While I highlighted House Divided’s map collection a few weeks ago, another great resource is the American Geographical Society Library Digital Map Collection. One can look through over 500 maps from around the world as well as from different eras (15th – 21st century). This collection has lots of interesting maps to check out, such as world maps from 1818,  1850s, and 1890s, as well as city maps of major US cities like Chicago, New Orleans, and New York (1840 and 1871). The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries hosts this collection and a number of other digital projects as well.

“John Bull & Uncle Sam: Four Centuries of British-American Relations” is an interesting exhibit of selected items from the British Library in London and the Library of Congress in Washington DC. The site is organized around several themes, such as “Exploration and Settlement,” “Common Language, Separate Voices,” “From Abolition to Equal Rights,” and “Popular Culture: from Baseball to Rock and Roll.” The material related to the Civil War is spread out among these groups. Some particularly interesting items in this exhibit are a satire on the California Gold Rush (A Goodnatured Hint about California (London, 1849)), a political cartoon on Confederate diplomats’ failure to win recognition as an independent country from the United Kingdom, and a letter from Queen Victoria to Mary Lincoln after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

Utah Digital Newspapers, which is available from the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, is another great collection of digital newspapers. The project has over thirty newspapers between 1850 and the 1970s. There are three papers from the Civil War Era, all of which were published in Salt Lake County – Desert News (1850-1910), Union Vedette (1863-1867), and the Valley Tan (1858-1860). The complete list of digital newspapers is available here.

While I have noted other digital historic newspaper projects in previous posts, another great collection is available through Missouri Digital Heritage. The site has three newspapers from the Civil War era – Border Star Newspaper (1858-1860), Liberty Tribune (1846-1848, 1852-1867, 1869-1878, 1880, 1882, and 1883), and the St. Louis Christian Advocate (1857 – 1879). The site is easy to navigate and all of the newspapers are available for download as PDF files. Also be sure to check out all of the other digital collections available through Missouri Digital Heritage.

The University of Miami Libraries has created a virtual collection of letters written by Calvin Shedd, a  carpenter who enlisted in the 7th New Hampshire Volunteers at the outbreak of the Civil War. Shedd’s detailed letters provide a unique glimpse of military life at sub-tropical outposts in Key West, Fort Jefferson, and St. Augustine.

Images as well as annotated footnotes help to create an immersive digital experience.  Names mentioned by Shedd are cross-listed with all 54 of his letters  dating 1861-1869. The University also utilizes an extensive array of secondary sources to provide detailed, era-specific descriptions of various vocabulary and phrases quoted by Shedd in his letters.

Primary sources are also linked within the letters as Shedd mentions them, such as his 1861 enlistment papers and 1862  promotion to 2nd lieutenant. This site is any historian’s best friend and is a great place to give a look if your project has anything to do with the  Civil War in Florida.

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.

The Enoch Pratt Free Library, a public library in Baltimore, Maryland, has a number of great digital collections available. While a few have materials related to the Civil War era, one particularly interesting collection is of broadsides published during the 19th century. Over 100 broadsides are available, including a number from the Civil War. As Maryland was a border state, the collection contains broadsides from both Union and Confederate supporters. Not all of these broadsides are related to politics. Other topics include love songs and temperance songs.

Tulane University has put together a detailed description of the opening volleys of the Civil War. The site breaks the description down into nine specific parts that provide lengthy summaries as well as biographies while detailing decisions that were made and orders that were given both before and after the battle.

The most effective facet of this site are the calenders provided for each section. The calenders point out  days in which events such as letters, missions, and reports that took place during the specific section. This sheer amount of information provided by Tulane is a great place to go if you want to know anything about the fort that started the Civil War.

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.