LibGuides: Primary Sources: 19th Century

19th Century

The 1877 Railroad Strike
This strike was a general strike that paralyzed the nation’s railroad traffic and telegraphic communications for about two weeks in the summer of 1877. It was the first major incident of a wave of violent labor unrest that lasted for the next twenty years. Other parts of the website document the history of railroads in the 19th century, including GIS shapefiles and other data visualization resources.

African American Newspapers: The 19th Century
Find full-text content of six major African-American newspapers published during the 1800s with specific emphasis on New York, and East Coast African American history, as well as Canadian history.
American Art-Union, 1839-1851: The Rise of American Art Literacy
Documents and primary sources on the rise of art literacy.

American County Histories to 1900 - New York
Electronic version of various New York Counties' history book published during the 18th century. It includes texts, maps and illustrations. The entire contents are full-text searchable.

Black Abolitionist Papers
This full-text collection details the extensive work of African Americans to abolish slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War.

Congressional Globe
"It contains the congressional debates of the 23rd through 42nd Congresses (1833-73)"

Gateway to North America: People, Places, and Organizations of 19th-Century New York
Contains over 800,000 pages of content from over 1,500 print and manuscript directories, member lists, travel guides and other sources, chronicling the people and organizations of New York City from the late 18th through the early 20th century.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online
Find primary source collections for the 19th Century, primarily British and American, but includes material from other countries. It consists of monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other kinds of documents in Western and non-Western languages.
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers
Historical primary source newspapers, featuring full-text content including images. Covers newspapers that published in the 1800s from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S.
Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Enforcement of Federal Law in the South, 1871–1884

Civil War and Reconstruction

CivilWar@Smithsonian
From the National Portrait Gallery, this site is "dedicated to examining the Civil War through the Smithsonian Institution's extensive and manifold collections." The Collections section includes documents, images, and artifacts related to the War. There is also a chronology of the war and a Resources page with suggestions for further reading.
The Civil War Collection at Michigan State University
Scanned letters, newspaper articles, images, photographs, diaries, of Michigan soldiers.
Civil War Era Diaires at Penn State
Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints
Portraits and battleground images, including those of Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner.
Civil War Maps

Civil War Primary Source Documents
From the New-York Historical Society, Civil War Primary Source Documents is an archive of unique manuscripts chronicling the American Civil War as it was experienced. Providing both Northern and Southern perspectives, it covers all aspects of the war, including reactions and impressions from the home front.

Conferederate Slave Payrolls (National Archives)
Cornell Making of America
"Comprised of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction." Includes the "War of the Rebellion, a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies."
Freedmen and Southern Society Project
A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867. This is the leading online resource for the history of emancipation and Reconstruction.
Northern Visions of Race, Region, and Reform
This site documents the efforts of Northern volunteer teachers and the Freedmen’s Bureau to set up schools and economic opportunities for the freed people during the Civil War.
The Papers of Jefferson Davis
Selections from a multi-volume edition of his letters and speeches from Rice University.
Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Enforcement of Federal Law in the South, 1871-1884
"This collection on law and order documents the efforts of district attorneys from southern states to uphold federal laws in the states that fought in the Confederacy or were Border States. This publication includes their correspondence with the attorney general as well all other letters received by the attorney general from the states in question during that period, including the correspondence of marshals, judges, convicts, and concerned or aggrieved citizens."
The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
From the Virginia Center for Digital History, this site includes primary sources from the period 1859-1870 for 2 counties, one Northern and one Southern. The primary sources include letters and diaries, offical records, battle maps, newspapers, etc.
Visualizing Emancipation
" map of slavery’s end during the American Civil War. It finds patterns in the collapse of southern slavery, mapping the interactions between federal policies, armies in the field, and the actions of enslaved men and women on countless farms and city blocks. "

U.S. Presidents

Abraham Lincoln Papers at the LIbrary of Congress
Corresponde of James K. Polk
Papers of Andrew Jackson
Ulysses S. Grant Digital Collections
"The digital collection consists of 32 volumes of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, political cartoons, and sheet music from the larger collection. Other materials will be added to the digital collection as processing continues."