These free websites provide primary source material related to the Civil War.
Newspapers
- Brooklyn Daily Eagle
- Chronicling America (includes the Memphis Appeal, Chattanooga Rebel, New York Sun and New York Daily Tribune)
- Harper’s Weekly
- Richmond Daily Dispatch
- Seccession-Era Editorials
Maps and Photographs
Diaries and Letters
- Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
- The Civil War Archive
- Civil War on the Western Border
- The Civil War: Women and the Homefront
- First Person Narratives of the American South
- Manuscripts of the American Civil War
- Valley of the Shadow
- Virginia Military Institute Archives
Dispatches and Battles
- Antietam on the Web
- Making of America: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies
- The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
Slavery and Abolitionism
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project, 1936-1938
- Frederick Douglass Papers
- North American Slave Narratives
- Slavery and Abolition in the U.S.: Select Publications of the 1800s
- Slavery and the Courts 1740-1860
The Confederacy
Excerpted from:
Birkenseer, Susan. “The American Civil War: a collection of free online primary sources,” College & Research Libraries News, 76:5(May 2015):269-273.