The papers contain correspondence, business and land records, writings, legal records, and maps of Peter Smith, land speculator and local politician in Madison County, New York and his son Gerrit Smith, land owner, philanthropist, reformer, abolitionist, and temperance advocate. 89 reels, plus finding aid.

Emancipation papers resulting from the Act of April 16, 1862 and July 12, 1862; and manumission papers, 1857-1863, and fugitive slave case papers, 1851-1863. There are 3 reels, accompanied by a printed guide.

A rare line engraving, produced by Robert Brandard at some point in the first half of the nineteenth century. Based on an earlier image by George Cattermole.

The records consist of registers, letters, reports, and newspaper clippings received by the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1872. There are 74 microfilm reels and a published finding aid. Additional Freedmen’s Bureau records are available for Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

Materials related to slave labor in skilled industries such as gold and coal mining, iron manufacturing, machine shop work, lumbering, quarrying, brick-making, tobacco manufacturing, shipbuilding, and heavy construction. Including over 150 microfilm reels, the collection is based on documents from the Duke University Library, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the Virginia Historical Society and the University of Virginia Library. More information is available online.

James Hakewill, A picturesque tour of the island of Jamaica, from drawings made in the years 1820 and 1821(London, 1825). The Yale Center for British Art also holds a number of original watercolors by Hakewill, which depict life in the British Caribbean prior to emancipation.

In 1771 Thomas Hearne began working for Sir Ralph Payne, the recently appointed Governor-General of the Leeward Islands, a group of sugar colonies consisting of Antigua, Nevis, St. Christopher’s (now St. Kitts), and Montserrat. Hearne spent three and a half years making working drawings and, after his return to England in 1775, produced twenty large and highly finished watercolors for Payne, of which only eight are now known.

The collection consists of eight documents concerning slavery in Delaware: six signed manuscript records, manuscript copies of documents dated between 1783 and 1809, documenting the trade and emancipation of slaves and indentured servants by individual slave owners in Delaware; an order, dated April 29, 1829, signed and sealed by Delaware Governor Charles Polk, pardons James John for kidnapping Betsy Martin, a free racially-mixed woman, and transporting her across state lines; and a brief letter, dated December 11, 1910, from Henry C. Conrad, Delaware Superior Court judge, to Walter V. Johnson of Johns Hopkins University, concerns Abraham Lincoln’s abolition of slavery in Delaware.

Letters of the Secretary of the Navy to and from agents stationed on the northwest coast of Africa. The agents often dealt with Africans freed from captured slave ships. From the Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

This print, made by W. Pyott in 1792, was based on C. F. von Breda’s 1789 painting, “Portrait of a Swedish Gentleman Instructing a Negro Prince.”

The collection consists of over 100 reels, divided into six parts. Part one includes the complete papers of Thomas Clarkson, William Lloyd Garrison, Zachary Macaulay, Harriet Martineau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and William Wilberforce from the Huntington Library in California. Parts two and three reproduce the slavery collections of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool. Part four reproduces the Granville Sharp Papers from the Gloucestershire Record Office. Part five reproduces the Papers of Thomas Clarkson from the British Library, London. Part six reproduces the Papers of William Wilberforce, William Smith, Iveson Brookes, Francis Corbin and related records from the Rare Books, Manuscript and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

The papers consist of correspondence and business papers of Aaron Columbus Burr, merchant of New York City and adopted son of Aaron Burr. The papers relate to an attempt by Burr and James Grant to establish a colony for freed American slaves in Honduras. There is also material relating to the American Honduras Company, a firm formed by Burr and Grant for the cutting and exporting of mahogany.

The papers include correspondence, journal extracts, newspaper clippings, and printed material relating to Susan Walker’s activities as a teacher for the New England Freedmen’s Aid Society in Port Royal, South Carolina. Originals are in the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, Cincinnati, Ohio.

The papers consist of correspondence, writings, manuscript notes, and printed material documenting the life of Harriet Martineau. Among the noteworthy correspondents are Matthew Arnold, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Samuel Courtauld, W. E. Gladstone, Robert Graves, Samuel Lucas, Lord John Russell, Maria Weston Chapman, and Henry William Wilberforce.

The Medical Books collection at the Medical Historical Library contains rare books from the 15th through 19th centuries. Some of the books pertain directly to slavery or abolition, such as Lucretia Mott’s Sermon to the Medical Students. Others deal with slavery indirectly, such as Lorenzo Fowler’s Illustrated Phrenological Almanac, which published an image and analysis of Amistad captive Sarah (Margru) Kinson.

