Emancipation

128 Wall Street | Archives Home | Hours

The papers consist of correspondence and business papers of Aaron Columbus Burr, merchant of New York City and adopted son of Aaron Burr. The papers relate to an attempt by Burr and James Grant to establish a colony for freed American slaves in Honduras. There is also material relating to the American Honduras Company, a firm formed by Burr and Grant for the cutting and exporting of mahogany.

The papers consist of diaries, letters, and miscellanea documenting Charles Griswold Gurley Merrill’s voyages as a seaman on the ship Merrimac and experiences as a Union army surgeon, including the command of black troops, during the Civil War.

 

The records consist of correspondence written by Civil War soldiers from Yale College, 1855-1865. These records might be more revealing for what they do not say about slavery and emancipation than what they do offer on the subject. See also similar holdings at the Beinecke Library.

The papers consist of miscellaneous personal papers of Edward Parmelee Smith including letters to his future wife (1851-1854) and letters to his daughter (1872-1873) with an account of a sea voyage to California and his impressions once there. His years at Yale College are documented by an autograph album with messages from his teachers and classmates (1849-1855). Among the four photographs in the papers is one showing Smith with six students when he was president of Howard University, Washington, D.C. (1875). Clippings and correspondence describe his work as Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1873) and his death in Africa in 1876 while an envoy of the American Missionary Association.

The records include correspondence, notes, printed circulars, and memorabilia which document the organization and functioning of the Liverpool Emancipation Society. The society sought to educate the public and thereby garner support for the Union side during the American Civil War. The society also raised funds to aid distressed freedmen.

The papers consist of correspondence, writings, notes and research materials, clippings, memorabilia, photographs and financial records of William Graham Sumner, a sociologist, professor at Yale University, and advocate of free trade and the gold standard. The correspondence (over 13,000 items) documents many of Sumner’s interests including the Yale College curriculum and economic and political issues. It also includes substantive accounts from friends in the South about Reconstruction, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Tilden-Hayes election.

121 Wall Street | Library Home | Hours

Correspondence and writings by and about Abraham Lincoln. Includes an autograph praecipe issued by Lincoln for writ in his first law case, two volumes containing letters and writings by and about members of Lincoln’s cabinet, a fragment of a speech on slavery, and the gold pen used by Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.

The collection consists of letters sent to New England resident Adella Fowler Larkin by her family and friends during the second half of the nineteenth century. Prominent in the collection are letters from her sister Myra Fowler McFarland, a teacher with the American Missionary Association working in Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia before, during, and immediately after the Civil War.

The collection consists of eight documents concerning slavery in Delaware: six signed manuscript records, manuscript copies of documents dated between 1783 and 1809, documenting the trade and emancipation of slaves and indentured servants by individual slave owners in Delaware; an order, dated April 29, 1829, signed and sealed by Delaware Governor Charles Polk, pardons James John for kidnapping Betsy Martin, a free racially-mixed woman, and transporting her across state lines; and a brief letter, dated December 11, 1910, from Henry C. Conrad, Delaware Superior Court judge, to Walter V. Johnson of Johns Hopkins University, concerns Abraham Lincoln’s abolition of slavery in Delaware.

The papers contain four letter books and other official papers sent, received, and kept by George F. Usher, Haitian consul in New York under President Fabre Nicolas Geffrard; the correspondence primarily details Usher’s diplomatic and commercial work in New York City on behalf of the Republic of Haiti during the years 1859-1867, which included, in 1862, the United States’s official recognition of the Haitian government.

Thirteen printed and manuscript documents and fragments of documents, dating from 1794 to 1889, and signed by Haitian presidents and other government officials including Charles Hérard, Jean-Baptiste Riché, Jean Pierre Boyer, François Denis Légitime, Alexandre Pétion, Fabre Geffrard, Faustin Soulouque, Philippe Guerrier, Louis Étienne Salomon, and I. Dufrene.

Report, manuscript in an unidentified hand, signed by Collas, Paris, 1858 December 8, advocating recruitment of agricultural laborers for French Caribbean colonies from Africa, India, and China. The report discusses the history of French and English colonies in the Caribbean, 1827-1858; conflict between France and England after abolition of the Atlantic slave trade; labor in the colonies after the French abolition of slavery in 1848; and colonial policy of Napoléon III.

Amassed by Frederick Hill Meserve with the help of his daughter Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt, the collection contains more than 73,000 items, including 57,000 photographic prints, as well as thousands of books, pamphlets, maps, and theater broadsides. These materials document American history from the Civil War through the end of the 19th century and record the emergence of photography as a distinctive cultural practice. The collection’s significance also lies in the tens of thousands of portraits of American politicians, army officers (of both the Union and Confederate forces), writers, actors, singers, scientists, African Americans, and Native Americans.

Draft, holograph, corrected, of a novel about a young woman from New York who learns of her African-American ancestry while travelling through Florida, Tennesee, and other parts of the southern United States in the mid to late nineteenth century. The novel, by an unidentified author, addresses issues of race, slavery, and women’s rights during the Reconstruction.

The American Colonization Society was formed in Washington, DC, in 1817 to establish a colony in Africa for free people of color residing in the US. Most of the documents found here are letters between Liberia and representatives of the Society. Many cover fundraising issues relating to support and education in the newly-formed country. The collection consists of 324 microfilm reels. A majority of these documents are now available online at Fold3.

120 High Street | Reading Room Home | Hours

The American Missionary Association was established in 1846 as an interdenominational missionary society devoted to abolitionist principles. The manuscripts include correspondence, treasurer’s papers, minutes of executive committee meetings, and other materials such as sermons, statistical reports, drawings, pictures and essays. Additional information is available online.

