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This site is designed to help researchers and students find primary sources related to slavery, abolition, and resistance within the university’s many libraries and galleries. Select a repository from the list on the right to browse by location or use the search function to sort collections by topic. Consult the research and links pages for information about how to find additional source material.

Featured Collection

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.

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.

The collection comprises Howe’s outgoing and incoming correspondence, third-party correspondence, and six manuscript writings pertaining to slavery and ethics. The letters address Howe’s religious beliefs, opposition to the institution of slavery, support of the temperance movement, the annexation of Texas, and other political matters.

The collection includes annual reports, 1883-2000, submissions to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) and other related bodies, 1965-2000, ephemera & publications of Anti-Slavery International, 1980-2000, and publications and reports of Anti-Slavery International and its predecessors, 1880-1979.

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.

Holograph journal of a voyage to Martinique of the three-masted ship Le Diligent. Probably not an official log, the journal was written by First Lieutenant Robert Durand and describes in detail a voyage from Vannes, France, to the coast of Guinea, each slave trade port encountered on the coast, purchase of 256 slaves at Jacquin, voyage to Martinique, selling of the slaves at St. Pierre, and return to Vannes. Also described are conditions of trade in the African and Caribbean ports, dealings between slave traders and kings and chiefs, prices of provisions, competition among slave traders, effects of climate and disease, and expenses and revenues of the voyage.

The Civil War Manuscripts Collection was created to give the researcher more direct access to small and fragmentary collections of material on the subject of the Civil War in the United States, 1861-1865. It is an intentionally assembled collection of diaries, correspondence, photographs, printed material, and ephemera primarily documenting military events and daily camp life, as well as family life on the home front and civilian activities.

The papers consist of letters written to John J. Crittenden, law papers, a few copies of his own letters, and speeches relating to Crittenden’s political career in Kentucky and the United States Senate, with extensive material on the United States Civil War, 1861-1865, and the compromise efforts which proceeded it.

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.

Correspondence, diaries, writings and other papers of John Pitkin Norton, professor of agricultural chemistry at Yale from 1846-1852. Norton’s diaries contain observations on slavery and abolition, the Amistad case, the Liberty Party, religion, and temperance, among other topics. Professor Norton was also closely associated with the early days of the Sheffield Scientific School and was a pioneer in the application of scientific principles and methods to agriculture.

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.

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.”

The papers consist of correspondence, writings, manuscript notes, and printed material documenting the life of Harriet Martineau. Among the noteworthy correspondents are Matthew Arnold, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Samuel Courtauld, W. E. Gladstone, Robert Graves, Samuel Lucas, Lord John Russell, Maria Weston Chapman, and Henry William Wilberforce.

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 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.

Aaron Dutton and his son Samuel William Southmayd Dutton were Congregational clergymen in Connecticut who were known for their abolitionist views.  Aaron Dutton served as minister of the First Congregational Church in Guilford from 1806 until 1842, at which time he resigned due to the dissension in the congregation regarding his abolitionist stance. Samuel Dutton was minister at North Church (now United Church on the Green), New Haven from 1838 to 1866.  He was a noted champion of the antislavery cause. Selected sermons of Samuel Dutton and an article by Aaron Dutton are available online.

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.

Letters of the Secretary of the Navy to and from agents stationed on the northwest coast of Africa. The agents often dealt with Africans freed from captured slave ships. From the Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

The New England Indian Papers Series Database includes several documents directly related to slavery and the slave trade in early America. Manuscripts include information on Indian slaves taken after King Philip’s War and their fate in the Caribbean, Spain, and North Africa.

The papers consist primarily of correspondence and other papers relating to John Brown and events in Kansas for the years just before the Civil War. Some correspondence is family related, but the bulk concerns Brown’s anti-slavery activities. A series of documents from 1878-1919 consist of reminiscences about Brown and events like the Pottawatomie massacre. Originals at the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas.

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.”

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.

