Harvard University’s Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, which is available through their Open Collections Program, is a great resource that offers interesting primary sources that one cannot easily find elsewhere. This collection offers a wide range of material, including photographs, manuscripts, and books and pamphlets. While the focus is on immigration between 1789 and 1930, there is plenty of information on issues related to the Civil War era. One can browse the collection by theme (including “Immigration, Railroads, and the West” and “Gold Rush”) and topic (including Attitudes Towards Immigrants, Living Conditions, Reasons for Immigration, Working Conditions). Also check out their map collection and links to other digital resources on this subject.

“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.

American history teachers may want to check out Emory University’s “The Martyred President,” which provides full text access to fifty seven sermons on Abraham Lincoln’s death. The site includes sermons from different regions and religious denominations, such as Rev. Richard Eddy’s “The Martyr to Liberty” (Universalist) and Rev. Samuel T. Spear’s “The Punishment of Treason” (Presbyterian). These sermons, however, are largely from northern ministers.

Google Books is one of the many components of the ever expanding Google universe. This site offers a plethora of sources, including full views of books that are in the public domain. This is perfect for scholars of the 19th Century because many books are available in full view, scanned from the original copies of books. Many of these books are now unavailble in many libraries and bookstores, because they are often out of print. Therefore, many crucially important sources for historiography and new scholarly research are available for modern researchers. Such sources range from Sarah Bradford’s 1897 biography of Harriet Tubman, Harriet: The Moses of Her People, to Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, by Lincoln’s old law parter, William Herndon, published in 1900.

Clearly, Google Books sees a prominent position in the future of history.

When it comes to history, preserving it is as important as learning it.

Preserving the hallowed grounds of the Civil War is the mission of the Civil War Preservation Trust. The mission of this non-profit organization is “the preservation of our nation’s endangered Civil War battlefields” and to promote “educational programs and heritage tourism initiatives to inform the public of the war’s history and the fundamental conflicts that sparked it.”

Not only does the Trust’s website explain the group and its mission, it also has a number of useful tools and pages. This includes an extensive collection of videos of various battlefields, an interactive library of Civil War books, and a classroom and history center. It is clearly evident that the Civil War Preservation Trust is doing great things to preserve and teach this important era in our nation’s past. �

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.

If your class is going to study the Underground Railroad, one website you should check out is Documenting the American South (DocSouth). The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has put together a great collection of primary sources, including slave narratives published before 1920. To see a list of what they have available, go here. Besides the full text of books, DocSouth has great supplementary material for almost every title. On Frederick Douglass, for example, the site provides a short biography and related primary sources. While students may be familiar with Douglass or Harriet Tubman, they can find on DocSouth many new interesting stories from fugitive slaves like Solomon Northup and William Wells Brown.

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.