The Port Royal New South (1862-1866) offers an interesting perspective on life in the South Carolina lowcountry during the Civil War. The editors published the first issue of their weekly paper in March 1862, which was several months into the Union’s occupation of Port Royal. While it promised to “abstain from the discussion of exciting […]

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Susie King Taylor, born 1848, wrote a book in 1902 documenting her time spent enrolled as a laundress with the Union’s 1st South Carolina Volunteers, later named 33rd regiment of the United States Colored Troops, during the Civil War.  Documenting the American South, an online resource at the University of North Carolina, has her entire […]

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Confederate John Jacob Omenhausser, who was captured in 1864 and spent about a year at a Union prison camp in Maryland, filled a sketchbook with over sixty paintings of camp life. The University of Maryland does not have all of Omenhausser’s paintings, but this one is the largest. Omenhausser, who served with the 46th Virginia […]

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Lieutenant Cornelius C. Platter’s diary (Nov. 1864 – April 1865), which is available from the Digital Library of Georgia, provides an account of his service with the 81st Ohio Infantry Volunteers as they marched through Georgia and the Carolinas with General William T. Sherman. This diary offers an interesting perspective on life as an officer […]

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The University of Maryland has an interesting collection of sixty two letters from a family who lived in Maryland during the Civil War. This project consists primarily of Tillie Farquhar Sterling’s correspondence with her mother, which can provide an interesting look into daily life in Maryland between 1862 and 1864. Other letters in the collection […]

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Ta-Nehisi Coates, a contributing editor at the Atlantic, has an interesting essay on “the war between [battlefield] preservation and commerce.” This essay focuses on the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia and the controversy over Wal-Mart’s plan to build a store at a key location.  In addition, check out the author’s   video tour of this […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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The National Park Service boasts an intricate online archive containing regimental information on soldiers and sailors on both sides of the Civil War. Over 6.3 million servicemen can be looked up by name, regiment, or battle via an easy-to-use search engine. One can also look up by state the total amount of soldiers that have […]

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