Although not focused primarily on slavery and abolition, this collection is a key resource for understanding the history of race in America. In addition to Johnson’s papers, there are significant manuscript materials from W. E. B. DuBois, Walter White, Poppy Cannon White, Dorothy Peterson, Chester Himes, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Jean Toomer, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Wallace Thurman.

Painted by the London-based Italian artist Agostino Brunias, circa 1780. The Yale Center for British Art holds numerous oil paintings and engravings by Brunias, all of which document life in the colonial West Indies, especially on the Island of Dominica in the Lesser Antilles.

The collection contains material on the capture, trial, and release of the Amistad captives who were illegally sold into slavery. The collection consists of diaries, letters, court and government records, and newspaper accounts of the case; secondary accounts of the case; and background information on Africa, Cuba, the slave-trade, similar cases, slavery in the United States, and abolitionist sentiment in the North.

The collection, assembled by the rare book dealers Jenny Allsworth and Humphrey Winterton, brings together photographs, photograph albums, glass lantern slides, and a lantern projector, which document the Sultanate of Zanzibar and European colonial expansion in East and Central Africa from 1870 to 1914. Also documented are early Arab and Portuguese coastal settlements at Kilwa, Mafia, Pemba, Sofala, and Zanzibar and the work of photographers who operated in different parts of the region.

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 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.

This newspaper was printed by students at the Mendi Mission in Sherbro, West Africa, beginning in March 1861. Established by American abolitionists in the wake of theAmistad slave revolt, the Mendi Mission served as a bridge connecting the struggle against slavery across two continents. The Divinity Library also holds a rare copy of the Sherbro and English Book published by the mission in 1862.

This collection consists of anti-slavery tracts, pamphlets and journals from the Library of the Society of Friends. Also included is the Thompson-Clarkson Collection of autograph letters, portraits, and printed material relating to Thomas Clarkson’s “The history of the rise, progress and accomplishment of the abolition of the African slave-trade.” Originals are in the Library of the Religious Society of Friends, Friends House, London, England.

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.

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.

 

Family members include author and suffragist Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950); her parents, Henry Browne Blackwell (1825-1909) and Lucy Stone (1818-1893), abolitionists and advocates of women’s rights; her aunt, Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), the first woman to receive an academic medical degree; and Elizabeth Blackwell’s adopted daughter, Kitty Barry Blackwell (1848-1936). Includes correspondence, diaries, articles, and speeches of these and other Blackwell family members.

James Hakewill, A picturesque tour of the island of Jamaica, from drawings made in the years 1820 and 1821(London, 1825). The Yale Center for British Art also holds a number of original watercolors by Hakewill, which depict life in the British Caribbean prior to emancipation.

The papers concern Barbara D. Simison’s projected edition of the letters of Lydia Maria Child, and consist of research correspondence with other scholars and with libraries and Simison’s annotated working transcripts of Child’s letters. In addition, the collection contains 15 autograph letters by Lydia Maria Child, including an ALS to Richard Fletcher describing the Samaritan Asylum for Colored Orphans; 3 ALS to Oliver Johnson concerning publishing projects and Civil War politics; and an ALS to James Redpath in support of a woman sculptor’s effort to secure the commission for a statue of John Brown.

The papers consist of the research files of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, an author and history professor. The papers include Phillip’s notes and transcripts of historical source materials and the collected papers of several southern families from 1712-1933. The collected papers include correspondence, account books, business records, farm and plantation records, diaries, and other papers which focus on the years 1790-1865, and the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia and the Piedmont region of Georgia. Numerous photographs drawn from the collection are available online.

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 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 Beinecke Library holds several important abolitionist newspapers from various time periods and geographic locations, including the Alton Observer, American Citizen, Charter Oak, Emancipator, Liberator, Philanthropist, National Anti-Slavery Standard, and True American. Other newspapers, including the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, American Missionary, Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines’ Friend, and British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, are available through Orbis.

A Mezzotint, printed in color, by John Raphael Smith. Issued in 1791, this image was engraved “to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.”

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.