Draft, holograph, corrected, of a novel about a young woman from New York who learns of her African-American ancestry while travelling through Florida, Tennesee, and other parts of the southern United States in the mid to late nineteenth century. The novel, by an unidentified author, addresses issues of race, slavery, and women’s rights during the Reconstruction.

Correspondence, writings, speeches, diaries, clippings, printed matter, sermons, and other papers of two centuries of Beecher family members. The papers relate principally to Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), popular 19th century clergyman and orator, and members of his family. Among those represented are his father, the Reverend Lyman Beecher (1775-1863), clergyman; his brothers, Edward Beecher (1803-1895), educator and antislavery leader, and Thomas Kinnicut Beecher (1824-1900) and Charles Beecher (1815-1900), both clergyman and antislavery activists; and his sisters, Harriett Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe (1811-1896), author, Catherine Esther Beecher (1800-1878), pioneer educator and writer on ‘domestic economy,’ and Isabella Homes (Beecher) Hooker (1822-1907), well-known suffragist.

The papers of Benjamin Tappan, lawyer, judge, U.S. Senator from Ohio, and active participant in the antislavery movement, consist of correspondence, speeches, legal and business papers, and miscellaneous material. The correspondence, which constitutes the bulk of the papers, relates to Tappan’s law practice, his activities in the antislavery movement, and to Ohio and national politics especially during the Jacksonian period.

The records consist of fifty volumes of the confidential print relating to the slave trade. The confidential print is a collection of selected correspondence, memoranda and other documents printed for internal use in the Foreign Office and for distribution to the missions. Originals are in the Public Record Office, London, England. Published finding aid available.

Waller went to Africa in 1861 as Lay Superintendent of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa. He resigned from the Mission in 1863 following a disagreement related to liberated slaves under the care of the Mission. These papers document the Zambezi expedition of David Livingstone (1813-1873) and the early history of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa.  Waller’s deep interest in Africa and the problem of slavery continued throughout his life and is reflected in his correspondence with Livingstone and in diaries dated 1875-1876, after his return to England.  Selections from Waller’s diaries for 1875 and 1876 have been scanned.

Holograph manuscript containing copies of letters sent by William Codrington to his agents in Antigua and Barbuda from 1779 to 1782 concerning the management of his estates and accounts, the employment of servants and slaves, the sugar trade, and the effects of war on contact with the West Indies.

Darrach moved to Kansas Territory in 1855. About fifty letters dated at Osawatomie, 1855-1856, contain a detailed narrative of the lives of settlers and events of the Kansas border war, including discussion of elections and constitutional conventions; events in Lawrence and other fighting between free soil and slavery advocates; and the killings at Pottawatomie by John Brown and the subsequent sack of Osawatomie.

The E. L. McGlashan Collection of Papers Concerning Slavery in the United States consists of bills of sale, receipts, estate records, and other material documenting slave ownership and the slave trade in the United States. The papers span the dates 1770-1862, and predominantly document transactions in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, and Alabama. There are also records which document legal actions involving slaves in Maine, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana.

The Freedmen’s Aid Society was founded in 1866 as an agency of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The Society established and maintained schools and colleges for former slaves in the postbellum South. This collection consists of 120 microfilm reels, based on the originals housed at the Woodruff Library at Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia.

The collection includes about 73 microfilm reels and several printed guides. Documents cover plantations in Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Also included are the Albert A . Batchelor papers, Weeks Family Papers, Hammond Family Papers, 1866 - 1907, and Hammond Bryan Cummings Papers, 1866-1920.

Includes seven scrapbooks titled “Tracts on Slavery in the United States, and on the U.S. Constitution and Organic Laws.” Also includes a manuscript book containing records of punishments administered to slaves in a South American mining camp between 1836 and 1847, numerous deeds for slaves dating from 1783 to 1848, newspaper clippings from the 1840s through the 1860s relating to the anti-slavery movement in Kansas, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, and a manuscript census of slaves in Chester County, Pennsylvania, from 1780 to 1815.

The papers document the activities of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society, the first formal abolitionist society in America. Included are minutes from 1787 to 1916, and the society’s large collection of manuscripts dealing with abolition, dating from 1774 through 1868. More information is available online.

