U.S. History: Primary Source Collections Online

Database of records pertaining to 100,000 slaves brought to Louisiana. (Professor Emeritus of History Dr. Gwendolyn Hall; University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Center for the Public Domain)

Contains several hundred pamphlets and books pertaining to slavery and antislavery in New England from 1725-1911. These items include speeches, sermons, proceedings, and other publications from organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society, the American Colonization Society, and a small number of pro-slavery tracts. (Univ. of Massachusetts-Amherst)

Including papers of William Lloyd Garrison and the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (Boston Public Library)

Collection of over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials, from the 1820s through the Civil War. Provides a portrait of black involvement in the anti-slavery movement.

Includes primary sources on slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, black in the World Wars, and the Civil Rights Movement. (Fold3)

Collection consists of over 4000 pieces dating from 1724 to 1897, and relate directly to the social, economic, civil, and legal status of enslaved Negroes and Free People of Color in Louisiana an especially in New Orleans. The manuscripts are written in French, Spanish, and English. (Xavier University of Louisiana)

Data on race and slavery, including black slaves, free people of color, and whites, extracted from 18th and 19th-century documents, including court documents, wills, inventories, deeds, bills of sale, etc. TIP: Click Browse Subjects for a different way to dig into these documents. (Univ. of North Carolina at Greensboro)

Ecclesiastical and secular documents related to Africans, Afro-descended peoples, and other non-European groups (such as Chinese and indigenous groups) in the Americas. Nearly 400,000 documents from archives in four countries. Most documents date from the 18th and 19th centuries, though there are documents from Cuba and Spanish Florida from the 16th century and Brazilian documents from the 17th. TIP: To begin browsing documents, roll over a country in the menu and select "Documents." (Vanderbilt Univ.)

Large collection of Freedman's Bureau records (mostly transcribed, not digitized) from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington D.C. Also provides links to several other sites with Freedman's Bureau materials.

Digitized collection of runaway slave notices in newspapers, which "provide significant quantities of individual and collective information about the economic, demographic, social, and cultural history of slavery." (Cornell University)

Newspaper documenting early anti-slavery and other reform movements, published in Central New York. (Cornell Univ.)

Online documents including speeches, letters, cartoons and graphics, interviews, and articles. (Yale Univ.)

In 1838, Maryland's Jesuit priests sold hundreds of men, women, and children to Southern plantations to raise money for the construction of Georgetown University. Though they faced incredible hardship, most didn't perish. They married and raised children. Today, more than 8,000 of their descendants have been located through genealogical research. Use this site to search for an ancestor and to hear the stories of the descendants.

A collection of digitized historical Massachusetts petitions relating to anti-slavery and anti-segregation activities. (Harvard Dataverse Network, Harvard Univ.)

Digitized books and articles that document the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights. Part of the Documenting the American South collection. (Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill)

Documents American slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. 14 collections include diaries, account books, letter books, ships’ logs, indentures, bills of sale, personal papers, and records of institutions (such as NY Manumission Society, African Free School, MA Anti-Slavery Society, and more). (New York Historical Society)

42 digitized documents in both English and Arabic, including an 1831 manuscript in Arabic on "The Life of Omar Ibn Said," a West African slave in America--the only known extant narrative written in Arabic by an enslaved person in the United States. (Library of Congress)

Projects documenting topics such as the Underground Railroad, black hospitals and health care, the Brown decision, and white vs black housing in Virginia. (Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Humanities)

Pamphlets and leaflets document the social and political implications of the anti-slavery / abolitionist movement at the local, regional, and national levels. Includes sermons, position papers, offprints, local Anti-Slavery Society newsletters, poetry anthologies, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes. (Cornell Univ.)

Scroll down for heading "St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans, Baptism, Slaves and Free People of Color." Digital images of church records, mostly in Spanish, 1777-1812. (Archdiocese of New Orleans Office of Archives)

Read petitions to Washington, D.C., from slaveholders requesting compensation for their emancipated slaves. (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

Includes primary sources on the history of slavery in Delaware. (Delaware Public Archives)

"Interactive map of the spread of slavery in the United States from 1790 to 1860. Using Census data available from the NHGIS [National Historical Geographic Information System], the visualization shows the population of slaves, of free African Americans, of all free people, and of the entire United States. It also shows those subjects as population densities and percentages of the population." (Lincoln Mullen, PhD candidate at Brandeis Univ., joining the faculty of George Mason Univ. in fall 2014)

Includes more than 1,500 names found in letters, wills, court records and other sources, along with a digital copy of the original source document. Search by keywords like name, occupation, and plantation. (Virginia Historical Society)

"Visualizing Emancipation is an ongoing mapping project...on when and where men and women became free in the Civil War South. It tells the complex story of emancipation by mapping documentary evidence of black men and women's activities--using official military correspondence, newspapers, and wartime letters and diaries--alongside the movements of Union regiments and the shifting legal boundaries of slavery." (U. Richmond)

The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented here took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Several individuals sing songs, many of which were learned during the time of their enslavement. It is important to note that all of the interviewees spoke sixty or more years after the end of their enslavement, and it is their full lives that are reflected in these recordings. The individuals documented in this presentation have much to say about living as African Americans from the 1870s to the 1930s, and beyond. (Library of Congress)

"This online exhibition examines the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade through the voyage and capture of the slave ship Echo in 1858. The Echo voyage demonstrates how port cities such as New York City and New Orleans were strongly tied to the slave trade long after the U.S. Abolition Act of 1807. The subsequent Echo trials in South Carolina provide insight into debates about the future of U.S. slavery in the years preceding the American Civil War." (Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston)

Offers all of the records that remain from the journey of the Sally, which set sail from Providence, Rhode Island to West Africa on a slaving voyage in 1764. Visit "The Documents" area to find letters, invoices, legal documents, and trade books that tell how the ship was outfitted, who sailed aboard, and what cargo she carried. (Center for Digital Initiatives, John Carter Brown Library, Brown Univ.)

Information on more than 35,000 slave voyages between the 16th and 19th centuries.
- Look for particular voyages in this database of documented slaving expeditions.
- Create listings, tables, charts, and maps using information from the database.
- Use the interactive estimates page to analyze the full volume and multiple routes of the slave trade.
- Search the African Names Database, which identifies 91,491 Africans taken from captured slave ships or from African trading sites, including the African name, age, gender, origin, country, and places of embarkation and disembarkation of each individual.
(Emory Univ.)