Civil War Primary Documents, Personal Diaries, Journals, Letters, Cartoons, Art, Images, Poetry, Literature, & Music

Updated June, 2002

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Primary Documents & Personal Accounts

Photography, Images & Art

Music, Literature, & Poetry of the War

PRIMARY DOCUMENTS
U.S. Civil War Center -- Civil War Documents
Documents of the American Civil War
PRIMARY DOCUMENT: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union & Confederate Armies
PRIMARY DOCUMENT: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies
The Civil War: Newspapers & Periodicals
Civil War Era Documents
Schoff Civil War Collections
America's Civil War : Documents 
Documenting the American South Main Page 
  EyeWitness To The American Civil War
Confederate States of America: Documents
The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion
PRIMARY DOCUMENTS: Slavery
Slavery Debate at the Constitutional Convention
PRIMARY DOCUMENT: Jefferson on Slavery
Statutes of the United States Concerning Slavery
Slave Voices from the Duke University Special Collections Library
Informed ReSource: Historical Documents Regarding Slavery
Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, & the Civil War
PRIMARY DOCUMENTS: Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project
THE ALABAMA SUPREME COURT ON SLAVES
KENTUCKY AND VIRGINIA RESOLUTIONS - 1798
South Carolina’s Protest Against the Tariff of 1828
DANIEL WEBSTER: Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable
The Hayne-Webster Debate, 1830
William Lloyd Garrison, Editorial in The Liberator, Volume I, 1831
South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification, 1832
ANDREW JACKSON ON NULLIFICATION
Ordinance of Nullification, 1832
THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY: CONSTITUTION, 1833
PRIMARY DOCUMENT: John C. Calhoun, "Slavery a Positive Good," 1837
PRIMARY DOCUMENT: Plaindealer (New York), "The Blessings of Slavery," 1837
Daniel Webster's Seventh of March Speech
Daniel Webster's notes for his speech to the United States Senate favoring Compromise
Daniel Webster - The Seventh of March Speech, 1850
John C. Calhoun's speech to the United States Senate against the Compromise
PRIMARY DOCUMENT: Stephen Douglas's Compromise of 1850 Speech
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: On the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854
Creative Quotations from Charles Sumner (1811-1874)
U.S. Senate Historical Minutes: Caning of Charles Sumner, 1856
PRIMARY DOCUMENT: LINCOLN'S HOUSE DIVIDED SPEECH, June 1858
PRIMARY DOCUMENT: Lincoln Fragment on Slavery
JOHN BROWN'S LAST SPEECH November 2, 1859
Confederate VP, Alexander Stevens: The Cornerstone Speech, 1861
Texas Ordinance of Secession, 1861
The Confederate Provisional Constitution
Proposed Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, March 2, 1861
The First Confiscation Act, August 6, 1861
The Second Confiscation Act, July 17, 1862
Additional Article of War, March 13, 1862
Congressional Joint Resolution on compensated emancipation, April 10, 1862
The Militia Act, July 17, 1862
Jefferson Davis's Proclamation Regarding Captured Black Soldiers, 1862
Emancipation in the Federal Territories, June 19, 1862
President Lincoln's Proclamation Overruling Hunter's Emancipation, May 19, 1862
The District of Columbia Emancipation Act, 1862
Annual Report of Secretary of War Simon Cameron, December 1, 1862
President Lincoln's Order of Retaliation, July 30, 1863
Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, December 8, 1863
Mother of a Northern Black Soldier to the President, 1863
Lincoln's Appeal to Border State Representatives on Compensated Emancipation, 1862
Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, September 22, 1862
The Emancipation Proclamation, 1862 -enacted 1/1/1863
Gettysburg Address, 1863
ANDREW JOHNSON: Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon for the Confederate States, 1863
PRIMARY SOURCE: General William T. Sherman on War, 1864
Law equalizing pay of black soldiers, June 15, 1864
Plantation Regulations by a U.S. Treasury Agent, 1864
Confederate Law authorizing the enlistment of black soldiers, March 13, 1865
Congressional Joint Resolution Freeing Families of Black Soldiers. 1865
Sherman: Order by the Commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi, 1865
The Freedmen's Bureau Act, March 3, 1865
The Reconstruction Acts: 1867
PRIMARY DOCUMENTS: "CIVIL WAR" AMENDMENTS to the CONSTITUTION
Judge Albion Tourgee on the KKK, 1870
Freedom: Wartime Genesis: Lower South
Civil War Newspapers I - Civil War Newspapers II
USCWC -- Journalism
RECORDS of the 105th US COLORED TROOPS
Vshadow: Franklin Drafting and Enlisting
LIEBER-CODE: Instructions for Armies of the U.S. in the Field
ANNUAL REPORTS OF THE CHIEF OF ORDNANCE to the SECRETARY OF WAR
Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on Battlefields
For more Primary Resources, be sure to check out each subject area from my Main Civil War Menu Page.

