American Civil War

Online Resources | Encyclopedias, Dictionaries & Handbooks | Bibliographies | Newspapers & Periodicals

Search the E-Resource database:

• ONLINE RESOURCES
• Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
• American Civil War Home Page
• American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
• Civil War Era
• Civil War Resources on the Internet: Abolitionism to Reconstruction (Rutgers)
• Civil War Women (Duke) Online archival collections
• Congressional Globe
• Documenting the American South (DocSouth)- a source for links documenting the American South run out of the Wilson Library at Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
• The Fight for Equal Rights: Black Soldiers in the Civil War 
• Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress
• Freedmen’s Bureau Online­ primary materials from the Freedmen’s Bureau
• Images of Battle: Selected Civil War Letters from the Southern Historical Collection (UNC) 
• Letters Home from an Iowa Soldier in the Civil War
• Library of Congress American Memory collections -photographs and some documents.
• National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
• North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial-1950
• Papers of Jefferson Davis (Rice University) 
• Selected Civil War Photographs (American Memory, Library of Congress)
• Southeastern Oklahoma State, U.S. History resources
• The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War-Archive of experiences of Northerners and Southerners in two neighboring communities
• War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.- an essential source for the war and one that also provides social and political material. Consequently, it’s an often overlooked source by social historians. It was printed by the government from 1880 to 1901 and the original run contained 128 volumes. It has been put on line by Cornell
• Primary source materials for the classroom with a number of standard documents

  ENCYCLOPEDIAS, DICTIONARIES & HANDBOOKS

Selected Subject Headings:

• United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Dictionaries
• Southern States Civilization 1775-1865 Encyclopedias
• United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Encyclopedias
• United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Women Encyclopedias

Boatner, Mark Mayo.  The Civil War Dictionary.  Rev. ed.  New York: McKay, 1988.   SML, Reference E468 B63 1988

Encyclopedia of the Confederacy. Ed. Richard N. Current. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.   SML, Main Reading Room E487 +E55 1993 (LC)

Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War.  Ed. Patricia L. Faust.  New York: Harper & Row, 1986.  SML, Reference E468 H57 1986

Leaders of the American Civil War: A Biographical Dictionary.  Ed. Charles F. Ritter and John L. Wakelyn.  Westport: Greenwood, 1998. 
SML, Reference E467 L43X 1998

Purcell, L. Edward. Encyclopedia of Battles in North America, 1517 to 1916. New York: facts on File, 2000. SML, Reference E46.5 +P87X 2000

Sifakis, Stewart.  Who Was Who in the Civil War.  New York: Facts on File, 1988.  SML, Reference E467 +S56 1988

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BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Selected Subject Headings:

• Confederate States of America Bibliography
• United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Bibliography
• United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Journalists

Barbuto, Domenica M. and Martha Kreisel. Guide to Civil War Books.  Chicago: American Library Association, 1996.  SML Z1242 B18X 1996 
*An annotated selection of modern works on the War Between the States.

Cole, Garold.  Civil War Eyewitnesses: An Annotated Bibliography of Books and Articles, 1955-1986.  Columbia: U. of South Carolina, 1988.   SML, Reference Z1242 C78 1988

Dornbusch, Charles Emil. Military Bibliography of the Civil War.  New York: New York Public Library, 1961-72.  3 v.   SML Z1242 D67 1961

Eicher, David J.  The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography.  Urbana: U. of Illinois P., 1997.  SML, Reference Z1242 +E57X 1996

Fehrenbacher, Don Edward.  Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War, 1840-1861.  New York: Appleton, 1970.  SML, Andrews Study Z1236 F34 

Murdock, Eugene Converse.  The Civil War in the North: A Selective Annotated Bibliography.  New York: Garland, 1987.  SML, Reference Z1242 M87 1987

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NEWSPAPERS & PERIODICALS

Accessible Archives
American newspapers from the 18th & 19th Centuries. Eras covered include the Colonial Period, the French & Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, African-American History, Industrial Revolution, and Genealogy.

African American Newspapers: The 19th Century

American Broadsides & Ephemera, Series I

American Civil War: Letters & Diaries

American Periodical Series
This full-text-/full-image resource contains 1000 magazines published between 1741 and 1900.

The Civil War: A  Newspaper Perspective.
This database contains the full text of major articles gleaned from over 2,500 issues of The New York Herald, The Charleston Mercury and the Richmond Enquirer, published between November 1, 1860 and April 15, 1865.

Godey's Ladys Book 1830-1880

HarpWeek: The Civil War Era and Reconstruction (1857-1877)
Searchable full-text database of all the pages of Harper's Weekly during the Civil War Era, Reconstruction I and Reconstruction II with scanned images, together with a series of indexes.

Nineteenth Century Masterfile
The 19th Century Masterfile is an accumulation of indexes to printed materials from the nineteenth century with coverage from about 1774 to 1920, depending on the index selected.

Pennsylvania Gazette, Pennsylvania Genealogical Catalogue, Pennsylvania Newspaper Record

Richmond Daily Dispatch

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