Slavery

Primary sources for the study of African slavery are plentiful on the World Wide Web. They include slave narratives and first-person accounts, books and pamphlets, periodicals and newspapers, legislation and legal proceedings, census material, and images, among others. The following is a selection of some of the most notable sources available. For further information, consult Resources for the Study of North American Slavery. Note that some excellent instructional materials are included in the Teaching Resources section of this Web site.

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Narratives and First-Person Accounts

• North American Slave Narratives
  This searchable collection of texts, part of the "Documenting the American South" project at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, "includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920."

• Digital Schomburg: African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
  Searchable collection of 44 books from the New York Public Library.

• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
  More than 2,300 first-person accounts by former slaves.

Books and Pamphlets

• African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907
  A collection of 351 titles.

• From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909
  A collection of 397 pamphlets.

• Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
  The May Anti-Slavery Collection at Cornell University contains more than 10,000 items, including pamphlets, sermons, broadsides, newsletters, and Anti-Slavery Fair and other ephemera. Several thousand pamphlets are included in this resource.

Newspaper and Magazines

• Toward Racial Equality: Harper's Weekly Reports on Black America, 1857-1874
  Selected articles published in Harper's Weekly.

• The Geography of Slavery in Virginia
  Advertisements for runaway slaves in Virginia newspapers.

Legislation and Legal Proceedings

• Slave Code for the District of Columbia
  Printed Slavery Code of the District of Columbia published in 1862, just before slavery in the district was abolished, and manuscript that was probably a reference "practice book" used in a district law firm.

• Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860
  Some 100 books and pamphlets relating to legal cases about slavery.

• Race and Slavery Petitions Project
  Searchable database containing information about legislative and court petitions concerning slavery in the South, 1770s to 1860s.

• Dred Scott Case Collection
  Proceedings of suit initiated by Dred Scott and his wife Harriet in the St. Louis Circuit Court in 1846. The case eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where one of the most infamous judgments in U.S. history was issued.

Census Information

• United States Historical Census Data Browser
  U.S. census data, 1790-1960; provides demographic information, including numbers of slaves, by state and county.

• Census of Population and Housing
  Reports published by the U.S. Census Bureau, 1790-2000.

Images

• Digital Schomburg: Images of African Americans from the 19th Century

• Toward Racial Equality: Harper's Weekly Reports on Black America, 1857-1874
  Selected illustrations published in Harper's Weekly.

• The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
  Some 1,235 images.

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