Manuscript account book, in unidentified handwriting, for Austin & Laurens, in Charleston, South Carolina, recording purchases and sales. Includes accounts relating to the sale of slaves. The firm was founded by George Austin and Henry Laurens, and later joined by George Appleby. One volume, 368 pages.

The New England Indian Papers Series Database includes several documents directly related to slavery and the slave trade in early America. Manuscripts include information on Indian slaves taken after King Philip’s War and their fate in the Caribbean, Spain, and North Africa.

Although not focused primarily on slavery and abolition, this collection is a key resource for understanding the history of race in America. In addition to Johnson’s papers, there are significant manuscript materials from W. E. B. DuBois, Walter White, Poppy Cannon White, Dorothy Peterson, Chester Himes, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Jean Toomer, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Wallace Thurman.

The collection documents black life and American racial attitudes from the 1850’s to the 1940’s, and includes about 2500 items, chiefly historical photographs, accompanied by slave manifests, military medals, and civic trophies. The collection includes albumen photographs of Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Photographic formats include daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, and cabinet card photographs.

The collection, assembled by the rare book dealers Jenny Allsworth and Humphrey Winterton, brings together photographs, photograph albums, glass lantern slides, and a lantern projector, which document the Sultanate of Zanzibar and European colonial expansion in East and Central Africa from 1870 to 1914. Also documented are early Arab and Portuguese coastal settlements at Kilwa, Mafia, Pemba, Sofala, and Zanzibar and the work of photographers who operated in different parts of the region.

The Freedmen’s Missions Aid Society was the British Counterpart to the American Missionary Association. It provided financial support for educational and religious work among former slaves and their descendants in Africa and the United States.

The papers concern Barbara D. Simison’s projected edition of the letters of Lydia Maria Child, and consist of research correspondence with other scholars and with libraries and Simison’s annotated working transcripts of Child’s letters. In addition, the collection contains 15 autograph letters by Lydia Maria Child, including an ALS to Richard Fletcher describing the Samaritan Asylum for Colored Orphans; 3 ALS to Oliver Johnson concerning publishing projects and Civil War politics; and an ALS to James Redpath in support of a woman sculptor’s effort to secure the commission for a statue of John Brown.

Robert Bostock was a Liverpool trader who continued to be involved in the slave trade after its abolition by Parliament in 1807. His factory on Bunce Island was raided by H.M.S. Thais in 1813 and 233 slaves were seized. Also captured were Bostock, his partner Charles Mason, and the captain of an American slave-ship, the “Kitty,” which was to have smuggled the contraband slaves to Charleston, South Carolina.

Agents within the Office of the Secretary of the Interior were authorized by the Secretary of the Navy to receive any “Negroes, mulattos, or persons of color” found aboard vessels seized off the coast of Africa and relocate them to what is now known as Liberia. Ten microfilm reels, based on the originals held at the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. These documents and several related collections are now available in full online.

The papers document the life of Southern women through diaries, correspondence with family and friends, and business correspondence and records. The primary focus of the papers and diaries is on home life. Among the frequently discussed topics are courtship, education, child rearing, marriage, and religion. Discussions of family business dealings and women’s thoughts on temperance, slavery, and women’s rights also appear in the collection. Printed guides are available online.

The collection comprises Howe’s outgoing and incoming correspondence, third-party correspondence, and six manuscript writings pertaining to slavery and ethics. The letters address Howe’s religious beliefs, opposition to the institution of slavery, support of the temperance movement, the annexation of Texas, and other political matters.

Manuscript of a detailed description of the geography, population, economy, government, and social organization of Jamaica by John Dalling, who was appointed Lieutenant Governor of the colony in 1767. Topics include agriculture, the sugar trade and the mechanics of a typical sugar plantation, slavery and slave customs, and relations between the races.

Correspondence, business and personal papers, volumes and pamphlets, diaries, family papers, planation records, and miscellanea of families and individuals in Louisiana and the Mississipppi Valley. The effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction, emancipation, and social and economic change in the South are documented in nineteen separate collections. An unpublished finding aid is available.

The collection contains, 2,604 letters, 2,228 of which are from Lydia Maria Child. Topics include antislavery, politics, Childs’ professional writing experience, her work as an editor of a children’s magazine, her financial assistance to musicians and artists, feminism, and Child’s personal life. Recipients include Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Eliot, Margaret Fuller, Charles Dickens, James T. Fields, William Cullen Bryant and other prominent cultural figures.

