Slavery and Emancipation in the United States, 1619-1877
Course Number: HI330
Subject: History
Background sources
Companions and Subject Encyclopedias
- Andrews, William L, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
- Barney, William L. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
- Berry, Daina R. and Deleso A. Alford. Enslaved Women in America: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2012.
- Boyer, Paul S. The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
- Finkelman, Paul. Encyclopedia of African American History 1619-1895 : From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Foote, Lorien, and Earl J. Hess, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
- Harper, Judith E. Women during the Civil War: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 2004.
- Hine, Darlene Clark. Black Women in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
- Jorati, Julia. Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.
- Katz-Hyman, Martha B., and Kym S. Rice. World of a Slave Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States. Santa Barbara, Calif: Greenwood, 2011.
- Masur, Louis P. The U.S. Civil War: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
- Schroeder-Lein, Glenna R. The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 2008
- Tucker, Spencer, Paul G. Pierpaoli, and William E. White. The Civil War Naval Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010.
- Williams, Heather Andrea. American Slavery: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Cambridge Histories
Sheehan-Dean, Aaron. The Cambridge History of the American Civil War. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Bibliographies
Scholarly sources
Secondary sources - Books
- Search Omni
- Limit results to "Books and eBooks"
- slaves, slavery, states (gets both united and southern), antislavery, "slave trade", "underground railroad"
- possible limiters: date (e.g, 1970-current), language, adding the word "history"
Secondary Sources - Articles
Search Omni
- Limit results to "Articles" and "Peer reviewed"
- be aware that an item might be included in a peer reviewed journal, but itself might not be peer reviewed (e.g., a book review)
Or, you could narrow down your search by using a more specialized database, in particular those that index older content
Primary Sources
Books
Search Omni (slavery, "slave trade," marronage, abolition, emancipation, "united states," "civil war" etc. and one or more of these terms:
sources, legislation, interviews, "personal narratives", statistics, diaries, correspondence, biography, archives, speeches, document*, reader,
Examples:
- e.g., "slave narratives" = From bondage to belonging: the Worcester slave narratives (print)
- e.g., "slave sources" = Documents illustrative of the history of the slave trade to America (print)
Hahn, Steven, Steven F Miller, Susan E O’Donovan, John C Rodrigue, and Leslie S Rowland. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867: Series 3, Volume 1: Land and Labor, 1865. The University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
Hayden, René, Anthony E Kaye, and Kate Masur. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867: Series 3, Volume 2: Land and Labor, 1866-1867. The University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
Ebook Collections
Internet Archive
A collection of more than 20 million freely available books and texts.
Journals and Magazines
Newspapers
Digitized Collections
There are dozens of sites created by organizations that contain digitized copies of sources. Library subcriptions tend to be curated with helpful search guides, while library and archival sites tend to be uncurated lists of documents. Every site is different, and has different search and browse capabilities.
Library subscriptions
Library and Archival collections
- Locate the "about" page to understand the scope of the content
- look for groups of information beneath a label, e.g., subjects, topics, genre, theme, etc.
- look for the site search function. If not, google the site, e.g., abolition: site:ebooks.library.cornell.edu/m/mayantislavery/
- look for copyright/usage information. Most will allow for educational use, with attribution
Slavery and Slave Trade
- Charles F. Heartman Manuscripts of Slavery Collection (Xavier University of Louisiana)
- Digital Library on American Slavery (UNC Greensboro)
- North Caroline Runaway Slave Advertisements (UNC Greensboro)
- Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection (Cornell University)
- Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation and Freedom (Princeton University)
- Slavery Collection (New York Historical Society)
- Slavery and Justice: Depository of Historical Documents (Brown University)
- Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
War and Rebellion
- The Civil War: Women and the Homefront (Duke University)
- see other Duke University Digital Collections
- Freedom on the Move (various institutions)
- Geography of Slavery in Virginia (University of Virginia)
- Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
- Freedom Narratives: Testimonies of West Africans from the Era of Slavery (Smithsonian)
- Calvin Shedd Papers: The Civil War in Florida (University of Miami)
- Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony (University of Virginia)
- Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture (University of Virginia)
- Valley of the Shadow (University of Virginia)
- Voyage of the Echo: The Trials of an Illegal Trans-Atlantic Slave Ship (Johns Hopkins University)
Abolition and Emancipation
- African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts
- Antislavery Collection(University of Massachusetts)
- Black Abolitionists Archive (University of Detroit Mercy)
- Visualizing Emancipation
Library of Congress Digital Collections
- Abraham Lincoln Papers
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project
- Frederick Douglass Papers
- African-American Perspectives
- Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818–1907
- Print and Photographs
- Selected Civil War Photographs at the Library of Congress
- Slavery and the Judiciary, 1740 to 1860
- Voices from the Days of Slavery (audio, no transcripts)