The William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection (ca. 500 items) spans the years 1773 to 1987, with the bulk of the material dating from the Civil War period, 1861-1865. The collection consists of correspondence, pay vouchers, orders, muster rolls, enlistment and discharge papers, receipts, contracts, affidavits, tax records, miscellaneous military documents, and printed matter. Most items document African Americans in military service, especially the United States Corps d'Afrique and the United States Colored Troops, which were organized during the Civil War. Also included are many documents concerning slavery and various other Civil War documents that mention African Americans. The Revolutionary War items are primarily pay vouchers to Connecticut blacks who served in the Continental Army. World War I is represented by the papers of Lieutenant Edward L. Goodlett of the 370th Infantry, 93rd Division. Printed matter includes nineteenth-century speeches and writings on slavery, government orders, broadsides, and twentieth-century booklets and journal articles for scholars or collectors.

The collection was purchased by the Library of Congress from Gladstone in 1995. It has been kept in the numerical order established by him, which is neither topical nor chronological. The Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division complements and enhances this collection of manuscripts.

All or selected parts of this collection were transcribed by volunteers participating in the By the People crowdsourcing transcription project of the Library of Congress. Crowdsourced text associated with the specific image from which it was transcribed can be viewed by clicking on the “Image w/Text” option above the image itself, or by selecting the “Text” option in the dropdown menu below the image. Selecting “Text (all pages)” opens a document containing the available transcribed text for all the images in the respective object record.

A transcription dataset for this collection is available online as Transcription dataset from the William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection, Manuscript Division. For general information on transcription datasets at the Library of Congress and their uses, see “Datasets at the Library of Congress: A Research Guide.”