North’s largest cities.

A Few More Specific Primary Sources On Line

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln

There are of course many web pages dedicated to Abraham Lincoln. This site is a nicely searchable version of the 8 volumes of Lincoln papers, edited by Roy Basler.

Virginia Tech: Civil War Love Letters

This is a small collection, but with some excellent letters.

Philadelphia’s Great Central Fair

This collection from the Library Company of Philadelphia, has great photographs of the city’s 1864 fund-raising fair.

Emilie Davis Diaries

Emilie Davis was an African American Philadelphian. She kept a small journal for the final three years of the war. Dr. Judy Giesberg and a team of her students at Villanova transcribed this fabulous diary.

American Slave Narratives: An On-line Anthology

Hosted by the University of Virginia, this site offers excerpts from various slave narratives and a good discussion of the source.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture

This is another prize winning project from the University of Virginia. It is run by Dr. Stephen Railton. The range of material here is truly amazing.

Florida History and the Civil War

UF: Florida and the Civil War

This page is an entrée into Civil War manuscripts at UF’s Special Collections.

Researching the Civil War at the University of Florida

This is a fabulous resource compiled by archivist James Cusick. Dr. Cusick put this list together from my seminar on the Civil War home front, but it also includes all sorts of other material on the Civil War available in P. K. Yonge (newspapers, diaries, manuscript collections, regimental histories, dissertations etc)

Florida in the Civil War (Florida Memory)

This web site is part of the Florida Memory Project, produced by the State Library and Archives. It includes a useful overview and some documents and images. From this page students can also access a wealth of other material about Florida history.

Florida in the Civil War

This page is from the Museum of Florida History. Again, this page also leads the student to lots of other material on Florida history.

Florida State University Guide to Civil War Materials

Florida Confederate Pension Application Files

This is an invaluable source from the Florida Memory Project. Raw data at your fingertips.

The Battle of Olustee

This fabulous site was created by Thomas Fasulo, who was an entomologist in the University of Florida’s Entomology and Nematology Department. It includes all sorts of material about the battle and about reenactments.