BackStory

The following links and documents relate to BackStory‘s Civil War Sesquicentennial series, broadcast in the spring  of 2011. You can find out more about all three episodes in the series here.

Click here to see our suggested bibliography of Civil War-related readings.

THE ROAD TO CIVIL WAR

• Federalist Papers No. 6 – 8 - “Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States”
• Lincoln’s key speeches – “A House Divided” (text) – June 16, 1858; Address at Independence Hall (text) – Feb. 22, 1861; Cooper Union Address (text) – Feb. 27, 1861; First Inaugural Address – March 4, 1861
• South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession
• “Dr. Smith’s Back Room” – New York’s black leaders in the years leading to war
• “Cup of Wrath and Fire” – Frederick Douglass’s reaction to secession
• “The Late Election” – Frederick Douglass on Lincoln’s election
• A Diary from Dixie – Mary Chesnut’s Civil War Memoir
• “Virginia Convention of 1861“ - Encyclopedia Virginia
• Virginia Secession Convention – fully searchable text of the debates
• Voting America – visualizing the election of 1860
• The Crisis of the Union – an electronic archive of documents about causes, conduct, and consequences of the Civil War
• Adam Goodheart on South Carolina secession and the period between Lincoln’s election and the firing on Sumter
• William Freehling discusses pre-Civil War Virginia showdowns, twolectures
• Elizabeth Varon discusses Disunion! on BookTV
• EDSITEment lessons on slavery, the crisis of the Union, the Civil War, and Reconstruction

WHY THEY FOUGHT

• National Archives lesson plan on black soldiers in the Civil War with primary sources
• Victors, Not Victims – a history of the US Colored Troops from Hari Jones of the African American Civil War Memorial
• Written in Glory – a daily blog of letters from the soldiers and officers of the 54th Massachusetts free black unit
• A list of resources on black Confederates
• Soldier Studies – an open database of Civil War soldiers’ letters
• Civil War Letters and Diaries
• Civil War Women: Primary Sources on the Internet
• Walt Whitman documents the Civil War
• Documenting the American South – primary resources for studying Southern history, literature, and culture
• “Restless Confederates,” The Nation
• “Why Non-Slaveholding Southerners Fought,” Gordon Rhea
• The Library of Congress’s collection of Civil War soldier portraits
• The Civil War – major events of the war with contemporaneous coverage from the NYT archives

EMANCIPATION

• The Freedmen and Southern Society Project - the drama of emancipation in the words of the participants
• Behind the Scenes - memoir of Elizabeth Keckley, dressmaker to both Varina Davis and Mary Todd Lincoln
• “I Will Be Heard!” Abolitionism in America – an online exhibit from the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
• Visualizing Emancipation – maps where men and women were becoming free in the Civil War South
• A collection of documents and online resources from The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition
• North American Slave Narratives – narratives of fugitive and former slaves
• Born In Slavery – Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project
• Abraham Lincoln – “Plea for Compensated Emancipation” (PDF); Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (PDF); and Emancipation Proclamation (PDF)
• Resources on “Contrabands” – “Fort Monroe During the Civil War“; Benjamin Butler’s Report on the Contrabands of War; Contraband Historical Society; “General Butler and the Contraband of War,” 1861 NYT article
• A Small Southern Town – radio documentary on Civil War-era Washington, DC
• EDSITEment lessons on slavery, the crisis of the Union, the Civil War, and Reconstruction

THE CIVIL WAR TODAY

• The Civil War and Reconstruction Era 1845-1877 – a free online course taught by BackStory guest and Yale historian David Blight
• Disunion – a NYT project that uses diaries, images, and analysis to follow the Civil War as it unfolded
• The Long Recall – the Civil War in real time, 150 years later.
• A House Divided – detailed coverage of the Civil War Sesquicentenial from The Washington Post (master archive)
• Seven Score and Ten Years Ago - reports and delivers Civil War news each day, as it happened exactly 150 years ago
• A House Divided – an instructional film from the Civil War Centennial in 1960
• History News Network covers the Civil War Sesquicentennial
• African American Reenactment – slave auction; Slave Cabin Project
• Civil War Road Trip – a photo essay
• Blogging the Civil War – an interview with Disunion blogger and BackStory guest Adam Goodyear
• A few notable Civil War blogs – Civil War Memory, Jubilo!, Civil War Women, Blog Divided, Civil Warriors, Crossroads, TOCWOC, Renegade South, Civil Warriors, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Civil War Research Circle
  
• “Virginia 4th Grade Textbook Criticized Over Claims on Black Confederate Soldiers,” Washington Post
• Retouching History: The Modern Falsification of a Civil War Photograph – scholars investigate a photo of black Union soldiers “retouched” into Confederates
• “Interpreting the Civil War,” by former chief historian of the National Park Service
• “Historians Respond to Gov. McDonnell’s Confederate History Month Proclamation,” Civil War Memory
• “China’s Lincolnophilia,” Alan Wachman