QUOTES
Selected Civil War Quotes
Creative Quotations from Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
Creative Quotations from Stonewall Jackson (1824-1863)
Creative Quotations from Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Abraham Lincoln Quotes
Creative Quotations from Robert E. Lee (1807-1870)
More quotes found on specific topic pages on my Main Civil War page.

CIVIL WAR ART & CARTOONS
U.S. Civil War Center -- Images and Art
Civil War Humor
Civil War Cartoons
Copperhead Cartoon
POLITICAL CARTOONS: The Mexican War and Slavery
POLITICAL CARTOONS: The Civil War
POLITICAL CARTOONS: The South Secedes
Cartoons and Caricatures of the Civil War
Conrad Vogel's Coloring Book of the Civil War
Thomas Nast Comes to the Relief of Fort Sumter (not a moment too soon)
The Civil War Fife and Drum Page: Original Photos
Need pictures for your report or page - Civil War Clipart Gallery and another Civil War Clipart Gallery
Galerie Alfred Waud - Civil War Artist
Scartoons Introduction
Civil War Illustrations
USA State Seals - some state seals during the Civil War.
USCWC -- Films/Theatre, Music, and Writers/Literature
South-Art - The "Lost Cause" personified.
For maps and flags, check out my Civil War Causes, Maps page.
Many more images can be found on most of the sites on the Main Civil War page.

PHOTOGRAPHY DURING THE WAR
Selected Civil War Photographs Home Page
  America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1864
  U.S. Civil War Center -- Images and Art
  History of Civil War Photography 
  The Civil War Photography Center 
  MASTERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY - Civil War Battlefields
  Photography and the Civil War, 1861–1865 | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline
  TreasureNet Historical Image Collection
  IMAGES: Civil War 
  Civil War Photographs: Taking Photographs at the Time of the Civil War 
  Does The Camera Ever Lie? 
  Beyond Face Value: Depictions of Slavery in Confederate Currency  
The Daguerreian Society and the Daguerreotype
The Daguerreian Society: Resources
Mathew Brady
Mathew Brady NY Studio
MATTHEW BRADY PORTRAITS - TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Civil War Fife And Drum Page: Original Photos
  Bibliographies about Civil War Photography 
  War art and photographs of the Civil War 
  Schoff Civil War Collections
For more photographs and images, be sure to check out each subject area from my Main Civil War Menu Page.

CIVIL WAR MUSIC, LITERATURE, POETRY, & LATER FILM DEPICTIONS OF THE WAR
Y, & LATER FILM DEPICTIONS OF THE WAR
USCWC -- Films/Theatre, Music, and Writers/Literature
  Henry David Thoreau's "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" 
  Harriet Beecher Stowe and the impact of her book, UNCLE TOM'S CABIN 
A Digitized Library of Southern Literature to 1920 
  Documenting the American South 
  Southern Literature
  “The South In Literature” 
Poetry and Music of the War Between the States
  Stephen Foster Songs 
  American Experience | Stephen Foster 
  Civil War Sheet Music Collection (The Library of Congress) 
   Ashokan Farewell FAQ 
  The Mudcat Cafe: The Digital Traditions Folksong Database 
Sheet Music about Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Civil War   
  CIVIL WAR SONGBOOK
Civil War Music
  Soldiers' Songs
American Civil War Songs
More Civil War Music
2nd South Carolina String Band. Civil War Music
   The Civil War Fife and Drum Page
The Civil War Fife and Drum Page: Interesting Facts
Port Royal Band Books
  The Minstrel Show 
  Black-Face Minstrelsy 
  The Black Minstrel Show 
  PAL: Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) 
  Uncle Remus 
  Selected Text Page-Uncle Remus 
  The Wonderful Tar Baby Story
Thomas Dixon, 1864-1946. The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan 
  About Thomas Dixon, Jr. (1864-1946) 
  The Birth of a Nation 
  Birth of a Nation: AKA "The Clansman" (1915) 
  D.W. Griffith, The Birth of a Nation (1915) 
  Reexamining The Birth of a Nation 
  D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation & NAACP 
  CIVIL WAR VIDEOS AND DVD 
  CIVIL WAR MUSIC ON CASSETTE AND COMPACT DISK 
  Civil War Movies and Videos 
  USCWC -- Williamson Collection of Civil War Books For Young People

THE DRUMMER BOY OF SHILOH
On Shiloh's dark and bloody ground / The Drummer Boy of Shiloh
Drum Making Activity, Civil War Gallery

RETURN TO THE MAIN CIVIL WAR PAGE.