Nineteenth Century

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.

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.”

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.