The papers document the life and career of Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, orator, journalist, diplomat, and public official. They contain correspondence, a diary, speeches, articles, a manuscript of Douglass’ autobiography, financial and legal papers, newspaper clippings, and other material, chiefly covering the years 1862-1895. Topics include emancipation and the problems of emancipated blacks, women’s rights, political affairs, a proposed naval station in Haiti, and family.

The papers consist of correspondence, minutes, financial records, records of manumission and emigration, reports of colonial agents, pamphlets and books on the colonization movement, copies of the Maryland Colonization Journal and the Liberia Herald, and census records of Maryland in Liberia. The materials shed light on race relations and socioeconomic conditions in antebellum America and are a source of information on the founding of Liberia. The complete collection is available online.

Reproduces a collection of nearly 3,000 petitions assembled over a period of ten years by the Race and Slavery Petitions Project, University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Documents were drawn from state archives in Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The digital compliment to this project is now availableonline.

The collection includes about 73 microfilm reels and several printed guides. Documents cover plantations in Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Also included are the Albert A . Batchelor papers, Weeks Family Papers, Hammond Family Papers, 1866 - 1907, and Hammond Bryan Cummings Papers, 1866-1920.

Emancipation papers resulting from the Act of April 16, 1862 and July 12, 1862; and manumission papers, 1857-1863, and fugitive slave case papers, 1851-1863. There are 3 reels, accompanied by a printed guide.

The records consist of registers, letters, reports, and newspaper clippings received by the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1872. There are 74 microfilm reels and a published finding aid. Additional Freedmen’s Bureau records are available for Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

The papers consist of selected manuscripts from the Public Archives Record Center, Canada. Included are P.A.R.C. File No. 297-1-21, “Enlistment of Colored Men in the Canadian Militia,” and the Rev. William King Papers, M.G. 28/127. The King papers include three files: his “Auto biography”, “Correspondence”, and the “Buxton Mission and Elgin Settlement.” Part of this collection is available online.

Typewritten records prepared by the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938, of slave narratives from seventeen southern, border, and midwestern states. Arranged alphabetically by state. The bulk of these records are now available online.

The papers include correspondence, journal extracts, newspaper clippings, and printed material relating to Susan Walker’s activities as a teacher for the New England Freedmen’s Aid Society in Port Royal, South Carolina. Originals are in the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Congressman, abolitionist, and Radical Republican, Thaddeus Stevens emerged as a leader of the fight for emancipation and equal rights in the era of the Civil War. The papers include correspodence, speeches and resolutions, and legal and buisness papers. Accompanied by a printed guide.

The records include seven volumes compiled for publication by the Colored Troops Division of the Adjutant General’s Office. Material includes published and unpublished primary source documents. Originals at the National Archives and Records Service, Washington, D.C.

William Smeal Collection from the Glasgow Public Library, 1833-1893

The collection consists of minute books, cash books, a subscription book, and annual reports of the Glasgow Emancipation Society; minutes and other records of the Glasgow Freeman’s Aid Society; and other papers, pamphlets and reports relating to the anti-slavery movement in Glasgow, Scotland.

The papers consist of correspondence, clippings, photographs, scrapbooks, diaries, legal papers, financial records, speeches, articles, and military papers relating to the career of General William Tecumseh Sherman, his father Charles R. Sherman, his wife Ellen Ewing Sherman and her family, and Sherman’s children. Filmed guide available.

127 Wall Street | Library Home | Hours

The Law Library’s American Trials Collection includes numerous books and pamphlets related to slavery, abolition, and their legacies. Several pamphlets pertaining to slavery and race in the antebellum United States have been made available through the Library’s Rare Books Blog. A brief guide, Researching Race in the American Trials Collection, is also available online.

1111 Chapel Street | Gallery Home | Hours

Part of a series of watercolor images entitled “Emancipation of the Slaves,” produced during the Civil War era in the United States. The Yale University Art Gallery owns a corresponding image from the same series.

The Yale University Art Gallery owns several different versions of the Emancipation Proclamation, issued in different shapes and sizes and utilizing different visual techniques. Most of these posters date from the period of the Civil War, although this elaborate color lithograph was produced in 1890.

409 Prospect Street | Library Home | Hours

The Freedmen’s Aid Society was founded in 1866 as an agency of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The Society established and maintained schools and colleges for former slaves in the postbellum South. This collection consists of 120 microfilm reels, based on the originals housed at the Woodruff Library at Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Freedmen’s Missions Aid Society was the British Counterpart to the American Missionary Association. It provided financial support for educational and religious work among former slaves and their descendants in Africa and the United States.

120 High Street | Library Home | Hours

Highlights include recordings by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers and the Tuskegee Institute Singers as well as excerpts from Booker T. Washington’s famous “Atlanta Compromise” speech. The Beinecke Library holds complementary material related to blackface minstrelsy and spirtuals, including sheet music for the original “Jim Crow.”

1080 Chapel Street | Gallery Home | Hours

Created by Richard Bridgens, circa 1833. Apparently meant to represent Trinidad on the eve of emancipation. Graphite on wove paper, with additional text at the bottom.

Published in Jamaica in 1837-38 by the Jewish Jamaican-born artist Isaac Mendes Belisario, Sketches of Character, In Illustration of the Habits, Occupation, and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica provides the first detailed visual representation of Jonkonnu (or John Canoe), the celebrated Afro-Jamaican masquerade performed by the enslaved during the Christmas and New Year holidays. These illustrations formed the centerpiece of an exhibition organized by the Yale Center for British Art: Art & Emancipation In Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds.

This print, made by W. Pyott in 1792, was based on C. F. von Breda’s 1789 painting, “Portrait of a Swedish Gentleman Instructing a Negro Prince.”