I was looking around on American Memory and found two pictures of “contraband” camps that were in Harpers Ferry. As I have not seen pictures of these types of camps before, I thought I would point them out. See them here and here.

The U.S. National Park Service has a wealth of information on some of the key battlefields of the Civil War. Not least among them is Gettysburg, located nearby Dickinson College in Adams County, PA. Along with pages discussing the battlefield itself, the National Park Service features a web exhibit of the day-to-day life of Civil War soldiers. The site includes definitions of some Civil War era military terms and brief descriptions of what soldiers of the time would have experienced during their long encampments. Most interesting are the image galleries included in the site. These are contemporary, high quality digital images of artifacts related to encampment life. Among these artifacts are game boards, musical instruments, diaries, letters, and personal photographs. Certainly a site worth checking out!

I stumbled across a great site today called Picture History. It has a lot of great scans of original letters and pictures from the time period. I ran across the site while researching Grace Bedell, the young girl influential enough to convince President Lincoln to grow his beard. They have scanned and posted the letter Lincoln wrote back. There are many other documents to browse around through.

Kansas Historical Society has a very comprehensive site that categorizes major events in Kansas history into easily browsed sections. Some of the topics include Civil War and “Bleeding Kansas.” In addition to a search engine the website provides articles and images on the topic pages. This would be a good resource for an expansion on several aspects of the House Divided site. Kansas Historical society website also has a section for teachers.

Harpers Ferry Images – Part II
I wanted to point out a few more images of Harpers Ferry that I found through American Memory (Library of Congress). Many textbooks already have pictures of Harpers Ferry, but I think students might find these interesting.

Harpers Ferry, Railroad Bridge:
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpb.03739

Harpers Ferry, Railroad Bridge destroyed:
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpb.04106

Harpers Ferry Panorama (1912):
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pan.6a13009

Harpers Ferry Panorama (1915):
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pan.6a13017

I was looking for images of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and I found several interesting ones on the Library of Congress website. While none are from John Brown’s attack in October 1859, these are related to it.

Before the raid, Brown and his men lived for several months at the Kennedy Farm in Maryland:
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.md0587

PBS also has an interesting site on the Kennedy Farm: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/sfeature/kennedyfarm.html

The Library of Congress also has an image of the engine house (from 1865) where Brown was captured by the US military:
http://memory.loc.gov/ndlpcoop/nhnycw/ad/ad45/ad45008v.jpg