Two websites currently stand out for the access they provide to primary sources about the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868.  The first from Douglas O. Linder’s quite exceptional “Famous Trials” series.  Linder, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) has put together invaluable primary source packets on trials from Socrates to the 9/11 hijackers.  His archive on the Johnson impeachment trial is quite good and contains both primary sources and useful background information such as a timeline and bibliography.   There’s not too many visual bells & whistles here, but the content is strong.  A more professional-looking site and one that also contains significant content comes from HarpWeek.  Their site relies on over 200 excerpts, including wonderful cartoons and images, from Harper’s Weekly magazine during the period 1865-1869.

In the summer of 1863, the town of Carlisle, PA became the one of the northern-most posts of the Confederate Army.  An account of the occupation of Carlisle during the Battle of Gettysburg by Richard Edling appears on civilwaralbum.com.  145 years ago this week, Dickinson College became host to General Ewell’s troops.  Edling provides modern day pictures of the Civil War sites in Carlisle.  Check out House Divided for images of Dickinson College from the Civil War.

CivilWarHome.com is a great site with a ton of information on life during the civil war. Their main page is separated in several categories including Medicine, Biographies, and Essays each with numerous links and descriptions for subcategories.

History Net is an online collection of history magazines that has daily posts of the latest articles from history magazine.  The site also features images, videos, and daily quizzes from all periods of modern history.  Under features for today there was an article about Confederate discontent following their defeat at Gettysburg.  The History Net also provides an RSS feed so you can be notified when updates occur.

The Library of Congress has a number of interesting image collections that students might like to see. One I might use in my class next semester is on President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. They have pictures of Ford’s theater, the conspirators, the funeral, and a wanted poster. I’ve only included the top half of that poster, but you can see the full image here.

At the recent unveiling of the House Divided project, held June 13th at Dickinson College, Pullitzer prize-winning author and Civil War historian Mark Neely spoke on party politics during the 1850s. He also allowed us a brief interview, during which time we were able to get his impression on Sherman’s March to the Sea and its implication as an example of ‘total war.’ While Professor Neely does not agree that the March was ‘total war’ in a modern sense, Sherman used some of the fiercest tactics yet seen during the war. Indeed, Sherman hoped to have the South “…begging for mercy…” at the conclusion of his march.

This History Channel website provides an interactive map, complete with audio and images, detailing the three campaigns of Sherman’s march. Principal battles of the campaigns and other events are explained, and factoid boxes provide information on little known tactics, events or other interesting things about the March to the Sea.

An interesting, thoroughly 21st century tech exploration of this crucial military movement.

The Smithsonian Institute presents an online review of its Civil War collections at its CivilWar@Smithsonian website. The site contains a number of smaller pages offering brief over views and accompanying images. The topics covered range from Slavery & Abolition to Life & Culture of the period. Images include portraits of important characters in each topic, photographs of artifacts, and postage stamps from the Confederacy. Drawings and paintings by Winslow Homer are also included, many of these depicting the Civil War from the battlefront. A sampling of Matthew Brady’s photography is also included. This includes images of the major players of the Civil War and other popular characters of the day.

Certainly a useful site for further illustrating the Civil War era. A virtual field trip to the Smithsonian Institute’s Civil War collections.

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.