Printed material and manuscript documents relating to slavery and the slave trade, particularly to the Portuguese slave trade in the nineteenth century and British attempts to suppress it by means of the Palmerston Act (1839). Manuscript material includes a brief note on the legitimacy of the slave trade (1823) in Portuguese; documents and tax agreements in French; and receipts, declarations and agreements concerning American slaves, 1842-1864, in English.

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.

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 manuscript, corrected, of a memoir by a young African-American, circa 1858. The memoir documents the major events in the author’s life leading up to and including incarcerations in the New York House of Refuge, the first juvenile reformatory in the United States, and Auburn Prison, the first state prison in New York, from 1833 to the late 1850s. The author compares the New York penal system to the slaveholding South.

There are four scrapbooks of pastor Amos G. Beman in the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection. Beman (1812-1874) was a prominent abolitionist, minister, and missionary, and a leader of the black temperance movement. The scrapbooks, which include newspaper clippings, programs, and correspondence, were a gift of New Haven’s Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church.

Papers of the American Slave Trade, provides scholars with access to primary source material on the business aspect of the trade in human beings. The collection documents the international slave trade in Britain’s New World colonies and the United States from 1718 to the trade’s demise after 1808. There are multiple series accompanied by printed guides. The printed guides are also available online.

New Haven resident William H. Townsend made pen-and-ink sketches of the Amistad captives while they were awaiting trial. Twenty-two of these drawings were given to Yale in 1934 by Asa G. Dickerman, whose grandmother was the artist’s cousin. Townsend, who was about 18 years old when he made the drawings, is buried in the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut, beside the Yale University campus.

The papers of William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and Robert Isaac Wilberforce (1802-1857). Series one reproduces the Wilberforce papers from the Bodleian Library, Oxford (50 reels). Series two reproduces the papers of William Wilberforce and related slavery and anti-slavery materials from Wilberforce House, Hull (16 reels). Detailed research guides are available.

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.

The records consist of correspondence, account books, minutes, attendance registers, and papers from the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, the Aborigines’ Protection Society, and the Mico Charity. There are 59 microfilm reels and a list available in Microform Reference. A smaller collection, Rhodes House Selected Anti-Slavery Papers, 1836-1868, is also available.

The papers consist of correspondence and official government and military directives to and from Holwell Walshe, which document his career in the 1st and 2nd West India Regiments, particularly his years as commander of Sherbro Island, Sierra Leone. Walshe took possession of Sherbro in September 1862 and successfully defended the island and revitalized its economy. He remained as Civil Commandant until 1871, when he was transferred to Singapore as a police magistrate.

The collection documents black life and American racial attitudes from the 1850’s to the 1940’s, and includes about 2500 items, chiefly historical photographs, accompanied by slave manifests, military medals, and civic trophies. The collection includes albumen photographs of Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Photographic formats include daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, and cabinet card photographs.

Fifteen volumes of original correspondence, typed and bound, from the archives of the U.S. Navy Department at Washington, D.C. Letters range from 1819 to 1861 and cover all aspects of the African Squadron, including the settlement of Liberia, the repatriation of captured slaves, and efforts to suppress the international slave trade.

RAAI aspires to reproduce all the illustrations of figurative African objects published between 1800 and 1920 in books, periodicals, catalogues, newspapers, and other publications. It does not include postcards or pamphlets of very limited distribution. More than 95% of the material is contained in the James J. Ross library, the remainder has been recorded from copies in other libraries. Many of the items pertain in some way to slavery or its legacies.

The papers consist of personal correspondence of Joshua Reed Giddings, Ohio abolitionist and politician, while he was serving as Abraham Lincoln’s consul-general in Canada. There is one microfilm reel, covering the years 1861-1864.

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 Society originated in a bequest by Robert Boyle in 1691 for advancing religion amongst infidels. In 1794, the charity was reconstituted as “The Society for the Conversion and Religious Instruction and Education of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands,” and in 1836, after the abolition of slavery, as “The Society for Advancing the Christian Faith in the British West-India Islands, and elsewhere, in the Dioceses of Jamaica, and of the Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, and in the Mauritius.” The papers document the Society’s activities from the 17th through the 20th centuries.

