American Memory Historical Collections
Examples of materials related to slavery are provided for
most of the collections listed below. Search on the term slavery
to locate additional resources within these American Memory
collections.
Abraham
Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
The complete Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
consists of approximately 20,000 documents. The collection
includes a special presentation on the Emancipation
Proclamation that includes a timeline
and gallery.
The
African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920: Selections
from the Ohio Historical Society
The collection is a selection of manuscript and printed
text and images drawn from the collections of the Ohio Historical
Society.
African
American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray
Collection, 1818-1907
The collection presents a panoramic and eclectic review
of African-American history and culture, spanning almost
one hundred years from the early nineteenth through the
early twentieth centuries.
African-American
Sheet Music, 1850-1920: Selected from the Collections of Brown
University
The collection consists of 1,305 pieces of African-American
sheet music dating from 1850 through 1920. The collection
includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum blackface
minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement
of the same period.
American
Indians of the Pacific Northwest
The collection integrates over 2,300 photographs and 7,700
pages of text relating to the American Indians in two cultural
areas of the Pacific Northwest, the Northwest Coast and
Plateau.
American
Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920
The collection comprises 253 published narratives by Americans
and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies
and the United States and their observations and opinions
about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750
to 1920.
An
American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other
Printed Ephemera
The Printed Ephemera collection at the Library of Congress
is a rich repository of Americana. In total, the collection
comprises 28,000 primary-source items dating from the seventeenth
century to the present and encompasses key events and eras
in American history.
American
Women: A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the
Study of Women’s History and Culture in the United States
The site contains a slightly expanded and fully searchable
version of the print publication American Women: A Library
of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture
in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Library of
Congress, 2001). The guide has been redesigned for online
use, with added illustrations and links to existing digitized
material located throughout the Library of Congress Web
site.
Born
in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project,
1936-1938
The collection contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts
of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former
slaves. The special presentations in the collection are
An
Introduction to the WPA Slave Narratives and Voices
and Faces from the Collection.
"California
as I Saw It": First-Person Narratives of California's
Early Years, 1849-1900
The collection consists of the full texts and illustrations
of 190 works documenting the formative era of California's
history through eyewitness accounts.
The
Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake
Bay Region, 1600-1925
The collection includes first-person narratives, early
histories, historical biographies, promotional brochures,
and books of photographs that capture in words and pictures
a distinctive region as it developed between the onset of
European settlement and the first quarter of the twentieth
century.
A
Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional
Documents and Debates, 1774-1875
The collection consists of a linked set of published congressional
records of the United States of America from the Continental
Congress through the 43rd Congress, 1774-1875.
The
Church in the Southern Black Community, 1780-1925
This compilation of printed texts from the libraries at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill traces how
Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant
Christianity into the central institution of community life.
First-Person
Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920
This compilation of printed texts from the libraries at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill documents
the culture of the nineteenth-century American South from
the viewpoint of Southerners. It includes the diaries,
autobiographies,
memoirs, travel
accounts, and ex-slave narratives of not only prominent
individuals, but also of relatively inaccessible populations:
women, African Americans, enlisted men, laborers, and Native
Americans.
The
Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress
The collection presents the papers of the nineteenth-century
African-American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and
then risked his own freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery
lecturer, writer, and publisher.
From
Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection,
1824-1909
The collection includes 396 pamphlets from the Rare Book
and Special Collections Division, published from 1822 through
1909, by African-American authors and others who wrote about
slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction,
and related topics.
George
Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741-1799
The complete George Washington Papers collection from the
Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress consists
of approximately 65,000 documents. This is the largest collection
of original Washington documents in the world.
Historic
American Sheet Music, 1850-1920
The collection presents 3,042 pieces of sheet music drawn
from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections
Library at Duke University, which holds an important, representative,
and comprehensive collection of nineteenth, and early-twentieth-century
American sheet music.
The
James Madison Papers, 1723-1836
The James Madison Papers from the Manuscript Division at
the Library of Congress consist of approximately 12,000
items captured in some 72,000 digital images.
Map
Collections
The Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress
holds more than 4.5 million items, of which Map Collections
represents only a small fraction, those that have been converted
to digital form. The collection is organized according to
seven major categories: Cities
and Towns, Conservation
and Environment, Cultural
Landscapes, Discovery
and Exploration, General
Maps, Military
Battles and Campaigns, and Transportation
and Communication.
Music
for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1820-1860 & 1870-1885
The collection contains more than 62,500 pieces of historical
sheet music registered for copyright: more than 15,000 registered
during the years 1820-1860 and more than 47,000 registered
during the years 1870-1885.
The
Nineteenth Century in Print: Books
The books in this collection bear nineteenth-century American
imprints, dating mainly from between 1850 and 1880. Currently,
approximately 1,500 books are included.
The
Nineteenth Century in Print: Periodicals
The collection includes 955 volumes from twenty-two nineteenth-century
periodicals digitized by Cornell University as part of the
original Making of America project.
Pioneering
the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin,
ca. 1820-1910
The collection's 138 volumes depict the land and its resources;
the conflicts between settlers and Native peoples; the experience
of pioneers and missionaries, soldiers and immigrants and
reformers; the growth of local communities and local cultural
traditions; and the development of regional and national
leadership in agriculture, business, medicine, politics,
religion, law, journalism, education, and the role of women.
Slaves
and the Courts, 1740-1860
The collection contains just over a hundred pamphlets and
books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the difficult
and troubling experiences of African and African-American
slaves in the American colonies and the United States.
Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
A multi-format ethnographic field collection that includes approximately 700 sound recordings, as well as photographic prints, fieldnotes, dust jackets, and other manuscripts documenting a three-month, 6,502-mile trip through the southern United States collecting folksongs.
The
Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress
The complete Thomas Jefferson Papers from the Manuscript
Division at the Library of Congress consists of approximately
27,000 documents. This is the largest collection of original
Jefferson documents in the world.
Voices
from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories
The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented
in this collection took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine
Southern states. The collection includes Faces
and Voices from the Presentation and Biographies
of the Interviewers.
Votes
for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage
Association Collection, 1848-1921
The NAWSA Collection consists of 167 books, pamphlets and
other artifacts documenting the suffrage campaign.
Words
and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating
the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years
The Manuscript Division staff selected approximately ninety
representative documents spanning from the fifteenth century
to the mid-twentieth century.
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