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Slavery and Emancipation in the United States, 1619-1877

Course Number: HI330

Subject: History

Background sources

Companions and Subject Encyclopedias

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

JSTOR

Current and back issues of journals in arts and sciences.

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:

Ebook Collections

Internet Archive

A collection of more than 20 million freely available books and texts.

Journals and Magazines

JSTOR

Current and back issues of journals in arts and sciences.

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

War and Rebellion

Abolition and Emancipation

Library of Congress Digital Collections

Page Owner: Greg Sennema

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