History

Part of the National Digital Newspaper Program at the Library of Congress, this site has digitized 15 million pages of American newspapers from 1789 to 1963.

Union postmaster Joseph H. Sears published the New South newspaper out of the post office building on Union Square in Port Royal, S.C., on a weekly basis beginning in March 1862. The paper was moved to the town of Beaufort sometime in 1865 and remained there until it ceased in 1867. The New South offers a glimpse into an era of unprecedented social upheaval in the South Carolina Lowcountry. In the Battle of Port Royal Sound of Nov. 7, 1861, Union Navy forces seized control of Port Royal Harbor, and Beaufort District’s white residents fled in their wake. Union forces occupied the district through the end of the war.

This is a digitized collection of Harper’s Weekly newspapers from 1861 to 1865.

This online collection provides access to about 7,000 different views and portraits made during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and its immediate aftermath. The images represent the original glass plate negatives made under the supervision of Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner as well as the photographic prints in the Civil War photographs file in the Prints & Photographs Reading Room. These negatives and prints are sometimes referred to as the Anthony-Taylor-Rand-Ordway-Eaton Collection to indicate the previous owners. The Library purchased the negatives in 1943.

Brings together materials from three premier collections: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia. Among the reconnaissance, sketch, and theater-of-war maps are the detailed battle maps made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss for Generals Lee and Jackson, General Sherman's Southern military campaigns, and maps taken from diaries, scrapbooks, and manuscripts all available for the first time in one place.

Images and records provided by the New York Public Library.

Civil War: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints provides a sample of the photographs, images, albums, and more, relating to the Civil War held by Southern Methodist University's DeGolyer Library. These items illustrate both the Confederate and Union sides of the war.

Jeremy Francis Gilmer (1818-1883) was a United States Army Engineer, 1839-1861, and Confederate Chief of Engineers. Personal and military papers of Gilmer include a series of official army papers, 1851-1859, relating to the construction of fortifications on the Georgia and Florida coast; a diary, 1841-1842, at Fort Schuyler, N.Y.; letters, 1861-1864, from Gilmer to his wife Louisa Fredericka Alexander Gilmer, and other Civil War papers; a Confederate order book, 1863-1864, at headquarters, military district of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina; family correspondence with Lawton, Alexander, and Porter relatives in Georgia, including letters received by wife and daughter Louisa Porter Gilmer; and extensive group of Civil War maps, including both manuscript maps and printed maps with manuscript annotations and engineers' drawings of military construction. Provided by the University of North Carolina.

More than 7,000 special portrait photographs, called ambrotypes and tintypes, and small card photos called cartes de visite represent both Union and Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Tom Liljenquist and his sons Jason, Brandon, and Christian built this collection in memory of President Abraham Lincoln and the estimated 620,000-850,000 Union and Confederate servicemen who died in the American Civil War. For many, these photographs are the last known record we have of who they were and what they looked like.

The U.S. National Archives has digitized over 6,000 images from the series Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War-Era Personalities and Scenes (National Archives's Local Identifier 111-B) and included them in our online catalog.

Digitized archives provided by Virginia Tech.

Digitized materials on the Civil War provided by Emory University Libraries.

Digital archives provided by Northern Illinois University.

Collection with a wide variety of materials dealing with life during the Civil War.

In addition to images and military documents – such as muster rolls, generals’ orders, and supply requests – the department also houses a significant amount of correspondence and journals from the time period. As a collective whole, these materials chronicle the evolution of the American Civil War and the immediate aftermath.

Missouri Digital Heritage provides instant access to more than 500,000 digitized Civil War records, accompanied by research guides, lesson plans and other tools designed to help Missourians learn more about this tumultuous and violent period in their state’s history.

South Carolina and the Civil War brings together eyewitness views and accounts of this period of American history, selected from the rich holdings of University of South Carolina Libraries. Books, diaries, sheet music, maps, letters, photographs and illustrations all provide glimpses of everyday life during exceptional times. This collection provides students and other researchers with primary sources on the Confederate and Union soldiers, women, African Americans, and others who lived in camps and on battlefields, in urban and rural areas, at the home front and on both sides of the blockade during our bloodiest conflict.

Provides access to a variety of digitized collections detailing the Civil War experience in Pennsylvania.

"The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865," presents documents related to all aspects of Southern life during the Civil War. In particular, government and civilian publications demonstrate the Confederate States of America's unsuccessful attempt to create a viable nation state. This collection includes over four hundred Civil War era maps, broadsides, photographs, printed works, Confederate currency, and manuscript letters and diaries.

Here, you may explore the lives of people swept up in the great American dramas of slavery, war, and emancipation. The two communities, one in the North and one in the South, experienced every national challenge from secession through Reconstruction.

On February 13, 1861, delegates representing all counties in Virginia met to decide how the state would respond to recent events, especially Abraham Lincoln's election and South Carolina's secession. They voted to remain in the Union and hoped that a compromise could be reached to defuse the situation. Two months later, the same men voted to secede from the United States, sparking a radically different war than might otherwise have taken place. This is a digital version of the four-volume Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861 published by the Library of Virginia in 1965.

A variety of collections provided by the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Emilie Davis was an African-American woman living in Philadelphia during the U.S. Civil War. This website is a transcription of Emilie’s three pocket diaries for the years 1863, 1864, and 1865.

This database (put together by Western Michigan University) includes a diverse selection of Civil War era diaries.

The "Confederate Broadside Poetry Collection" at Wake Forest University consists of over 250 examples of poems written by Southerners and Confederate sympathizers during the Civil War. The collection includes some pamphlets and clippings, as well as broadsides.

Pamphlets, books, broadsides, cartoons, clippings, paintings, maps, and other print memorabilia about America from circa 1830 to 1880.

Digitized collection of this multi-volume set, available on HathiTrust courtesy of Cornell University.

This collection has a great deal of material from the Civil War era, including memoirs of soldiers, nurses, etc.

Another University of Chicago collection, this includes the papers of a physician who worked with a regiment of Illinois troops during the Civil War.