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US Civil War and Slavery Primary Sources

Primary sources located in Tomlinson Library Special Collections & Archives and freely available online

Primary sources at CMU

Butler, Benjamin F. Campaign Before Richmond. Address at Lowell, MA, 1865. Appendix: speeches given at Boston on 1865 February 4 – Two Attacks on Fort Fisher and Treatment of the Negro; 1865 January 24 orations and rebuttals by George S. Boutwell and James Brooks.

Garfield, James A. The Confiscation of Property of Rebels. Union Congressional Committee. 1864 January. US House of Representatives.

Gooch, Daniel W. Secession and Reconstruction. Union Congressional Committee. 1864 May 3. US House of Representatives.

Kelley, William D. Freedmen’s Affairs. Union Congressional Committee. 1864 February 23. US House of Representatives.

Raymond, Henry J. The Rebellion and Our Foreign Relations. 1862 March 5. Assembly, State of New York.

Schenck. No Compromise with Treason: Reply to Mr. Fernando Wood, of New York, in the Debate on the Resolution to Expel Mr. Long. Union Congressional Committee. 1864 April 11. US House of Representatives.

Shall We Have an Armistice? Union Congressional Committee. Republican Congressional Committee publication, no. 20, 1864.

Shanks, John P. C. Vindication of Major General John C. Fremont, Against the Attacks of the Slave Power and Its Allies. 1862 March 4. US House of Representatives.

Ten Eyck, John C. Reconstruction in the States. Union Congressional Committee. 1864 May 6. US Senate.

Wilson, James F. A Free Constitution. Union Congressional Committee. 1864 March 19. US House of Representatives.

The Great Surrender to the Rebels in Arms: The Armistice. Washington, DC: McGill & Witherow, 1864.

Mr. Lincoln’s Arbitrary Arrests: The Acts which the Baltimore Platform Approves. Democratic Newspaper Offices, circa 1861-1864, no. 13.

Reply of Maj. Gen. Sherman to the Mayor of Atlanta. “In the Field, Atlanta,” 1864 September 12; Speeches of Maj. Gen. Hooker.  “Delivered in the Cities of Brooklyn and New York,” 1864 September 22; Letter of Lieut. Gen. Grant. City Point, VA: Headquarters of the Armies of the United States, 1864 August 16. (Published as one circular)

Report of Lieutenant General U.S. Grant, of the Armies of the United States – 1864-1865. Washington, DC: Headquarters of the Armies of the United States, 1865 July 22.

Wilson, Thomas L. A Brief History of the Cruelties and Atrocities of the Rebellion. Union Congressional Committee. Washington, DC: McGill & Witherow, 1864 August 29.

Reply to President Lincoln’s Letter of 12th June, 1863. Albany, NY: Papers from the Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge, no. 10, 1963 June 30.

Address of Abraham Lincoln: Delivered at the Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on 1863 November 19. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920 February 14.

Long Remembered: Facsimiles of the Five Versions of the Gettysburg Address in the Handwriting of Abraham Lincoln. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1963.

Abbott, A. R. A Review of the Reasons Assigned for the Rebellion. Boston: Abel Tompkins, 1862 April. (Reprinted from the Universalist Quarterly.)

Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, 1865 March 4. Americanization Department: Veterans of Foreign Wars.

A Memorial: To His Excellency Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States. New Orleans, 1864 December 1.

What Jeff. Davis Thinks of the War. New York, NY: National Union Executive Committee, Astor House, circa 1860s. (Published speeches of Jefferson Davis at Macon and Montgomery, as well as an “Oct. 6” article titled “The Rebel Need of Reinforcements” from the Richmond Enquirer.)

Harper’s Pictoral History of the Civil War, 1865 April and 1866 June. (Annotated as “incomplete.”)

“The Field of the Rebellion: Its Vast Extent and Compact Form in 1861 and Its Dissolving Fragments in 1864.” The New York Herald. 1863 February 10. (Front page newsprint fragment with large battlefield map.)

The New York Herald, 1865 April 15. (Two pages with articles focused on Lincoln’s assassination and Civil War - reproduction.)

Official Army Register for August 1862. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1862.

Prince DeJoinville and William Henry Hurlbert. Army of the Potomac: Its Organization, Its Commander, and Its Campaign. New York, NY: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1862.

Second Annual Report: For the Year 1863. Philadelphia, PA: United States Christian Commission for Army and Navy, 1864 April.

Major Henry Janes, Surgeon, U.S.V., 1861-1866: A Surgeon of the Civil War. Typewritten manuscript, undated.

Smalley, George W. The Story of Antietam: Battlefield of Antietam, Wednesday evening, Sept. 17, 1862. (Appears to be a news report, six pages in length.)

Another Chance! 400 Dollars Bounty. To Avoid the Draft. Enlist in the 7th Ind. Cavalry. (Reproduction of a Civil War army recruiting poster.)

Brand Another Traitor, circa 1863. (This leaflet records a few outspoken quotes from New Jersey resident Reverend C. Chauncey Burr who was reportedly one of the “Rev.” Copperheads during the Chicago Convention.)