The collection consists of over 100 reels, divided into six parts. Part one includes the complete papers of Thomas Clarkson, William Lloyd Garrison, Zachary Macaulay, Harriet Martineau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and William Wilberforce from the Huntington Library in California. Parts two and three reproduce the slavery collections of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool. Part four reproduces the Granville Sharp Papers from the Gloucestershire Record Office. Part five reproduces the Papers of Thomas Clarkson from the British Library, London. Part six reproduces the Papers of William Wilberforce, William Smith, Iveson Brookes, Francis Corbin and related records from the Rare Books, Manuscript and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

The Yale-van Rijn Photographic Archive comprises images of art from Africa south of the Sahara in collections worldwide. Currently there are more than 100,000 images of African art drawn from private and museum collections, dealers, general archives, and the existing body of literature including books, articles, notices, and auction catalogues. The archive may be useful for researchers interested in the impact of slavery on African culture or the evolution of African culture in the Americas. It is available for general research by appointment only.

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 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.

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.

From the library of Simeon E. Baldwin. Includes several rare books and pamphlets on the Amistad slave revolt, manuscript correspondence about the revolt and its aftermath, and two notebooks used by attorney Roger Sherman Baldwin during the trials.

The papers of Lewis Tappan, merchant and abolitionist, consist of correspondence, letterbooks, journals, notebooks, clippings, photocopies, notes, and miscellanea. The journals and notebooks, which date from 1814-1869, document Tappan’s activities in the antislavery movement. The bulk of the correspondence consists of copies of Tappan’s outgoing letters. Originals are in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Robert Bostock was a Liverpool trader who continued to be involved in the slave trade after its abolition by Parliament in 1807. His factory on Bunce Island was raided by H.M.S. Thais in 1813 and 233 slaves were seized. Also captured were Bostock, his partner Charles Mason, and the captain of an American slave-ship, the “Kitty,” which was to have smuggled the contraband slaves to Charleston, South Carolina.

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.

The papers document the life of Southern women through diaries, correspondence with family and friends, and business correspondence and records. The primary focus of the papers and diaries is on home life. Among the frequently discussed topics are courtship, education, child rearing, marriage, and religion. Discussions of family business dealings and women’s thoughts on temperance, slavery, and women’s rights also appear in the collection. Printed guides are 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 collection contains, 2,604 letters, 2,228 of which are from Lydia Maria Child. Topics include antislavery, politics, Childs’ professional writing experience, her work as an editor of a children’s magazine, her financial assistance to musicians and artists, feminism, and Child’s personal life. Recipients include Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Eliot, Margaret Fuller, Charles Dickens, James T. Fields, William Cullen Bryant and other prominent cultural figures.

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 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.

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.

Includes seven scrapbooks titled “Tracts on Slavery in the United States, and on the U.S. Constitution and Organic Laws.” Also includes a manuscript book containing records of punishments administered to slaves in a South American mining camp between 1836 and 1847, numerous deeds for slaves dating from 1783 to 1848, newspaper clippings from the 1840s through the 1860s relating to the anti-slavery movement in Kansas, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, and a manuscript census of slaves in Chester County, Pennsylvania, from 1780 to 1815.

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.

Twelve manuscript legal documents in unidentified hands concerning the slave trade in Louisiana and Mississippi and one printed broadside advertising the sale of slaves in St. Louis, Missouri. The legal documents include bills of sale for slaves.

The papers include records relating to trade, industry, plantations, agriculture, ranching, immigration and settlement, the anti-slavery movement, politics, religion, and military affairs of Scotland and England. Personal papers, diaries, state documents, printed material, and the records of industrial and commercial concerns are also included in the papers. Additional information is availableonline.

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.

John W. Blassingame served as the acting chairman of Afro-American studies at Yale (1971-1972, 1976-1977) and as chairman (1981-1989). In the mid-1970s, he also became the editor and publisher of the papers of Frederick Douglass. He wrote and edited numerous works on the history of slavery in America. The papers consist of electrostatic copies of reseach materials and note cards used in the preparation of Blassingame’s 1971 Yale University Ph.D., A Social and Economic History of the Negro in New Orleans, 1860-1880.

