U. S. History: The Nineteenth Century and the Civil War: Open Access Primary Sources

Article by librarian Susan Birkenseer with extensive links to Civil War sources including diaries, letters, and other documents.

A comprehensive site with many good links.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database comprises more than 35,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866. Records of the voyages have been found in archives and libraries throughout the Atlantic world. They provide information about vessels, enslaved peoples, slave traders and owners, and trading routes. Users can search for information about a particular voyage or group of voyages. The website provides full interactive capability to analyze the data and report results in the form of statistical tables, graphs, maps, a timeline, and an animation.

This collection includes full-text of diaries and letters from 1839-1869.

Links, photographs, and timeline.

Scanned images of poetry broadsides.

Full-text with transcriptions of three journals kept by Union soldier Henry Pippitt intimately describe life in Company G of the 104th Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War.

Haunting formal images of soldiers taken right before and during the war from the Library of Congress.

Available in digital form from Mississippi State University.

Part of LC's American Memory site. Most of the images were taken under the supervision of Mathew Brady, famed Civil War photographer.

Photographs of artifacts and art from the Civil War period. A collaborative effort by Middle Tennessee State University Walker Library, the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University, and Vanderbilt University Libraries.

This collection of approximately 20,000 documents is organized into three "General Correspondence" series which include incoming and outgoing correspondence and enclosures, drafts of speeches, and notes and printed material. Most of the 20,000 items are from the 1850s through Lincoln's presidential years, 1860-65.

Brings together materials from three premier collections: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia. Among the reconnaissance, sketch, and theater-of-war maps are the detailed battle maps made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss for Generals Lee and Jackson, General Sherman's Southern military campaigns, and maps taken from diaries, scrapbooks, and manuscripts all available for the first time in one place.

HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. To login, click on the bright yellowish/orange LOG IN button. Select University of Tennessee, Knoxville from the drop-down list and log in with your NetID/password.

Full-text of thousands of books. Especially useful for contemporary titles. Use advanced search to limit to "full view" (full-text) and to have access to the most searching options.

Open access to full-text of books and periodicals.

Searchable full-text of New York newspaper from Brooklyn Public Library.

Searchable full-text of Virginia Civil War newspaper from University of Richmond.

NLM's free online repository of biomedical resources including books, still images, videos, and maps. From the colonial period to the 20th century.