Research Guides: American history to 1900: Civil War

Military & government records

Civil war unit histories [microform]: regimental histories and personal narratives
Microfiche 1419
[many]
Printed guide: Firestone Microforms E546 .C584
This collection reproduces more than 3000 published personal narratives (e.g. diaries) and regimental histories for Union and Confederate units. Arranged by region and state. Each item is individually cataloged in the Main Catalog.

Reports and decisions of the Provost Marshal General, 1863-1866 [microform]
Microfilm 11886
1 reel
Printed guide: none
From originals held by National Archives as part of Record Group 110, Records of the Provost Marshal General's Bureau (Civil War). The Bureau was responsible for recruiting, the draft, the arrest of deserters, and for compiling reports on casualties. See http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/110.html.

Historical reports of state acting assistant provost marshals general and district provost marshals, 1865
Microfilm 11887
5 reels
Printed guide: none
See above.

Civil War CD-ROM [electronic resource]: the War of the Rebellion : a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies
Computer File 335
Printed guide: none
CDROM version of the printed multi-volume set The war of the rebellion : a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies [Firestone E464 .U6 1985]. The collection was originally published in 1880 by the Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. and reproduces correspondence, orders and reports of the Union and Confederate armies.

Civil War Service Reports of Union Army Generals Archives Unbound “These generals’ reports of service represent an attempt by the Adjutant General’s Office (AGO) to obtain more complete records of the service of the various Union generals serving in the Civil War. In 1864, the Adjutant General requested that each such general submit "…a succinct account of your military history…since March 4th, 1861." In 1872, and in later years, similar requests were made for statements of service for the remaining period of the war. These records comprise Entry 160: Generals’ Service Reports, 1864-1887, RG94: Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780’s-1917.”

Confederate Military Manuscripts and Records of Union General and the Union Army: History Vault. The collections in the Confederate Military Manuscripts cover the perspective of an army commander or an administrative department down to the level of the private soldier, covering all aspects of their military service and experience, while also offering glimpses of life on the home front. Several previously unpublished collections of records of the Union Army are also integral to this module. Highlights include papers of spies, scouts, guides and detectives, including a series on Allan Pinkerton; records on military discipline from courts-martial, courts of inquiry and investigations by military commissions; and records of the U.S. Colored Troops.

Mapping Occupation
Shows the presence of Union troops in the Reconstruction South
Freedman's Bureau Online
Online collection of selected records of the Freedman's Bureau
Journal of the Confederate Congress
• The first entry provides a link to a searchable version of the whole collection. To do a keyword search within a document, you’ll need to download the PDF, open in Adobe, then do Ctrl+F to search.
• The next seven entries are PDFs of the individual volumes.

Proquest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Contains records related to the Lincoln & Johnson administrations, United States Congress, and selected documents from the Confederate government
Hein Online Library This link opens in a new window
Contains selected legal documents related to the Civil War

The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
Online version of the 128-volume printed edition
Civil War Maps at the Library of Congress
Antietam on the Web
Highlights papers of generals and other officers, battle maps, and important background information
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies / War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
Searchable records of both navies and both armies
Papers of Ulysses S. Grant
Papers of Jefferson Davis
Selected papers available online
Confederate States of America Records
Official or semiofficial records generated by departments of the Confederate government and their agents. The departments of state, justice, treasury, navy, war, and the post office are represented, along with material relating to the president, congress, and constitution.
Jedediah Hotchkiss Papers
Papers of the educator, Confederate cartographer and topographical engineer.
Ulysses S. Grant Papers at Library of Congress
Approximately 50,000 items dating from 1819-1974, with the bulk falling in the period 1843-1885. They include general and family correspondence, speeches, writings, reports, messages, military records, financial and legal records, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, memorabilia, and other papers. The collection relates to Grant's service in the Mexican War and Civil War, his pre-Civil War career, and his postwar service as U.S. secretary of war ad interim under President Andrew Johnson, his 1868 presidential campaign and two-term presidency, his unsuccessful 1880 presidential bid, and his extensive travels and financial difficulties. The collection also includes the manuscript draft of his Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, correspondence and memoirs of his wife Julia Dent Grant (1826-1902), and a galley proof of the biography Ulysses S. Grant: Warrior and Statesman (1969) by his grandson Ulysses S. Grant III.

Mass media

Images of the American Civil War This link opens in a new window
Photographs, illustrations and graphics of all aspects of the Civil War, from the American Antiquarian Society, the Virginia Historical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the New York Historical Society.
Civil War: A newspaper perspective, The This link opens in a new window
Full text of major articles gleaned from the The New York Herald, the Charleston Mercury and the Richmond Enquirer.
Illustrated Civil War Newspapers and Magazines This link opens in a new window
Digital edition of nearly 50 American & British newspapers and periodicals published during the American Civil War.

American Civil War Collection, 1860-1922 American Antiquarian Society collection of 13,500 titles includes broadsides, lithographs, maps, monographs, pamphlets, photographs, political cartoons, and stereographs.