The records consist of fifty volumes of the confidential print relating to the slave trade. The confidential print is a collection of selected correspondence, memoranda and other documents printed for internal use in the Foreign Office and for distribution to the missions. Originals are in the Public Record Office, London, England. Published finding aid available.

These photographs are from a collection housed at the Medical Historical Library entitled Gunshot Wounds Illustrated. The collection is composed of enlarged photographs of individual soldiers who were treated at Harewood Hopsital in Washington D.C. during the Civil War. These images, some quite graphic, depict soldiers recovering from a variety of wounds, including gunshot wounds. The soldiers’ case histories and stories are included on the back of many of the photographs, although some remain anonymous.

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.

Freeborn Garrettson (1752-1827) became a Methodist minister due to the influence of Bishop Francis Asbury. He opposed slavery and freed his own slaves when he began his ministry. He was instrumental, along with Asbury, in organizing the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts contains papers of both Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont, intermixed. It features material pertaining to Tocqueville’s study of American democracy, including a letter discussing slavery, abolition, and emancipation. The papers also include manuscript drafts and notes for Beaumont’s Marie, ou l’Esclavage aux Etats-Unis (1835), one of the first novels about racial slavery in the United States.

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.

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.

Group of 18 financial documents connected to John M. McQuie, the majority of which document his purchases, and sales, of slaves. The bills of sale and receipts usually list the names, ages and prices of the slaves, and occasionally other personal characteristics. An indenture for the work of two of McQuie’s slaves specifies that their employer must agree to “treat said negroes with humanity & to find them in good holsome food & cloathing together with a blanket to each.”

The papers document the activities of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society, the first formal abolitionist society in America. Included are minutes from 1787 to 1916, and the society’s large collection of manuscripts dealing with abolition, dating from 1774 through 1868. More information is available online.

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).

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.

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.

The records consist of 2,196 volumes of correspondence with commissioners at the several stations appointed to carry out the articles of the Slave Trade Conventions with various nations. The records constitute part of Public Record Office group Foreign Office class 84 (PRO FO 84). There are 1,222 microfilm reels.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Roger Sherman Baldwin (1793-1863) graduated from Yale University in 1811, and began his law practice in New Haven in 1814. He served in New Haven and Connecticut politics (1826-1838), established a national reputation for his anti-slavery defense of slaves in the “Amistad” case (1839-1840), was elected governor of Connecticut (1844-1845), accepted the appointment and subsequent election to the U.S. Senate (1847-1851), and served as a delegate to the National Peace Convention (1861). Baldwin’s notebook on the Amistad case and correspondence with the captives are included in the collection.

Joseph Bartholomew Kidd, West Indian Scenery: Illustrations of Jamaica in a Series of Views Comprising the Principal Towns, Public Buildings, Estates and Most Picturesque Scenery of the Island (London & Kingston, 1840). An extremely rare collection of 50 colored plates, produced during the transition from apprenticeship to full emancipation.

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.

Books, pamphlets and other documents outlining the moral, religious, economic and legal aspects of the slavery debate. Includes anti-slavery society records, campaign literature and speeches made in and out of Congress, children’s literature, sermons and theological works, proslavery literature, and more. There are 7,235 fiches, accompanied by a printed guide.

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.

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. 

The papers of Benjamin Tappan, lawyer, judge, U.S. Senator from Ohio, and active participant in the antislavery movement, consist of correspondence, speeches, legal and business papers, and miscellaneous material. The correspondence, which constitutes the bulk of the papers, relates to Tappan’s law practice, his activities in the antislavery movement, and to Ohio and national politics especially during the Jacksonian period.

Includes the Slave Journal of Humphrey Morice (1721-1730), Journal of Humphrey Morice (1708-1710), trading accounts, personal and business papers, and documents relating to British trade with Africa, America, and the West Indies. More information and a detailed research guide are available online.

