Antebellum and Slavery

Background and Context  --  HOLLIS Subject Terms  --  Periodical Articles  --  Document Collections

Background and Context  

Encyclopedia of the antebellum South, by James M. Volo and Dorothy Denneen Volo. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 2000, 390 p.
HOLLIS Record
Internet Archive Full Text 

The early republic and antebellum America : an encyclopedia of social, political, cultural, and economic history, ed. by Christopher G. Bates. Armonk, N.Y. : Sharpe Reference, 2010. 4 v.
HOLLIS Record 
Internet Archive Full Text:   v. 1. A-E   --  v. 2. F-M  --  v. 3. N-T  --  v. 4. U-Z

Historical dictionary of the Jacksonian era and Manifest Destiny, by Terry Corps. Lanham : Scarecrow Press, 2006, 435 p.
HOLLIS Record
Internet Archive Full Text

HOLLIS Subject Terms

  • United States -- History -- 1783-1815
  • United States -- History -- 1815-1861

Periodical Articles 

For Newspapers, see the Guide to Newspapers and Newspaper Indexes

American Underworld: The Flash Press: Crime, Scandal, and Blackmail Papers of the Nineteenth Century

Black Abolitionist Papers (1830-1865): Circa 15,000 articles, documents, correspondence, proceedings, manuscripts, and literary works of nearly 300 Black abolitionists in the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Germany. Correspondence, speeches, sermons, and lectures; articles, essays, editorials, and other major writings from abolitionist and reform newspapers; and receipts, poems, and other miscellaneous documents.

Document Collections

Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922 offers over 12,000 books, pamphlets and broadsides, including many lesser-known imprints, from the Library Company of Philadelphia. 

American Slavery Collection, (1820-1922, primarily before 1880). Includes over 3,500 books, pamphlets, graphic materials, and ephemera pertaining to transatlantic slavery, abolitionism, and memoir of slavery published after the Civil War drawn from American Antiquarian Society. Includes some Caribbean and European imprints as well as US.

British records on the Atlantic world (17th-19th centuries) includes missionary records, records of the slave trade and of missionaries, Jamaican estates and other subjects
HOLLIS Record (Online Collection)

Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery

Digital Library on American Slavery.  No date limitation.  Demands a keyword.

Documenting the American South contains primary sources documenting the cultural history of the American South, mostly during the 19th century.

Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies (ESSSS) covers Africans and Afro-descended peoples in the Americas.

Georgetown Slavery Archive is a repository of materials relating to the Maryland Jesuits, Georgetown University

In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience (New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) offers text, images, and maps organized around thirteen migration periods from the Transatlantic Slave Trade (1450s-1867), to the Great Migration (1916-1930), to the Haitian Immigration (1970-present).

The Making of the Modern World offers full text searching of works on economics and business published from 1450-1914 from the Kress Collection of Business and Economics at the Baker Library, Harvard Business School and the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature at the University of London Library. Includes material on commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, public health, trade, etc. Has considerable French material.

Sabin Americana Digital Archive (1500-1926) contains works about the Americas published worldwide. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture  Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, New York Public Library- Collects, preserves, and makes available for research purposes rare, unique, and primary materials that document the history and culture of people of African descent throughout the world, with a concentration on the Americas and the Caribbean. Digital Collections- browse or search by keyword

Slave Biographies: The Atlantic Database Network offers the names, ethnicities, skills, occupations, and illnesses of individual slaves involved in the Atlantic slave trade. It also connects slaves to family members.

Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice, 1490-2007 is a "portal for slavery and abolition studies, bringing together documents and collections from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world.

Slavery and Anti-slavery: A Transnational Archive. (1700-1940) includes books, pamphlets, newspapers and manuscript collections. Associated reference works and interpretive essays.

Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law (HeinOnline)

Slavery in antebellum Southern industries (1700-1896) (ProQuest history vault) includes company records; business and personal correspondence.

Slavery and Abolition in the US: Select Publications - Deila

Slaves and the Courts (1740-1860) contains 100 pamphlets.

Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 36,000 slaving voyages.

Yale Slavery and Abolition Portal