History: Primary Sources in U.S. Slavery

The collection consists of approximately 20,000 documents. It is organized into three "General Correspondence" series which include incoming and outgoing correspondence and enclosures, drafts of speeches, and notes and printed material.

This 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. It contains twelve items on the subject of Afro-Americans civil rights.

The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented here took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom.

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. It includes a "Speech before the Civil Right Mass Meeting" in Washington, D.C.

The William A. Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs provides almost 350 images showing African Americans and related military and social history. The Civil War era is the primary time period covered, with scattered examples through 1945.

Collection contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"One of the most distinguished figures in American history, Frederick Douglass was born a slave on Holmes Hill Farm, near the town of Easton on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. In 1838, only months after escaping bondage through the Underground Railroad, Douglass read his first issue of William Lloyd Garrison’s anti-slavery weekly, the Liberator. Inspired by Garrison’s activism, Douglass delivered his own abolitionist orations three years later, speaking to the Convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society."

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Conspiracy Theories in American History

The Louisiana Research Collection preserves a renowned collection of images pertaining to the Civil War and its aftermath. Among its holdings are more than 1,000 photographs, lithographs, and drawings from the Louisiana Historical Association depicting the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Subjects include political leaders, soldier and regimental portraits, studio portraits of general officers, photographs of memorial committees and veteransí organizations, and forts and battlefields. Also included are images pertaining to the Army of Northern Virginia, the Washington Artillery, and photographs of Confederate monuments.

From The American Economy: A Historical Encyclopedia
On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared that all slaves in areas of open rebellion were free. Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not have any immediate effect on the status of slaves in the Confederacy, after the Civil War the United States abolished slavery with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Encyclopedia of Race and Racism
Supreme Court chief justice Roger Brooke Taney led his Court to a decision in 1856 that would become a final impetus in the movement toward the Civil War.

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

This digital collection is comprised of correspondence, dating from 1839-1841, by abolitionists, pro-slavery advocates, governmental officials, and the Amistad Africans themselves, related to the development of efforts to provide legal assistance to the Africans. The resulting trials in the U.S. court system; the political interests on the part of the United States, Cuba, and Spain; and the personal experiences of the imprisoned Africans are detailed in these letters, which are housed in the archives of the American Missionary Association, an abolitionist missionary organization that grew out of the Amistad Committee’s efforts.

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
Speaking to more than a thousand representatives in the statehouse, he boldly asserted that, with regard to slavery and its devisive effect on the nation, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Evoking Jesus’s words in the Synoptic Gospels, Lincoln’s statement was far more radical than expected and, in the eyes of many, politically unsafe for a man with a calling for higher office.

From Encyclopedia of Race and Racism
One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success.

The Avery Research Center houses a variety of oral history interviews, largely documenting African American experiences in the Lowcountry. Oral history projects include the Avery Normal Institute documentation effort and the Sea Island Preservation Initiative.

Historically known as "The Walter Pantovic Slavery Collection," these artifacts span the African American experience from slavery to the Civil Rights era to the rise of African Americans in popular culture. Walter Pantovic was born in Yugoslavia in 1965 and immigrated to the United States at the age of two. He became interested in African-American history in elementary school and in his adult life began collecting artifacts related to the subject. Highlighted items in his assembled collection include shackles, slave tags, and manillas along with 1960s Civil Rights ephemera and 1970s African-American pop culture memorabilia.

This collection details the inner workings of Newton Plantation in the 1800s and contains several account and transaction ledgers. Specifically, this collection includes several day books (Newton Day Book or Newton Plantation Day Book), originating between 1854-1872, which hold detailed records of monetary transactions on the plantation including accounts payable and accounts receivable. Also in this collection is the Newton Slave List, 1828 which records names of slaves and their respective occupations on the plantation that year. Additionally the collection includes Newton Plantation Cash Books from 1869-1873, a Stock Keepers and Watchmen book from 1862 and an 1849 Sugar Book which contains records of sugar, rum and molasses production on the plantation.

This disbound scrapbook contains legal documents, personal and business correspondence, receipts, ephemera, clippings and photographs pertaining to the Holloway family, a prominent free family of color in Charleston, SC. Legal documents include deeds, conveyances, slave bills of sale, contracts and a photograph of a 1797 document declaring patriarch Richard Holliday (Holloway) a free mulatto. Personal and business correspondence include letters concerning the hiring out of slaves, an offer to buy Holloway Negroes, a letter from Samuel Benedict about emigrating to Liberia, and information about the Brown Fellowship Society, the Century Fellowship Society, the Minors Moralist Society and the Bonneau Literary Society.

The Friendly Moralist Society was a benevolent society for free brown (mulatto or mixed race) men established in Charleston, S.C. in 1838. The group provided burial aid and purchased plots for those in need and provided charitable assistance to widows and orphans of deceased members. Includes proceedings, minutes, and an Absentee's Book.

The collection of artifacts pertaining to the Craft and Crum families of the South Carolina Lowcountry includes a myriad of materials; photo albums, letters, account books, and land deeds. The Craft Family Photo Album includes images of Craft family members, famous abolitionists, and other family friends, many of international historical significance. Also included in the collection are legal documents pertaining to the family land, Woodville Plantation.

The African-American experience in slavery and freedom as told through documents held in Wofford College’s Special Colelctions. Drawing upon materials from the library’s Special Collections, including the Littlejohn Collection, and the Wofford and SC Methodist Archives, this exhibition traces the African-American experience from the American Revolution to the early modern era, particularly in the South and Upstate.