The Yale University Art Gallery holds numerous bronze and copper tokens related to slavery and abolition, including this one, which was manufactured in the United States and issued by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1838.

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 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.

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.

Manuscript account book, in unidentified handwriting, for Austin & Laurens, in Charleston, South Carolina, recording purchases and sales. Includes accounts relating to the sale of slaves. The firm was founded by George Austin and Henry Laurens, and later joined by George Appleby. One volume, 368 pages.

A rare compilation about the Amistad revolt, published in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1839. Contains “a description of the Kingdom of Mandingo, and of the manners and customs of the inhabitants, an account of King Sharka, of Gallinas” as well as “a sketch of the slave trade and horrors of the middle passage, with the proceedings on board the ‘long, low, black schooner’, Amistad.”

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.

Correspondence, diaries, writings, photographs, scrapbooks, research materials, and miscellanea documenting the personal life and literary career of Katherine Mayo, an author of several historical and investigative articles, essays, and books from 1896 to 1940. Prior to Mayo’s success as a literary figure she was employed by Oswald Garrison Villard to conduct extensive field research for his biography of John Brown. The collection includes a piece of the rope allegedly used to hang Brown.

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.

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.

The papers consist of correspondence, parliamentary speeches, working papers, notebooks, and political pamphlets documenting the life and work of Thomas Fowell Buxton, nineteenth century abolitionist and reformer. The originals are in the Rhodes House Library, University of Oxford, England.

Manuscripts and typewritten copies of newspaper articles, ships’ logs and letterbooks in the Library of Congress relating to the slave trade after 1806, especially during the years 1810-1811, 1816-1821 and 1860-1863. These were collected but not used in connection with herDocuments Illustrative of the Slave Trade, published 1930-1934.

The papers include correspondence, journals, memorabilia, and photographs that document the life of Samuel Willard Saxton and the career of his brother General Rufus Saxton during the Civil War. Samuel Saxton’s journal highlights his ardent abolitionist and reformist interests, his work on behalf of freedmen’s education, and his strong Republican loyalties. The letterbooks reflect Saxton’s position as an aide-de-camp for his brother and Rufus Saxton’s administration of the Department of the South and the former slaves under his jurisdiction.

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.

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.

A singular resource for the study of English provincial philanthropic societies. The collection includes documents on Africa, the West Indies, and the American Civil War. Also included are the Raymond English collection of the letters, diaries, pamphlets and press cuttings of the abolitionist George Donisthorpe Thompson and his son-in-law F. W. Chesson and the H. J. Wilson anti-slavery collection of 19th century pamphlets.

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.

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 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 Mirror of Liberty was the first magazine owned and edited by an African American. This issue from July 1841 contains a report of a meeting in New Bedford, MA, led by David Ruggles and Frederick Douglass.

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.

Mary Estlin was the daughter of John B. Estlin (1785-1855), a prominent opthalmic surgeon of Bristol, England, a Unitarian reformer and anti-slavery supporter. She was a member of the Bristol and Clifton Auxiliary Ladies Anti-Slavery Society and maintained an extensive correspondence with fellow abolitionists in the United States. After the Civil War she transferred her energies to the Women’s Rights campaign.

The collection consists of over 200 original letters to C.K. Prioleau for the period 1860-1869 from figures such as J.D. Bulloch, agent for the Confederate Navy, Caleb Huse, principal Confederate Army purchasing officer in Europe, and General C.J. McRae, Confederate Treasury Agent in Europe. Subjects include the shelling of Charleston, blockade running, battles, armament supply and the financing of the Southern war effort. Accompanied by a printed guide.

The papers consist of correspondence, writings, and topical files, primarily documenting the professional career of historian C. Vann Woodward. A Yale professor for many years, Woodward was a leading scholar of the U.S. South.

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.

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.

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 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 papers contain correspondence, business and land records, writings, legal records, and maps of Peter Smith, land speculator and local politician in Madison County, New York and his son Gerrit Smith, land owner, philanthropist, reformer, abolitionist, and temperance advocate. 89 reels, plus finding aid.

