Primary Sources: Slavery & Abolition: Abolition

"... documents our country’s intellectual, moral, and political struggle to achieve freedom for all Americans. Featuring rare books, manuscripts, letters, photographs, and other materials from Cornell’s pre-eminent anti-slavery and Civil War collections, the exhibition explores the complex history of slavery, resistance, and abolition from the 1700s through 1865. "

"This interactive teaching resource is modeled off the Summer Seminar for School Teachers sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and hosted by the Library Company of Philadelphia."

"This website features 117 items from the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. This group of unique manuscripts and rare published materials includes handwritten documents and letters (Phillis Wheatley and members of the Hartford family), the earliest antislavery pamphlet published in Massachusetts (The Selling of Joseph, printed in 1700), petitions of enslaved people requesting freedom, documents certifying the freedom of specific individuals, materials relating to two people involved in landmark legal cases that helped to bring an end to slavery in Massachusetts (Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker), warrants and depositions for freedom seekers, bills of sale and account books documenting enslavement transactions, and a series of letters written in 1795 in which some notable men share their perspective on the history and end of slavery in Massachusetts."

"From the 1820s to the Civil War, African Americans assumed prominent roles in the transatlantic struggle to abolish slavery. In contrast to the popular belief that the abolitionist crusade was driven by wealthy whites, some 300 black abolitionists were regularly involved in the antislavery movement, heightening its credibility and broadening its agenda. The Black Abolitionist Digital Archive is 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." This site is endorsed by the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM)

"Anti-Slavery collection (approximately 40,000 pieces). In the late 1890's, the family of William Lloyd Garrison, along with others closely involved in the anti-slavery movement, presented the library with a major gathering of correspondence, documents, and other original material relating to the abolitionist cause from 1832 until after the Civil War. The major holdings consist of the papers of William Lloyd Garrison, Maria Weston Chapman and Deborah Weston, Lydia Maria Child, Amos Augustus Phelps, John Bishop Estlin, and Samuel May, Jr. "

Part VII: Abraham Lincoln Library Abolitionist Books:
Compiled by the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Library in Springfield, Illinois this unique collection brings together a disparate group of abolitionist era reference materials. Ranging from memoirs to speeches, biographies to essays, sermons to proceedings minutes, these publications provide the user an intimate insight into the social, political and religious natures of these contentious times.

The diversity of the materials allows the user to access information reflecting both points of view on the abolition of slavery.

"Relying on the expertise of distinguished curators and scholars, Digital Schomburg provides access to trusted information, interpretation, and scholarship on the global black experience 24/7. Users worldwide can find, in this virtual Schomburg Center, exhibitions, books, articles, photographs, prints, audio and video streams, and selected external links for research in the history and cultures of the peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora."

Part of the HarpWeek Explore history site.
[For access to the Harper's Weekly subscription database, please use the link in the A-Z list.

"is one of the most significant and little studied newspapers documenting early anti-slavery and other reform movements." The collection is provided by Cornell University and includes 281 issues, published from 1836 - 1842.

This site which is part of the Yale Center for International and Area studies "is dedicated to the investigation and dissemination of information concerning all aspects of the Atlantic slave system and its destruction."

"The Gilder Lehrman Center's online document collection contains over 200 individual items, including speeches, letters, cartoons and graphics, interviews, and articles."
From The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

"The collection contains materials gathered by James Birney in the course of his anti-slavery labors, and items gathered by William Birney while preparing a biography of his father. Over the years the collection has been augmented and now includes both anti- and pro-slavery material; printed speeches; African colonization; politics and campaign biographies; and black eduction. "

"This database contains 828 indexed articles (436 which are provided in full-text) which appeared between 1831 and 1855 in William Garrison's abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. These articles were chosen as potentially useful to the research of civic engagement through voluntary assocations among both African-American and white Bostonians during the antebellum period. The resulting database is provided to complement our biographical database of African Americans in Beacon Hill and the West End, 1848-1853." primaryresearch.org

The Liberator was a weekly newspaper published by William Lloyd Garrison in Boston, Massachusetts. William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts in December, 1805. At thirteen years of age he began his newspaper career with the Newburyport Herald, where he acquired great skills in both accuracy and speed in the art of setting type. He also wrote anonymous articles, and at the age of twenty-one began publishing his own newspaper.

"This is a collection of items which appear in THE LIBERATOR, a Boston-based Abolitionist newspaper, published under the editorship of William Lloyd Garrison, who lived from 1805–1879.

The assembled items represent only a tiny portion of what appeared in the 1,803 editions of the paper, published weekly from 1831-1865. . The source of the collection has been Garrison’s copies of THE LIBERATOR., access to which has been granted and facilitated by the Boston Public Library, Rare Books."

This project was created to "increase public accessibility to rare historical materials formerly available only on-site at the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College and the Quaker & Special Collections at Haverford College." Users can browse or search this online collection containing images and documents.

"The collection of pamphlets and supplementary texts within Recovered Histories covers a century of campaigning in Europe and America, capturing the voices of the enslaved, enslavers, slave ship surgeons, abolitionists, parliamentarians, the clergy, planters and rebels."

"Numbering over 10,000 titles, May's pamphlets and leaflets document the anti-slavery struggle at the local, regional, and national levels. Much of the May Anti-Slavery Collection was considered ephemeral or fugitive, and today many of these pamphlets are scarce. Sermons, position papers, offprints, local Anti-Slavery Society newsletters, poetry anthologies, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes all document the social and political implications of the abolitionist movement."

Letter was written, shortly after the pro-slavery riot in Boston by Angeline E. Grimke to William Lloyd Garrison ... 1835.

This site provides three different modes of access: Browse Mode - "provides access to all the primary material in the archive -- texts, images, songs, 3-D objects, film clips, &c. -- one at a time." Search Mode - "allows you to search all the primary material at once." Interpret Mode - "includes an interactive timeline, virtual exhibits designed to suggest ways of exploring and understanding the primary material, as well as lesson plans for teachers and student projects. Usually the best place to enter is the BROWSE MODE, which gives you the most direct access to the story of Stowe's story as an American cultural phenomenon." Use this site to research Uncle Tom's Cabin; site includes reviews, articles and numerous other resources..