Slavery

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Holograph manuscript diary describing a trip taken by Charles Peter Gizzard, a New York City businessman, and his wife, Martha Gizzard, to visit Martha’s brother, Major Feltus, on his plantations near Woodville, Mississippi. Gizzard describes in detail his travel experiences, including steamboat travel on the Ohio, Mississippi, and Alabama Rivers, his views on plantation life and slavery, and other impressions of the South.

A letter dated 1835 Dec 24-26, at Clinton, East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, was written while Hulin worked as a schoolteacher in Louisiana. He discusses his impressions of the South, the character of Southern planters, slavery, and attitudes of Southerners toward Arthur Tappan and other Northern abolitionists. The letter reports the hanging of a group of African American slaves and whites accused of planning a rebellion against slave owners in Jackson, Louisiana. Hulin also gives examples of Southern dialect and briefly discusses his work as a teacher.

Darrach moved to Kansas Territory in 1855. About fifty letters dated at Osawatomie, 1855-1856, contain a detailed narrative of the lives of settlers and events of the Kansas border war, including discussion of elections and constitutional conventions; events in Lawrence and other fighting between free soil and slavery advocates; and the killings at Pottawatomie by John Brown and the subsequent sack of Osawatomie.

The papers primarily document the administration of the debt-burdened estate of Auchinleck after the death of Sir Alexander Boswell in 1822. The collection also includes the letters by Charles Douglas, a planter in Jamaica, concerning many aspects of his life and career, such as his ownership of slaves and opinions about slavery, immigrant life in Jamaica, and the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on the Caribbean.

Correspondence and official documents originating from various CSA government departments and from individual Confederate states, 1861-65. Includes correspondence of Jefferson Davis, Confederate cabinet members and congressmen, and other officials, as well as official reports of Civil War battles and events, estimates of expenditures and appropriations, petitions, special orders, forms, passes, receipts, bonds, tax records, and other documents. The collection also includes designs for an alternate Confederate flag.

Documents relating to the registration, sale and manumission of slaves in Cuba, and contracts outlining the terms of service of African and Chinese indentured servants working in Cuba, for the Compañía Asiatica de la Habana and for other companies and individuals. The documents include a death certificate, identification passes, and authorizations to transfer slaves.

The E. L. McGlashan Collection of Papers Concerning Slavery in the United States consists of bills of sale, receipts, estate records, and other material documenting slave ownership and the slave trade in the United States. The papers span the dates 1770-1862, and predominantly document transactions in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, and Alabama. There are also records which document legal actions involving slaves in Maine, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana.

This is a rare copy of a play about slavery, published in Mexico in 1825. Totaling 65 pages, the play is billed as a “melodrama in two acts.”

Four manuscript letters, dated between 1855 and 1856, provide information on the conflict between antislavery and proslavery settlers in Kansas Territory. Narratives by Frederick and Jason Brown, sons of the militant abolitionist John Brown, describe the family’s encounters with proslavery forces in various locations.

Fourteen autograph letters, signed, by members of the extended Junken family, primarily to Noble and Maria Junken. Margaret Junken and Richard Conkling both write on the subject of African Americans: Margaret describes what she sees as the happy lives of Louisiana slaves and Richard describes a hired African American girl’s attempted murder of her child in 1837.

The collection consists of 37 manuscript legal documents from Adair County, Kentucky, regarding slaves and freedpersons. The papers include affidavits, summonses to court, and deeds of emancipation; most are docketed on the verso. Several of the documents deal with the apprenticeship of children, and one concerns the marriage of two former slaves.

Holograph manuscript containing copies of letters sent by William Codrington to his agents in Antigua and Barbuda from 1779 to 1782 concerning the management of his estates and accounts, the employment of servants and slaves, the sugar trade, and the effects of war on contact with the West Indies.

Holograph diary addressed to “Meg,” narrating Leveson-Gower’s experiences as a Grenadier Guard, including a voyage to the West Indies and his impressions of slavery there. Illustrated with several drawings and watercolors of ships and scenery.

Manuscript fair copy, of dated entries recounting the departure from Liverpool, the shipwreck on the Barbary Coast, the crew’s enslavement in northern Africa, and their return to Dartmouth. Many entries concern the work done, foods, illnesses and injuries, and racial and religious differences encountered. The manuscript dates from about 1790.

The Beinecke Library holds numerous books and pamphlets related to slavery and abolition, some of which were owned and annotated by prominent abolitionists. These include two books on the Somerset case (1772), concerning the legality of slavery in England, with extensive marginal annotations by Granville Sharp.

Manuscript of a detailed description of the geography, population, economy, government, and social organization of Jamaica by John Dalling, who was appointed Lieutenant Governor of the colony in 1767. Topics include agriculture, the sugar trade and the mechanics of a typical sugar plantation, slavery and slave customs, and relations between the races.