Correspondence, sermons, speeches, missionary reports, writings, and printed matter of approximately three hundred nineteenth-century black abolitionists, documenting their activities in the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, and Scotland. The collection consists of 17 microfilm reels, drawn from numerous international archives. This collection is also available online.

Autograph manuscript letters and receipts, dated 1858 to 1868, and other letters, deeds and documents relating to slaves and the slave trade, from 1788 to 1863. The focus is on the firm of J. D. Fondren & Bro., based in Richmond, Virginia. About 80 items total, in one volume.

Ten letterbooks containing business correspondence to Oswald from his agents, factors, nephews and Edinburgh attorney, all written after his “retirement” to Scotland. The letters include extensive information on Oswald’s trading ventures, particularly his trade with the American colonies and his West African slave trade (based at Bunce Island), and his Scottish land investments.

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.”

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.

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.

Two manuscript legal documents written in unidentified hands concerning the purchase of slaves by David D. Withers of New York. A receipt, December 20, 1854, New Orleans, acknowledges the sale of thirty-seven slaves from Walter L. Campbell to Withers. There is another manuscript document regarding the 1855 sale of ninety-one slaves from the Union Bank of Louisiana to Withers for fifty-five thousand dollars.

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.

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) was a Quaker abolitionist and poet of international renown. He was affiliated with the National Era, one of the most important abolitionist newspapers in America. This collection consists of miscellaneous correspondence, manuscripts, and other material by and about Whittier. Included is the orignal draft for “Moloch in State Street,” about the arrest of fugitive slave Thomas Sims, with significant alterations and revisions.

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.

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.

Correspondence, writings, speeches, diaries, clippings, printed matter, sermons, and other papers of two centuries of Beecher family members. The papers relate principally to Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), popular 19th century clergyman and orator, and members of his family. Among those represented are his father, the Reverend Lyman Beecher (1775-1863), clergyman; his brothers, Edward Beecher (1803-1895), educator and antislavery leader, and Thomas Kinnicut Beecher (1824-1900) and Charles Beecher (1815-1900), both clergyman and antislavery activists; and his sisters, Harriett Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe (1811-1896), author, Catherine Esther Beecher (1800-1878), pioneer educator and writer on ‘domestic economy,’ and Isabella Homes (Beecher) Hooker (1822-1907), well-known suffragist.

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.

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.

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 papers consist of correspondence, newspaper clippings of a historical and religious nature, journals, and other papers of the Bacon family. Included are sermons and writings of Leonard Bacon, and papers and journals of Leonard Woolsey Bacon and Benjamin Wisner Bacon. Leonard Bacon was actively involved in colonization, missionary, and antislavery movements throughout his career. His brother, David Francis Bacon, served as a medical professional in Liberia.

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.

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.”

Established in Philadelphia in the 1700s by Richard Allen, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was the first black church to expand on a national level in the United States. These extensive records of the first AME church detail the establishment and daily operation of the church. The collection also contains committee meeting minutes, records of marriages and baptisms, financial records, receipts, lists of church officers, class roll books, records of committee activities, and other items. More information is available online.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Agents within the Office of the Secretary of the Interior were authorized by the Secretary of the Navy to receive any “Negroes, mulattos, or persons of color” found aboard vessels seized off the coast of Africa and relocate them to what is now known as Liberia. Ten microfilm reels, based on the originals held at the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. These documents and several related collections are now available in full online.

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 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.

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

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 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.

Correspondence, diaries, writings and other papers of John Pitkin Norton, professor of agricultural chemistry at Yale from 1846-1852. Norton’s diaries contain observations on slavery and abolition, the Amistad case, the Liberty Party, religion, and temperance, among other topics. Professor Norton was also closely associated with the early days of the Sheffield Scientific School and was a pioneer in the application of scientific principles and methods to agriculture.

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.

Letter to “Capt. Nathaniel Briggs. Master of the Ship the Three Friends favourd by Capt. Duncan, on the Coast of Africa,” with a long postscript, unsigned, by another hand. The contents relate to the trade in African slaves.

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 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.