Highlights include recordings by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers and the Tuskegee Institute Singers as well as excerpts from Booker T. Washington’s famous “Atlanta Compromise” speech. The Beinecke Library holds complementary material related to blackface minstrelsy and spirtuals, including sheet music for the original “Jim Crow.”

RAAI aspires to reproduce all the illustrations of figurative African objects published between 1800 and 1920 in books, periodicals, catalogues, newspapers, and other publications. It does not include postcards or pamphlets of very limited distribution. More than 95% of the material is contained in the James J. Ross library, the remainder has been recorded from copies in other libraries. Many of the items pertain in some way to slavery or its legacies.

Papers of the American Slave Trade, provides scholars with access to primary source material on the business aspect of the trade in human beings. The collection documents the international slave trade in Britain’s New World colonies and the United States from 1718 to the trade’s demise after 1808. There are multiple series accompanied by printed guides. The printed guides are also available online.

Four manuscript letters, dated between 1855 and 1856, provide information on the conflict between antislavery and proslavery settlers in Kansas Territory. Narratives by Frederick and Jason Brown, sons of the militant abolitionist John Brown, describe the family’s encounters with proslavery forces in various locations.

The collection contains material on the capture, trial, and release of the Amistad captives who were illegally sold into slavery. The collection consists of diaries, letters, court and government records, and newspaper accounts of the case; secondary accounts of the case; and background information on Africa, Cuba, the slave-trade, similar cases, slavery in the United States, and abolitionist sentiment in the North.

Part one centers on Jamaica, c1765-1848. It includes the Taylor and Vanneck-Arcedekne Papers from Cambridge University Library and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. Highlights include the correspondence and papers of West Indian agents, correspondence and accounts of London agents concerning Jamaica, and materials covering the Maroon and French wars, slave revolts, the treatment of colonists by the British government, births, deaths, marriages, inheritances, debts and family quarrels. A detailed guide is available online.

The American Missionary Association was established in 1846 as an interdenominational missionary society devoted to abolitionist principles. The manuscripts include correspondence, treasurer’s papers, minutes of executive committee meetings, and other materials such as sermons, statistical reports, drawings, pictures and essays. Additional information is available online.

The papers consist of correspondence and official government and military directives to and from Holwell Walshe, which document his career in the 1st and 2nd West India Regiments, particularly his years as commander of Sherbro Island, Sierra Leone. Walshe took possession of Sherbro in September 1862 and successfully defended the island and revitalized its economy. He remained as Civil Commandant until 1871, when he was transferred to Singapore as a police magistrate.

The records consist of 2,196 volumes of correspondence with commissioners at the several stations appointed to carry out the articles of the Slave Trade Conventions with various nations. The records constitute part of Public Record Office group Foreign Office class 84 (PRO FO 84). There are 1,222 microfilm reels.

The collection consists of minute books, cash books, a subscription book, and annual reports of the Glasgow Emancipation Society; minutes and other records of the Glasgow Freeman’s Aid Society; and other papers, pamphlets and reports relating to the anti-slavery movement in Glasgow, Scotland.

The papers document the life and career of Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, orator, journalist, diplomat, and public official. They contain correspondence, a diary, speeches, articles, a manuscript of Douglass’ autobiography, financial and legal papers, newspaper clippings, and other material, chiefly covering the years 1862-1895. Topics include emancipation and the problems of emancipated blacks, women’s rights, political affairs, a proposed naval station in Haiti, and family.

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) was a Quaker abolitionist and poet of international renown. He was affiliated with the National Era, one of the most important abolitionist newspapers in America. This collection consists of miscellaneous correspondence, manuscripts, and other material by and about Whittier. Included is the orignal draft for “Moloch in State Street,” about the arrest of fugitive slave Thomas Sims, with significant alterations and revisions.

Books, pamphlets and other documents outlining the moral, religious, economic and legal aspects of the slavery debate. Includes anti-slavery society records, campaign literature and speeches made in and out of Congress, children’s literature, sermons and theological works, proslavery literature, and more. There are 7,235 fiches, accompanied by a printed guide.

A singular resource for the study of English provincial philanthropic societies. The collection includes documents on Africa, the West Indies, and the American Civil War. Also included are the Raymond English collection of the letters, diaries, pamphlets and press cuttings of the abolitionist George Donisthorpe Thompson and his son-in-law F. W. Chesson and the H. J. Wilson anti-slavery collection of 19th century pamphlets.