Confederate Newspapers: A Collection from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Alabama Archives Unbound "This collection is a mixture of issues and papers from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Alabama ranging from 1861-1865. These newspapers "recorded the real and true history of public opinion during the war. In their columns is to be found the only really correct and indicative ’map of busy life, its fluctuations and its vast concerns’ in the South, during her days of darkness and of trial."

Pamphlets in American History: Group V: Civil War
Microfiche 899
797 microfiches
Printed guide: Firestone Microforms E179.P35
Group V: Civil War (CW1-CW743) "provides documents published before, during, and after the conflict. Topics include such issues as pre-war political thought, eyewitness accounts of battles, narratives of battles, biographies of Civil War soldiers and leaders such as Lincoln, Grant, and Lee, and many documents relating to the Confederate view of the war."

John Shaw Pierson Civil War Collection
This collection was donated to Princeton by John Shaw Pierson, Class of 1840. "The collection focuses on the American Civil War, covering military operations, regimental histories, personal narratives, political, social, economic phases, and the War in drama, fiction, poetry, collected from all parts of the United States, and in Mexico, Canada, and Europe. Much of the material was collected as issued and, consequently, the collection is rich in pamphlet and other ephemeral material." Please consult staff in the Special Collections Department for access to this material.

Confederate imprints, 1861-1865 [microform]
Available at Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania
This collection includes both government and private publications from the states of the Confederacy. Includes books, documents, and ephemera. There is a catalog of the titles in Confederate imprints : a bibliography of southern publications from secession to surrender at Z1242.5 .P37 in Firestone Library: Non Circulating (Fnc).

ProQuest Civil War Era
Provides online access to an extensive collection of pamphlets and complete runs of selected regional newspaper titles covering 1840-1865. Topics addressed include the Civil War, slavery, abolition, medicine, and the law.
Richmond Daily Dispatch
Digitized newspaper from 1860-1865

Personal papers

A People at war [microform]
Microfilm 06838
60 reels
Printed guide: Firestone Microforms E456 .P466
Reproduces Civil War manuscripts from the Library of Congress, including personal letters and diaries, accounts of military service, and official correspondence and reports. "This collection reproduces on microfilm the personal papers of more than 350 people from both North and South - civilians, professionals, camp followers and ordinary soldiers, participants and observers, male and female, black and white."

Boyd B. Stutler collection of John Brown papers [microform]
RECAP Microfilm 07251
8 reels
Printed guide: Firestone Microforms E451 .J63
This collection and the collection below are comprised of papers of the abolitionist John Brown (see http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00096.html), including letters to and from Brown, plus material about him collected by Boyd Stutler.

Papers of Abraham Lincoln at the Library of Congress

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/malhome.html

Complements the printed version at MICROFILM 12591

Papers of John Brown, Jr., 1830-1932 [microform]
RECAP Microfilm 07250
1 reel
Printed guide: Firestone Microforms E451 .J63
See above.

American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
Includes more than 1,000 diaries, letters, and memoirs from both Northern and Southern politicians, generals, slaves, landowners, farmers, seaman, wives, and even spies.

The Civil War in Words and Deeds Archives Unbound
"These first-person accounts [personal narratives and regimental histories], compiled in the postwar period and early 20th Century period, chronicle the highs and lows of army life from 1861 through 1865."

Civil war and Reconstruction, the making of modern America. Series one, The papers of Jay Cooke (1821-1905) from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania [microform]
Microfilm 11742
100 reels
Printed guide: none
On Cooke, an investment banker who is often described as "the financier of the Civil War," see http://www.anb.org/articles/10/10-00323.html.

