“Slavery & Abolition in the US: Select Publications of the 1800s,” a digital collection from Dickinson College and Millersville University, has several important resources on the Harpers Ferry raid. James Redpath, a reporter who strongly supported abolitionists, published The Public Life of Capt. John Brown in April 1860. Redpath, who first met Brown in Kansas, “[became] an avid promoter of the John Brown legend” as historian David Reynolds explains. (He also published Echoes of Harpers Ferry in 1860, which you can find on Google Books). Franklin B. Sanborn was one of the “secret six,” who provided Brown with financial assistance during the 1850s, and he published The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia in 1885. Also available is abolitionist Richard J. Hinton’s John Brown and His Men; With Some Account of the Roads Traveled to Reach Harper’s Ferry (1894). Hinton met Brown in Kansas when he became involved in the fight against slavery.

The Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection at Cornell University also has material on Brown’s raid, including Osborne P. Anderson’s account – Voice from Harper’s Ferry (1861). Anderson, who was born to a free black family in Pennsylvania and attended Oberlin College, was the only African American who was not captured during the attack. The site also includes other biographies and several sermons (George Cheever – Nov. 6, 1859; James Clarke – Nov. 6, 1859; John Gregory – Dec. 4, 1859; Nathaniel Colver – Dec. 11, 1859).

You can also learn more about some of these authors on the People tab of the Harpers Ferry major topic in House Divided.

“True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina” is an interesting online exhibit from Documenting the American South at UNC-Chapel Hill.  The site breaks down this period (1795-1869) into six chapters and each one has essays on key topics and relevant primary sources.

One particularly interesting letter from 1856 shows what can happen to southerners who publicly supported the Republican party. UNC professor Benjamin Hedrick told Hinton Rowan Helper (The Impending Crisis of the South) that “all the means of the worst politicians were at once brought to bear against me,” including “efforts…to excite the students to mob me.” Eventually the UNC Board of Trustees forced him out of the university. As the “trustees [were] nearly all politicians,” Hedrick concluded “they were very willing to sacrifice me to the popular clamor.” (House Divided also has an editorial about this event.)  Check out DocSouth’s other digital collections here.

Horatio Nelson Taft’s diary (January 1861-May 1865) is available online from the Library of Congress and provides an interesting look at life in Washington D.C. during the Civil War. While Taft worked at the US Patent office, his children played with “Willie” and “Tad” Lincoln. “Our three boys and the Two Lincoln boys have been very busy fireing off Crackers & Pistols,” as Taft recorded on December 25, 1861. Be sure to check out this short essay from the Library of Congress for more information about Taft’s diary.

The University of Washington offers a great collection of Civil War letters that provide interesting accounts on a wide range of topics. The collection contains correspondence from both Union and Confederate soldiers, including a description of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender. “It all seems like a dream,” as M. Adelaide Smith explained to his “dear friends” back in Michigan. Another interesting letter is one General Lee’s wife wrote to Union General Sanford in late May 1861, in which she complained about the conduct of northern troops who occupied her home in northern Virginia. An overview of all the material in this collection is available.

Among the many websites and digital projects bringing the 19th century to the World Wide Web is the Lincoln Archives Digital Project from researcher Karen Needles. This ambitious project began in 2002 with the goal of digitizing all federal records from the Lincoln administration, including every cabinet and every agency. The project is the first of its kind to digitize the holdings of an entire administration and its standards are high. The project uses high resolution scans of original documents from the National Archives and incorporates technology such as “Zoomify” to create a high quality and easily accessible collection.

The project is not limited to just federal documents and includes maps, newspapers, photographs, political cartoons, blogs, lesson plans and even a dictionary and who’s who of the period. The wealth of information is seemingly endless and is always growing, although a subscription is required for full access to the project. For more information, check out the project and the August article about it in Civil War News.

In 1858, many important ideas were spread through letters.  Thus, during the Lincoln Douglas Debates, Lincoln and Douglas corresponded with many contemporaries concerning the senatorial race.  These letters provide an excellent window into the minds of these great men.  One such letter, sent August 25, 1858, was a letter written to Lincoln by Schuyler Colfax advising Lincoln on such matters as the Dred Scott Decision and the spread of slavery.  This is just one letter of many found on the documents section of the Lincoln Douglas major topic page.  House Divided has a dearth of information concerning the Lincoln Douglas Debates.

Of the many differences between America today and America during the House Divided era is the relationships between politicians and persons of a more controversial quality. 150 years ago, politicians associated and communicated with persons whose national stature would make such contact disastrious today. For example is a letter written by the infamous John Brown to Massachusetts Congressman Eli Thayer. In the letter, Brown asks Thayer, a Republican and adamant free-soiler, “to have Mr. ALLEN & Co. send me by express one or two navy-sized revolvers as soon as may be.” Putting aside the fact that Brown speaks of shipping weapons very casualy, it is both interesting and astonishing that a U.S. Congressman was so openly conspiraring with a notorious figure like Brown. It is not something likely to happen today.

The Papers of Abraham Lincoln website recently inlcuded a link to samples of New Lincoln Documents.  The site offers a sample of pieces that Lincoln either authored or upon which he penned “substantial” endorsements.  Any fan of Lincoln should be intrigued to learn that none of these documents appeared in prior collections of Lincoln’s papers.  Although personal letters make up the bulk of this new subset, the compilation also includes government documents and endorsements.   For those who simply cannot get enough Lincoln, this is certainly a site to visit in the near future!

I want to highlight an interesting letter that James Buchanan wrote about a week after President Abraham Lincoln’s Inauguration on March 4, 1861. Despite four “stormy and turbulent” years in the White House, Buchanan told New York Herald editor James Bennett that ultimately “[his] administration [had] been eminently successful in its foreign & domestic policy.” Seven southern states seceded before he left office, but Buchanan believed that the crisis was unavoidable. “No human wisdom could have prevented” the “sad events [that had] recently occurred,” as Buchanan explained. Whether the Civil War was inevitable has been the subject of debate ever since, but most historians criticize his response to the secession crisis.  (Historians who participated in CSPAN’s 2009 Presidential Leadership Survey ranked Buchanan as the worst Chief Executive).Yet perhaps the most interesting part of this letter is Buchanan’s confident stance about how “the public & posterity [would] judge” him. “I feel conscious that I have done my duty…& that I shall at last receive justice,” as Buchanan wrote.

Buchanan also defended his role during the secession crisis in Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion (1866), which you can access through Their Own Words.

Explorepahistory.com is a great resource for teachers of Pennsylvania, BUT it is also useful to ALL scholars, historians, teachers and students of the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.

The website provides images and explanations of every historical marker in Pennsylvania including The Christiana Riot, William Still, Frederick Douglass and John Brown. There are also lesson plans focused on the use of primary documents. For teachers who wish to address the myths associated with the Underground Railroad and topics that are often overlooked, this site is very useful.

There is a high school lesson entitled: “There Were Many Paths to Freedom.” In this lesson plan, students are challenged to rethink misconceptions and stereotypes of the Underground Railroad. Then students read original documents related to the varied experiences of runaways, including William and Ellen Craft, Anthony Burns, and Henry “Box” Brown. The third part of the lesson allows students to role-play a meeting of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, which conducted interviews of fugitive slaves who reached Philadelphia and decided how they would assist them.

There is also another lesson entitled “How Far to Freedom?” where students create a “Big Book on the Life of William Parker” after reading excerpts of his narrative. Overall, this website provides teachers and students a tremendous amount of primary documents and interactive activities that reveal significant runaways and vigilant activists of the Underground Railroad.