The Yale Map Collection has the largest collection of maps in Connecticut and one of the largest university collections in the United States. Its collections are geographically comprehensive and consist of over 200,000 map sheets, 3,000 atlases, and 900 reference books. There are several maps and atlases with an explicit focus on slavery, including Lewis’ Free Soil, Slavery, and Territorial Map of the United States, “Gulag Slavery” maps of Russia, and theAtlas of Antebellum Southern Agriculture. 

The papers consist of miscellaneous personal papers of Edward Parmelee Smith including letters to his future wife (1851-1854) and letters to his daughter (1872-1873) with an account of a sea voyage to California and his impressions once there. His years at Yale College are documented by an autograph album with messages from his teachers and classmates (1849-1855). Among the four photographs in the papers is one showing Smith with six students when he was president of Howard University, Washington, D.C. (1875). Clippings and correspondence describe his work as Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1873) and his death in Africa in 1876 while an envoy of the American Missionary Association.

Includes the Slave Journal of Humphrey Morice (1721-1730), Journal of Humphrey Morice (1708-1710), trading accounts, personal and business papers, and documents relating to British trade with Africa, America, and the West Indies. More information and a detailed research guide are available online.

A letter dated 1835 Dec 24-26, at Clinton, East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, was written while Hulin worked as a schoolteacher in Louisiana. He discusses his impressions of the South, the character of Southern planters, slavery, and attitudes of Southerners toward Arthur Tappan and other Northern abolitionists. The letter reports the hanging of a group of African American slaves and whites accused of planning a rebellion against slave owners in Jackson, Louisiana. Hulin also gives examples of Southern dialect and briefly discusses his work as a teacher.

A Mezzotint, printed in color, by John Raphael Smith. Issued in 1791, this image was engraved “to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.”

The papers consist of the research files of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, an author and history professor. The papers include Phillip’s notes and transcripts of historical source materials and the collected papers of several southern families from 1712-1933. The collected papers include correspondence, account books, business records, farm and plantation records, diaries, and other papers which focus on the years 1790-1865, and the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia and the Piedmont region of Georgia. Numerous photographs drawn from the collection are available online.

The papers consist of the personal correspondence, financial and legal papers, plantation and slave records, and writings of the Allston, Blythe, and Pringle families of Georgetown County, South Carolina. The bulk of the material relates to the Allston family and, in particular, to Robert F. W. Allston, planter and governor of South Carolina from 1856-1858. Among the subjects discussed are plantations, slaves, rice planting, politics, and the Civil War.

The independently catalogued “Slavery Pamphlets” include over 750 books and tracts from several different regions and time periods. The bulk of the collection consists of American and British pamphlets and includes Elizabeth Heyrick’s famous work, Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition(1824), which marked a revolutionary turn in transatlantic antislavery politics.

The Society originated in a bequest by Robert Boyle in 1691 for advancing religion amongst infidels. In 1794, the charity was reconstituted as “The Society for the Conversion and Religious Instruction and Education of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands,” and in 1836, after the abolition of slavery, as “The Society for Advancing the Christian Faith in the British West-India Islands, and elsewhere, in the Dioceses of Jamaica, and of the Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, and in the Mauritius.” The papers document the Society’s activities from the 17th through the 20th centuries.

The papers contain four letter books and other official papers sent, received, and kept by George F. Usher, Haitian consul in New York under President Fabre Nicolas Geffrard; the correspondence primarily details Usher’s diplomatic and commercial work in New York City on behalf of the Republic of Haiti during the years 1859-1867, which included, in 1862, the United States’s official recognition of the Haitian government.

Correspondence, diaries, writings and other papers of John Pitkin Norton, professor of agricultural chemistry at Yale from 1846-1852. Norton’s diaries contain observations on slavery and abolition, the Amistad case, the Liberty Party, religion, and temperance, among other topics. Professor Norton was also closely associated with the early days of the Sheffield Scientific School and was a pioneer in the application of scientific principles and methods to agriculture.

The collection consists of letters sent to New England resident Adella Fowler Larkin by her family and friends during the second half of the nineteenth century. Prominent in the collection are letters from her sister Myra Fowler McFarland, a teacher with the American Missionary Association working in Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia before, during, and immediately after the Civil War.

This is a rare copy of a play about slavery, published in Mexico in 1825. Totaling 65 pages, the play is billed as a “melodrama in two acts.”