A small porcelain jar decorated with two scenes from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Both scenes are variations on illustrations by Hammatt Billings that appeared in the illustrated edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in Boston by John P. Jewett and Company in 1853. Other artifacts relating to the novel include aporcelain statuette and Staffordshire child’s plate.

Printed forms, completed in manuscript, containing the triennial registration information for the slaves of Edward Owen of Jamaica as required by the Jamaica Registration Act of 1816 and the British Slave Registration Act of 1819. The 1817 form contains information for each slave including name, age, color, and origin (African or Creole) and often lists the mothers of Jamaica-born slaves. The returns for 1820 and after provide information on slaves acquired since the previous return, and also indicate whether they were obtained by birth, purchase, or inheritance.

The independently catalogued “Slavery Pamphlets” include over 750 books and tracts from several different regions and time periods. The bulk of the collection consists of American and British pamphlets and includes Elizabeth Heyrick’s famous work, Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition(1824), which marked a revolutionary turn in transatlantic antislavery politics.

Bound holograph draft, revised, of a fictional or semi-fictional autobiography of a former slave. It details her experiences as a maid in several households in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and North Carolina, and her subsequent escape to the North, where she settled in New Jersey. The narrator also tells the stories of other slaves she knows or comes into contact with, and to some extent the histories of the families she works for, identified as the De Vincents, the Henrys, and the Wheelers. An edited editionof this manuscript was published by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The diary contains entries from July 1 to September 5, 1856, January 11 to March 11, 1857, and February 14 to June 12, 1858, describing Swift’s activities as a surveyor in Leavenworth, Kansas, and the local struggle between the Free-Soil and proslavery parties. One volume, fifty-one pages.

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Created by British painter Francis Smith, circa 1760. Oil on canvas.

In 1771 Thomas Hearne began working for Sir Ralph Payne, the recently appointed Governor-General of the Leeward Islands, a group of sugar colonies consisting of Antigua, Nevis, St. Christopher’s (now St. Kitts), and Montserrat. Hearne spent three and a half years making working drawings and, after his return to England in 1775, produced twenty large and highly finished watercolors for Payne, of which only eight are now known.

A portrait of Elihu Yale (1649-1721) and associates being waited upon by an enslaved young man. Painted circa 1708. The Yale University Art Gallery owns a different version of this painting and a related portrait depicting Yale interacting with a similar “black servant.”

William Clark, Ten views in the island of Antigua: In which are represented the process of sugar making, and the employment of the Negroes, in the field, boiling-house and distillery (London, 1823). A rare view of the large-scale industrial and agricultural plantations of Antigua.

 

A rare line engraving, produced by Robert Brandard at some point in the first half of the nineteenth century. Based on an earlier image by George Cattermole.

Richard Bridgens, West India scenery with illustrations of Negro character, the process of making sugar, &c. from sketches taken during a voyage to, and residence of seven years in, the island of Trinidad (London, 1836). Twenty-seven plates with accompanying text.

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Correspondence, diaries, proclamations, and drafts of letters chiefly relating to the Civil War, but also including letters from the Jacksonian period. The major portion of the collection concerns the siege of Fort Sumter with letters from both Major Robert Anderson and General P.G.T. Beauregard. Included also are a diary kept by General S. Wylie Crawford during the siege and two letters from Abraham Lincoln.

The collection contains plantation records and a manuscript volume, “Obras completas de Juan Francisco Manzano esclavo de la Isla de Cuba.” The volume includes Manzano’s autobiography, letters, poetry and the drama, Zafira. Also included is a list of people who contributed money to purchase Manzano’s freedom.

The papers consist of correspondence and business papers relating to Eli Whitney’s interests in developing the cotton gin and the manufacture of firearms employing a system of interchangeable parts. The cotton gin, created in 1793, revolutionized southern argiculture and was a major factor in the spread of plantation slavery during the nineteenth century.

The collection consists of photoduplicates of original Mary Chesnut manuscripts, from the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina and from private owners, collected by C. Vann Woodward for the preparation of his book, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War.

A collection of correspondence; government documents, including reports, commissions, decrees, and awards; church documents; published illustrated materials; maps; and writings and poems from Mexico on civil, military, economic, religious, and social topics. Includes numerous documents about slavery. This collection is also available online.

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Benjamin Lincoln, physician, anatomist, and medical educator, taught anatomy and dissection at the University of Vermont. His papers include a journal of travel to New Orleans, describing plantations and slavery, the physical, economic, and social conditions, and medicine and public health. The papers also include manuscripts on slavery and the Civil War.

The Medical Books collection at the Medical Historical Library contains rare books from the 15th through 19th centuries. Some of the books pertain directly to slavery or abolition, such as Lucretia Mott’s Sermon to the Medical Students. Others deal with slavery indirectly, such as Lorenzo Fowler’s Illustrated Phrenological Almanac, which published an image and analysis of Amistad captive Sarah (Margru) Kinson.

