U.S. History

Abolitionist Movements

This is a guide to scholarly research and primary source collections related to United States history. Subpages include Boston history, Indigenous people's histories, Caribbean history, as well as African American History.

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This page is currently under construction and far from complete. If you notice broken links or have suggestions, please write the subject liaison e-mail.

Broad Digital Collections

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Located in Harlem, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is one of the most widely used research facilities in the world devoted to preserving materials on the history and culture of peoples of African descent. Provides much useful information pertaining to African-American authors and literature.
Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean.

Digital Humanities

Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade
"...discover and explore nearly a half million people records and 5 million data points. From archival fragments and spreadsheet entries, we see the lives of the enslaved in richer detail. Yet there’s much more work to do, and with the help of scholars, educators, and family historians, Enslaved.org will be rapidly expanding in 2021. We are just getting started."
Open Access.
Slave Voyages
This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them. European colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved laborers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. They forced millions of mostly unnamed Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action. [Emory Libraries]

Topics: Slavery

American Slavery Collection This link opens in a new window
A range of materials, including books, pamphlets, graphic materials, and ephemera, from the American Antiquarian Society's holdings of slavery and abolition materials. Published over the course of 100 years, topics include, for example, the Missouri Compromise and the founding of Liberia; the first National Anti-Slavery Society Convention in 1837 and the Compromise of 1850; the Emancipation Proclamation and the establishment of Redeemer state governments; the birth of Jim Crow and the expansion of segregation through the early 1920s.

American Slavery Documents (Duke)
Legal and personal documents related to the institution of slavery in the United States from 1757-1860s.
Ancestry.com: Census, Registers and Interviews Related to Slavery
From the main menu, select Search, then browse card catalog, then search for word in title slave*
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
This site contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts and 500 black-and-white photographs of former
slaves.
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The narratives were collected in the 1930s and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen
volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.
Digital Library on American Slavery
The Digital Library on American Slavery is an expanding resource compiling various independent online collections focused upon race and slavery in the American South, made searchable through a single, simple interface.
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Institution: UNC Greensboro
African American Perspectives
This Library of Congress web site presents an eclectic collection of pamphlets, course catalogs, speeches, annual reports and other items published from 1822 through 1909 primarily by African-American authors. 800+ items.
Hein Online's Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law
Brings together a multitude of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. Our cases go into the 20th century, because long after slavery was ended, there were still court cases based on issues emanating from slavery.
New York Historical Society Manuscript Collections Relating to Slavery
Diaries, account books, letter books, ships' logs, indentures, bills of sale, personal papers, and records of institutions, including the records of the New York Manumission Society and the African Free School, the diaries and correspondence of English abolitionists Granville Sharp and John Clarkson, the papers of the Boston anti-slavery activist Lysander Spooner, the records of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and an account book kept by the slave trading firm Bolton, Dickens & Co.
Slave Movement During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (UW-Madison)
This site provides access to the raw data and documentation which contains information on the following slave trade topics from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries:
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records of slave ship movement between Africa and the Americas, slave ships of eighteenth century France, slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, Virginia slave trade in the eighteenth century, English slave trade (House of Lords Survey), Angola slave trade in the eighteenth century, internal slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, slave trade to Havana, Cuba, Nantes slave trade in the eighteenth century, and slave trade to Jamaica.

Slavery and the Law This link opens in a new window
Includes petitions related to race and slavery to state legislatures and to southern county courts, as well as state slavery statutes from 1789-1865.

Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860
This collection consists of 105 library books and manuscripts, totalling approximately 8,700 pages drawn principally from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, with a few from the General Collections.

Topics: Abolition

African American Perspectives (LOC)
A panoramic and eclectic review of African American history and culture and is primarily comprised of two collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division: the African American Pamphlet Collection and the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection with a date range of 1822 through 1909.

Black Abolitionist Papers This link opens in a new window
This collection documents the efforts of African American activists in their international effort to abolish slavery in the United States. Covering the period 1830-1865, the 15,000-item collection records the full impact of African American efforts to oppose slavery by displaying the writings and publications of the activists themselves.

The Abolition of the Slave Trade (Schomburg)
This website provides resources for exploring the various dimensions and consequences, and the impact of decisions made and actions taken or not taken on four continents two centuries ago. It offers insights into the slave trade to the United States, African resistance, abolitionism, the U.S. Constitution and the Slave Trade Acts, 19th century African-American celebrations of the 1807 Act, the illegal slave trade, the campaign to revive the trade, and the end of the Africans’ deportation.
The Abolition Project
The abolitionists set in motion Britain's first, mass social movement. Their rallying themes of liberty and equality influenced reforming campaigns for the right to vote, to form trades unions and the feminist movement. Their techniques of consumer boycotts and petitions are used to this day.
Black Abolitionist Archive (University of Detroit, Mercy)
A collection of over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials from the period. These important documents provide a portrait of black involvement in the anti-slavery movement; scans of these documents are provided as images and PDF files.
Boston Abolitionists, 1831-1865 (Mass Historical Society)
Features important manuscripts, photographs, and artifacts from the Massachusetts Historical Society's collections that convey how Boston became a center of the national antislavery movement.
Colored Conventions Project
Features hundreds of primary sources from the long conventions movement. Primary sources include minutes, proceedings, newspaper articles, speeches, letters, transcripts, and images.
In Motion: Runaway Journeys
Selected and curated resources relevant to narratives of escape from enslavement. Associated with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture with the NYPL.
Portraits, People, & Abolition (National Portrait Gallery)
In 2007, the National Portrait Gallery has created a new gallery trail that highlights some of the individuals in the Collection who have been associated with the history of the slave trade. It mainly includes those who profited from the trade in enslaved peoples, reflecting the reliance on slave labour to create wealth, position and influence in British society.
Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society Papers, 1851-1868 (UMich)
The Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society papers consist of materials collected by the society, including correspondence to and from various members about slavery, fugitive slaves, the conditions of freemen, and other progressive issues; printed annual reports; and other items.
Sydney Howard Gay’s "Record of Fugitives"
Sydney Howard Gay, editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard and chief operative of an underground railroad outpost located at the newspaper's offices in New York City. The Record of Fugitives in its entirety consists of two notebooks and several pages of addenda.

Personal Papers and Narratives

African American History Collection, 1729-1966 (bulk 1781-1865)
The African American History Collection is comprised of individual letters, documents, and other manuscript items from the William L. Clements Library relating to slavery, abolition movements, and various aspects of African American life, largely dating between 1781 and 1865.
Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress
Presents the papers of the nineteenth-century African American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and then risked his freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher. The online collection, containing approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), spans the years 1841-1964, with the bulk of the material dating from 1862 to 1865.

For Additional Help

For additional recommendations, contact your History Liaison, Erin, at erinkate.scheopner@bc.edu or schedule an appointment.

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U.S. History

Abolitionist Movements

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Broad Digital Collections

Digital Humanities

Topics: Slavery

Topics: Abolition

Personal Papers and Narratives

For Additional Help