The records consist of correspondence, account books, minutes, attendance registers, and papers from the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, the Aborigines’ Protection Society, and the Mico Charity. There are 59 microfilm reels and a list available in Microform Reference. A smaller collection, Rhodes House Selected Anti-Slavery Papers, 1836-1868, is also available.

The papers of Lewis Tappan, merchant and abolitionist, consist of correspondence, letterbooks, journals, notebooks, clippings, photocopies, notes, and miscellanea. The journals and notebooks, which date from 1814-1869, document Tappan’s activities in the antislavery movement. The bulk of the correspondence consists of copies of Tappan’s outgoing letters. Originals are in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

The records include correspondence, notes, printed circulars, and memorabilia which document the organization and functioning of the Liverpool Emancipation Society. The society sought to educate the public and thereby garner support for the Union side during the American Civil War. The society also raised funds to aid distressed freedmen.

James Henry Hammond was a senator, governor, and plantation owner. His papers include correspondence, diaries, speeches, plantation manuals, account books, and scrapbooks pertaining chiefly to South Carolina and national politics in the three decades preceding the Civil War. There are 15 reels, accompanied by a printed guide.

The papers consist of selected manuscripts from the Public Archives Record Center, Canada. Included are P.A.R.C. File No. 297-1-21, “Enlistment of Colored Men in the Canadian Militia,” and the Rev. William King Papers, M.G. 28/127. The King papers include three files: his “Auto biography”, “Correspondence”, and the “Buxton Mission and Elgin Settlement.” Part of this collection is available online.

Ten letterbooks containing business correspondence to Oswald from his agents, factors, nephews and Edinburgh attorney, all written after his “retirement” to Scotland. The letters include extensive information on Oswald’s trading ventures, particularly his trade with the American colonies and his West African slave trade (based at Bunce Island), and his Scottish land investments.

Reproduces a collection of nearly 3,000 petitions assembled over a period of ten years by the Race and Slavery Petitions Project, University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Documents were drawn from state archives in Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The digital compliment to this project is now availableonline.

The papers consist of correspondence, newspaper clippings of a historical and religious nature, journals, and other papers of the Bacon family. Included are sermons and writings of Leonard Bacon, and papers and journals of Leonard Woolsey Bacon and Benjamin Wisner Bacon. Leonard Bacon was actively involved in colonization, missionary, and antislavery movements throughout his career. His brother, David Francis Bacon, served as a medical professional in Liberia.

A collection of correspondence; government documents, including reports, commissions, decrees, and awards; church documents; published illustrated materials; maps; and writings and poems from Mexico on civil, military, economic, religious, and social topics. Includes numerous documents about slavery. This collection is also available online.

The papers consist of correspondence, writings, and topical files, primarily documenting the professional career of historian C. Vann Woodward. A Yale professor for many years, Woodward was a leading scholar of the U.S. South.

Created by British painter Francis Smith, circa 1760. Oil on canvas.

Printed material and manuscript documents relating to slavery and the slave trade, particularly to the Portuguese slave trade in the nineteenth century and British attempts to suppress it by means of the Palmerston Act (1839). Manuscript material includes a brief note on the legitimacy of the slave trade (1823) in Portuguese; documents and tax agreements in French; and receipts, declarations and agreements concerning American slaves, 1842-1864, in English.

The Beinecke Library holds several important abolitionist newspapers from various time periods and geographic locations, including the Alton Observer, American Citizen, Charter Oak, Emancipator, Liberator, Philanthropist, National Anti-Slavery Standard, and True American. Other newspapers, including the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, American Missionary, Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines’ Friend, and British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, are available through Orbis.

Joseph Bartholomew Kidd, West Indian Scenery: Illustrations of Jamaica in a Series of Views Comprising the Principal Towns, Public Buildings, Estates and Most Picturesque Scenery of the Island (London & Kingston, 1840). An extremely rare collection of 50 colored plates, produced during the transition from apprenticeship to full emancipation.

Typewritten records prepared by the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938, of slave narratives from seventeen southern, border, and midwestern states. Arranged alphabetically by state. The bulk of these records are now available online.

The collection contains plantation records and a manuscript volume, “Obras completas de Juan Francisco Manzano esclavo de la Isla de Cuba.” The volume includes Manzano’s autobiography, letters, poetry and the drama, Zafira. Also included is a list of people who contributed money to purchase Manzano’s freedom.

The collection consists of photoduplicates of original Mary Chesnut manuscripts, from the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina and from private owners, collected by C. Vann Woodward for the preparation of his book, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War.