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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.

Part one centers on Jamaica, c1765-1848. It includes the Taylor and Vanneck-Arcedekne Papers from Cambridge University Library and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. Highlights include the correspondence and papers of West Indian agents, correspondence and accounts of London agents concerning Jamaica, and materials covering the Maroon and French wars, slave revolts, the treatment of colonists by the British government, births, deaths, marriages, inheritances, debts and family quarrels. A detailed guide is available online.

Correspondence, business and personal papers, volumes and pamphlets, diaries, family papers, planation records, and miscellanea of families and individuals in Louisiana and the Mississipppi Valley. The effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction, emancipation, and social and economic change in the South are documented in nineteen separate collections. An unpublished finding aid is available.

The records consist of family papers, plantation journals, crop books, overseers’ journals, account books, medical records, and slave lists relating to antebellum southern plantations from the American Revolution through the Civil War. Over 600 microfilm reels from numerous regional archives.

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.

Materials related to slave labor in skilled industries such as gold and coal mining, iron manufacturing, machine shop work, lumbering, quarrying, brick-making, tobacco manufacturing, shipbuilding, and heavy construction. Including over 150 microfilm reels, the collection is based on documents from the Duke University Library, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the Virginia Historical Society and the University of Virginia Library. More information is available online.

Slavery tracts and pamphlets from the West India Committee Collection, now housed at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Consists of 28 microfilm reels, including a list of titles and an index

The records consist of statutes passed in fifteen states that deal with slavery, free blacks, and the broader issue of race. Also included are private laws, special acts, legislative resolutions, and state constitutions with subsequent revisions. A published guide is available.

James Henry Hammond was a senator, governor, and plantation owner. His papers include correspondence, diaries, speeches, plantation manuals, account books, and scrapbooks pertaining chiefly to South Carolina and national politics in the three decades preceding the Civil War. There are 15 reels, accompanied by a printed guide.

The papers consist of the personal correspondence, financial and legal papers, plantation and slave records, and writings of the Allston, Blythe, and Pringle families of Georgetown County, South Carolina. The bulk of the material relates to the Allston family and, in particular, to Robert F. W. Allston, planter and governor of South Carolina from 1856-1858. Among the subjects discussed are plantations, slaves, rice planting, politics, and the Civil War.

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Waller went to Africa in 1861 as Lay Superintendent of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa. He resigned from the Mission in 1863 following a disagreement related to liberated slaves under the care of the Mission. These papers document the Zambezi expedition of David Livingstone (1813-1873) and the early history of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa.  Waller’s deep interest in Africa and the problem of slavery continued throughout his life and is reflected in his correspondence with Livingstone and in diaries dated 1875-1876, after his return to England.  Selections from Waller’s diaries for 1875 and 1876 have been scanned.

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This Collection, originally called at Yale the Mason-Franklin Collection, is the most extensive collection of materials by, about, and around Franklin and his times to be found in a single collection anywhere in the world. The main body of the Collection is housed in three adjoining rooms on the second floor of Sterling Memorial Library, where it is available for research and study. The published papers and their digital compliment contain numerous references to slavery and abolition.

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The Walpole Library is home to numerous eighteenth-century cartoons and prints pertaining to slavery and the slave trade. Of particular interest are a series of images depicting the lives of enslaved blacks and slaveholders in the Caribbean as well as cartoons illustrating the politics of slavery and freedom in Europe.

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The Greek Slave, by Hiram Powers, was the single most celebrated work of sculpture in nineteenth-century America. Its pose—inspired by the well-known Medici Venus—represents a Christian girl captured by the Turks during the Greek War of Independence, for sale in the slave market of Constantinople. The statue inspired an outpouring of prose and poetry and became an anti-slavery symbol for abolitionists.

The papers consist of diaries, weather journals, commonplace books, reading notes and other material documenting the life, work, and intellectual interests of the Jamaican planter and slaveowner Thomas Thistlewood. Thistlewood’s 37 diaries, in Series I, contain daily entries dating between 1750 and 1786. Topics include Thistlewood’s work as an overseer, and later owner, of slaves, including his methods of assigning work, alloting provisions, and discipline; his personal and sexual relationships with several, including his lengthy relationship with Phibbah; and slave rebellions and rumors of rebellions, including Tacky’s Revolt (1760).

The Yale Map Collection has the largest collection of maps in Connecticut and one of the largest university collections in the United States. Its collections are geographically comprehensive and consist of over 200,000 map sheets, 3,000 atlases, and 900 reference books. There are several maps and atlases with an explicit focus on slavery, including Lewis’ Free Soil, Slavery, and Territorial Map of the United States, “Gulag Slavery” maps of Russia, and theAtlas of Antebellum Southern Agriculture.