🗄 The Civil War & Reconstruction

📁 The Civil War

Civil War & Reconstruction Primary Source Archives (College & Research Libraries News)

Harper's Magazine offered a variety of articles on nineteenth century politics, popular culture, literature and the arts, and various other issues. The archive spans the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln

A searchable archive of primary sources associated with President Abraham Lincoln

The Papers of Jefferson Davis (Rice University)

A limited selection of primary sources drawn from the multi-volume paper of Confederate President Jefferson Davis

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (Mississippi State University)

Entire collection of Ulysses S. Grant’s papers, including personal letters, public addresses, military papers, and political documents.

📂 Reconstruction

Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery

A collection of newspaper advertisements and other primary sources written by formerly enslaved people who sought out family members after obtaining their freedom.

Mapping Occupation

Website created by historians Gregory P. Downs and Scott Nesbit visualizing the location of Union soldiers during Reconstruction.

The Freedmen’s Bureau Online

Various Freedmen’s Bureau Records from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington DC

Freedmen and Southern Society Project

Includes a variety of primary sources offerings a lens into the process of abolition and libertation , labor in Union occupied regions during the war years, and documenary evidence from politicians, Union officers, and every day people who experienced the extraordinary events of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War

Historian Edward Ayers assembled this website, exploring August County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, from John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry through Reconstruction. It contains thousands of primary sources.