Research Guide for Slavery and the Civil War Era

Look for specialized subject bibliographies in the HOLLIS Catalog: Search <Slavery [Keyword search] and bibliography [Subject Keyword search]> on Expanded Search screen.

Guide to African American and African primary sources at Harvard University, by Barbara A. Burg, Richard Newman, Elizabeth E. Sandager. Phoenix, Ariz. : Oryx Press, 2000, 217 p
HOLLIS Record
Internet Archive full text

Revealing documents : a guide to African American manuscript sources in the Schlesinger Library and the Radcliffe College Archives, compiled by Susan J. von Salis. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1993, 174 p. 
HOLLIS records

Anthologies of African American Writing, Lists and indexes anthologies, often citing notices and reviews, with illustrative material.

Bibliographies and indexes in Afro-American and African studies
HOLLIS Records

Black populism in the United States: an annotated bibliography, by Anthony J. Adam and Gerald H. Gaither. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004, 227 p.
HOLLIS Record

Black access: a bibliography of Afro-American bibliographies, by Richard Newman. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984, 249 p.
Gutman Education | E185 .N45 1984
Schlesinger | Harvard Depository | 016.3058 N551b
Widener | WID-LC | E185.Z99 N53 x, 1984

Black slavery in the Americas: an interdisciplinary bibliography, 1865-1980, by John David Smith. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982. 2 v.
HOLLIS Record

A bibliography of the Negro in Africa and America, by Monroe N. Work. NY: The H.W. Wilson Company, 698 p.
HOLLIS Record
HOLLIS Record 1968 reprint
HOLLIS Record 1965 reprint
HOLLIS Record 1965 reprint
Internet Archive Full Text
--Arranged by Subject

Societies after slavery : a select annotated bibliography of printed sources on Cuba, Brazil, British colonial Africa, South Africa, and the British West Indies, ed. by Rebecca J. Scott et al. Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002, 411 p. 
HOLLIS Record
--Historiographical Essays, and Indexes -- Primary Sources

For the general (HathiTrust, Google Books, Internet Archive) and English language digital libraries (Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Early American Imprints (1639-1819)), see the Library Research Guide for History.

African American Resources in the National Archives

African American Sheet Music, 1850–1920  (American Memory, Library of Congress, and Brown University) offers sheet music composed by and about African Americans, from antebellum minstrel shows to early 20th-century African American musical comedies

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.

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.

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.

Slave societies digital archive covers Africans and Afro-descended peoples in the Americas. Includes sources on Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Florida, Angola, Uruguay, Benin, Mexico

Freedom on the Move is a database of newspaper advertisements by slaveholders and by jailers trying to locate the slaveholders of captured slaves.

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. Plantation records.

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

Yale Slavery and Abolition Portal

Print

The Black worker : a documentary history from colonial times to the present, ed. by Philip S. Foner and Ronald L. Lewis. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 8 v. 1978-  .
HOLLIS Record
Internet Archive Full Text:

• v. 1. The Black worker to 1869.
• v. 2. The Black worker during the era of the National Labor Union.
• v. 3. The Black worker during the era of the Knights of Labor.
• v. 4. The Black worker during the era of the American Federation of Labor and the railroad brotherhoods.
• v. 5. The Black worker from 1900-1919.
• v. 6. The era of post-war prosperity and the Great Depression, 1920-1936
• v. 7. The Black worker from the founding of the CIO to the AFL-CIO merger, 1936-1955.
• v. 8. The Black worker since the AFL-CIO merger, 1955-1980.

Microfilm

State slavery statutes. 354 microfiches and guide (xviii, 565 p.)
Location: Microforms (Lamont) INDEX Microfiche W 3847 [= Guide]
Location: Microforms (Lamont) Microfiche W 3847
--Statutes issued between 1787 and 1865 of: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia.

Papers of the American slave trade [microform],133 microfilm reels
Microforms (Lamont) | Film A 947
Microforms (Lamont) | INDEX Film A 947 = guide
Online guide
--Includes material on shipboard revolts in Series A, Part 2.

Records of ante-bellum Southern plantations [microform] : from the Revolution through the Civil War [1702-ca. 1899]. 15 series + guides (38 v.) Microforms (Lamont) | Film A 557 Microforms (Lamont) | INDEX Film A 557 = guides
Online guide

Slavery in ante-bellum Southern industries.
Microforms (Lamont) | Film A 740
Microforms (Lamont) | INDEX Film A 740 = Guides
Online guide