Selected Web Sites

Here are just a few useful free websites for U.S. Civil War research:

American Civil War Homepage  This gateway to sites about the Civil War is maintained by the University of Tennessee.  

American Memory  This historical Collection for the National Digital Library provides access to pamphlets, sheet music, photographs, papers, baseball cards, film, folk history materials and other sources of information about the "American Memory".  There are also links to the Library of Congress and the National Archives.  A very rich source not to be overlooked when researching any aspect of American history, culture, society, etc.

American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology  Transcripts from WPA slave narratives selected from  The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, George P. Rawick, ed., (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972-79).

Brooklyn Daily Eagle  This website provides full-text images of articles published from 1841 to 1902.  This was the most widely read afternoon newspaper in the U.S. during the Civil War.  

Born in Slavery : Slave Narratives from the Federal Writer's Project 1936-1938 from the American Memory Library of Congress.

Documenting the American South  UNC at Chapel Hill provides this substantial collection of primary sources on Southern history.  The collection is arranged by the following projects:  First Person Narratives of the American South, Library of Southern Literature, North American Slave Narratives, The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865, the Church in the Southern Black Community, the North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940, and North Carolinians in the Great War.  

Eastern North Carolina Digital Library  Nearly 400 texts (including fictional works) and maps pertaining to the history of 41 eastern North Carolina counties were selected and digitized from East Carolina University's Special Collections.  The collection is searchable by author, title, subject, and keyword.

In the First Person:  An Index to Letters, Diaries, Oral Histories and Personal Narratives   
An index to English language personal narratives published or available on the web.  It aims to be "the most comprehensive archive of social memory ever created." 

Making of America  There are two collections in the Making of America project.  Cornell University's MoA collection includes 22 periodicals, 1815-1901, and 109 monographs.  It also provides full-text searchable access to Official Records of the War of the Rebellion (both Armies and Navies series).  MoA at the University of Michigan provides online access to approximately 8,500 books and 11 periodicals, 1831-1900.