Civil War Collections at Michigan State University
Personal letters, records of military units, photographs, and diaries.
Civil War Era Diaries
Diaries of Pennsylvania soldiers
Civil War Diaries and Letters
From Iowa soldiers
Civil War Diaries and Letters
From Auburn University in Alabama
Civil War on the Western Border
Letters, photographs, and diary entries that document the Kansas-Missouri Conflict, 1855-1865
First-Person Narratives of the American South
Diaries and memoirs concentrating on the Civil War period.
Diaries and Journals of the Civil War
Transcribed journals of soldiers and civilians
The Valley of the Shadow
Details life in two communities -- Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania -- using letters and diaries, newspapers and speeches, census and church records.
Civil War Manuscripts of Virginia Military Institute
Diaries, letters and personal papers of VMI cadets, faculty, and graduates
Wisconsin Goes to War
First person narrative accounts of Wisconsin soldiers and citizens
Alexander Hamilton Stephens Papers
Correspondence, supplemented by an autobiography and journal and miscellaneous memoranda, legal documents, and clippings from the lawyer, journalist, governor of Georgia, member of both houses of the United States Congress, and vice president of the Confederate States of America.
Betty Herndon Maury Maury Papers
A diary kept by Maury in Fredericksburg, Virginia, from June 3, 1861, to February 18, 1863
Charles Wellington Reed Papers, 1776 to 1926
The papers of Civil War soldier and artist Charles Wellington Reed (1841-1926) span the years 1776-1926, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1862-1865, when he served with the Ninth Independent Battery, Massachusetts Light Artillery. The collection includes approximately seven hundred sketches previously bound in two volumes and correspondence relating primarily to the Civil War.
Clara Barton Papers
Correspondence, diaries, reports, legal and financial papers, organizational records, lectures, writings, scrapbooks, printed matter, memorabilia, and other papers relating to Barton's work to provide relief services during the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, the work of the American National Red Cross which she founded, and the National First Aid Association of America.
Washington During the Civil War: The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861 to 1865
Three manuscript volumes that document daily life in Washington, D.C., through the eyes of U.S. Patent Office examiner Horatio Nelson Taft (1806-1888), including Taft's connection with Abraham Lincoln and his family. Of special interest is Taft's description of Lincoln's assassination, based on the accounts of his friends and his son, who was one of the attending physicians at Ford's Theatre the night Lincoln was shot, on April 14, 1865.
Edwin McMasters Stanton Papers, 1818 to 1921
Approximately 7,650 items. The papers focus chiefly on Stanton's tenure as secretary of war under presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson and stress his role in the Union victory over the Confederacy and the first phase of Reconstruction.
Lewis H. Machen Family Papers
seven diaries kept by Georgia teenager LeRoy Wiley Gresham (1847-1865) during the Civil War, and approximately 550 items of correspondence, primarily letters exchanged by members his family's inner circle.
Mary Ann Bickerdyke Papers
The papers of Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke (1817-1901), a Civil War nurse and agent for the United States Sanitary Commission who was known as "Mother Bickerdyke" to Union soldiers. Subject files in the collection contain Civil War supply lists and disbursements, passes, and an incomplete draft memoir. Other files pertain to her postwar work on behalf of former Union soldiers, the Woman's Relief Corps, and efforts to aid residents of Kansas following the grasshopper plague of 1874. Miscellaneous items include biographical material, financial papers, a few photographs, and printed matter.
Nathan W. Daniels Diary and Scrapbook
Three volumes of a handwritten diary of Union army officer and Freedmen’s Bureau advocate Nathan W. Daniels (1836-1867), spanning the years 1861-1867 with photographs, illustrations, and newspaper clippings mounted throughout the text. Also included are a typescript of summaries and transcripts of the bulk of the diaries prepared by the donor of the collection, C. P. Weaver, and a scrapbook of newspaper clippings.
Philip Henry Sheridan Papers
Approximately 18,000 items relating chiefly to the Civil War, Reconstruction, Mexican border disputes, Indian wars, and military administration, the collection includes correspondence, reports, orders, memorabilia, scrapbooks, commissions, financial records, and speeches.
Salmon P. Chase Papers
Papers of Ohio governor, Lincoln cabinet official, and Supreme Court justice Salmon P. Chase (1808-1873), with the bulk of the material originating between 1824 and 1872. The papers focus chiefly on Chase’s legal career, activities as an abolitionist, involvement in Ohio and national politics, tenure as secretary of the treasury (1861-1864), influence on national finance, and service as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court (1864-1873).
Samuel J. Gibson Diary and Correspondence
A diary kept by Union soldier Gibson in 1864 while serving with Company B, 103rd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, and a letter to his wife while held as a prisoner at Camp Sumter in Georgia, the Confederate prisoner of war camp commonly known as Andersonville Prison. The diary documents the capture of the Federal garrison at Plymouth, North Carolina, in April 1864, and Gibson’s experiences as a prisoner of war at Andersonville, Georgia, and Florence, South Carolina.
Thaddeus Stevens Papers
Papers document the involvement of Thaddeus Stevens in Pennsylvania state politics and national politics, the anti-Masonic movement, and the Whig and Republican Parties. The largest portion of the correspondence centers on issues surrounding the Civil War and its aftermath. Subjects discussed in the Civil War correspondence include Abraham Lincoln, slavery, secession, wartime finance, African American troops, and the army experience of Stevens's nephews A. J. (Alanson) Stevens and Thaddeus Stevens, Jr. Topics from the Reconstruction era include the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen's Bureau), the political situation in the South, complaints from loyal Union men at the election of former Confederates, the treatment of African Americans in the postwar South, suffrage, and Andrew Johnson's policies and impeachment. Other subjects addressed in the collection include education in Pennsylvania, mining of coal and iron ore in Pennsylvania, destruction of Stevens's Caledonia Iron Works operations by Confederate troops in 1863, railroads, and financial issues.
Civil War Soldier in the Wild Cat Regiment : Selections from the Tilton C. Reynolds Papers
Correspondence, photographs, and other materials dating between 1861 and 1865 documenting the Civil War experience of Captain Tilton C. Reynolds, a member of the 105th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers. The letters feature details of the regiment's movements, accounts of military engagements, and descriptions of the daily life of soldiers and their views of the war.
Private Voices
Over 4,000 transcribed letters from individual soldiers of the Civil War

Post-Civil War

The Gilded Age
Primary documents and scholarly commentary, with key treatises, songs, letters, photographs, cartoons, government documents, and ephemera from the late 19th century.