The Duke University libraries have several digital collections available on their websites. One of these is the American Song Sheets collection, which contains around 1800 song sheets, all from the 19th century. It was customary during the 19th century for publishers to print just the lyrics of popular songs on a single sheet, usually illustrated with a drawing. These became known as song sheets, handbills, or broadsides. The illustrations and the lyrics to these songs provide an insight into popular themes of the time. The collection contains a lot of broadsides from the South and the Civil War era in particular, so it can be useful for understanding homefront morale during the war or for studying the larger context of the 19th century. There are two options for searching the collection: by keyword on the main page or by using the index that allows the user to search the text of the song lyrics. For those interested in the music to accompany the words, there is also a searchable database of sheet music.

I’ve pointed out digital newspaper collections before, but those largely featured publications from northern or western states. A great resource for southern papers is available from the University of Richmond’s Digital Initiatives, which has over a thousand issues of the Richmond Daily Dispatch published between 1860-1865. One can learn more about Richmond during the Civil War from an essay written by historian Robert C. Kenzer. The project also provides full text access of related primary sources, such as a diary from someone who lived in Richmond in 1865.

Approaching the topic of slavery can be difficult, especially at the elementary school level when these issues might be discussed for the first time. Posted by the National Endowment for the Humanities, “Slave Narratives: Constructing U.S. History Through Analyzing Primary Sources” offers a helpful classroom solution. Students from third to fifth grade read and explore a selection of narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, after which they evaluate and respond to those sources.

The lesson plan gives several strategies for teachers and the class to review and summarize the narratives in accordance to their needs. In addition, “Slave Narratives” introduces primary sources in the context of a story, before asking students to assess the veracity of the testimony.  In a very real sense the students are “doing” history and hopefully fostering an interest at the same time.

The University of Virginia Library has an old exhibit on Southern women in the Civil War that is still accessible online.  This exhibit is very well organized into categories that represent major concerns that occupied women on the home front before, during, and after the war.  Under each category, the narrative is presented using a variety of primary sources.  Most of the sources are letters and diaries, which are summarized using important excerpts.   Some sections also make use of photographs or popular cards of the time.  The originals of all of the primary sources are  available as a scanned image on the website.  The format of the exhibit is straight-forward and easy to understand, and it tells the story of women during this time period in a concise and very effective way.  It would be easy for teachers to present one or more of these topics to a classroom using the primary documents selected here as a resource.

Marines deployed by the Union Army during the Civil War played an intricate role in battles and skirmishes that took place along rivers and coastlines. The library at Augustana College has compiled and transcribed the diary of Basil H. Messler, a soldier in the Union’s amphibious Mississippi Marine Brigade, which outlines his exploits as a soldier and commissary during the final years of the War.  This resource tool is great for anyone looking to get a personal view of how marines operated during the Civil War.

The site also has the diary of Illinois volunteer G.D. Molineaux, as well as a detailed outline of the troop deployments of his 8th Illinois Volunteer Infantry from 1861-1865.

When Democrats could not agree on a single candidate from the 1860 election, the northern and southern wings selected their own – Stephen Douglas and John Breckinridge, respectively. This development alarmed President John Buchanan, as a letter from August 1860 reveals. If “a re-union between the” northern and southern Democrats did not occur, Buchanan told editor Gerard Hallock that “the Constitution & the union cannot be perpetuated.” Yet the split in the party was not a simple North/South divide. While Hallock’s New York Journal of Commerce had provided able & valuable support…to [Buchanan’s] administration,” other northern Democrats were not as loyal. Calvert Comstock’s Albany (NY) Atlas & Argus had, as Buchanan explained, failed to “sustain the principles of my administration” and “[held] political doctrines in violation of the Constitution of the United States as expounded by the Supreme Court.”

Walt Whitman is the subject of not one, but two, interdisciplinary lesson plans hoping to explore the connection between the literature of the Civil War and the War itself. The first, aimed at students in grades from 7-12, is written by Nancy Hall and based off of Ken Burns’ documentary The Civil War, which has already been discussed previously. The second, aimed at students in grades from 9-12, is available through the National Endowment for the Humanities.

While both ask students to evaluate Whitman’s work in the context of the War, the lesson plan from the NEH is arguably the better of the two. Specifically, it asks students to examine primary sources such as photographs and letters, poems, and short prose pieces he wrote. Topics covered in the lesson include Civil War hospitals, the 51st New York regiment, and Washington DC during the War. In addition, students are encouraged to look at pages from Whitman’s notebooks, which offer an interesting look at how the writer worked. Group work is essential in completing this lesson and assumes an average of thirty-one students per class, though the numbers are flexible depending on individual class needs. Conclusions to the lesson include having students write their own poems or small presentations.

The American Antiquarian Society, an independent research library, has provided a digital collection of the Grant-Burr family papers on their website.  The letters in this collection were written between the years 1827-1892, and a majority of the correspondence is between Daniel Grant and his wife Caroline Burr Grant.  There are over 500 letters, covering a great range of 19th century topics from courtship and childrearing to westward expansion and the Civil War.  The collection can be searched by keyword or, perhaps more usefully, can be browsed according to subject.  Additionally, the website offers genealogical information and images of the family.  All of the transcribed letters are available as a scanned pdf file which is useful for those seeking to use these letters in the classroom.  For more information on how to use primary sources in the classroom, teachers may want to refer to this page from the Library of Congress.

After his victory in the 1860 election, President-Elect Abraham Lincoln quickly started to work on filling the positions in the federal government that were political appointments. While selecting cabinet members was an important task, historian Harold Holzer explains that “Lincoln understood” how critical it was “to purge [the] Democrats” and “guarantee the loyalty of the federal bureaucracy.” Even as Lincoln considered the appropriate response to the secession crisis, he held countless meetings with office seekers who showed up at his temporary office in the Illinois Statehouse (see image to the right – it is #1 on this map). Those unable to travel to Springfield sent numerous letters to recommend either themselves or their friends. Other letters offered Lincoln advice on the appointment process. “Do not be led astray by corrupt Politicians,” as one anonymous author warned. The significant amount of incoming mail even caught the eye of at least one reporter. After a meeting in December, the reporter’s only comment about Lincoln’s office was to note that “[the secretary’s] desk [was] heaped up with letters and documents.” The political activity in Springfield did not escape the notice of Democratic papers like the New York Herald, which used the opportunity to portray their rivals as corrupt. The Herald predicted a “great republican feast” on all “the fat things” and identified the two “cooks” who would direct “the distribution of federal offices” in Pennsylvania.