Skip to Main Content

HIUS 4501-5 Americans in the Civil War Era

Searching Virgo

Searching Virgo

                                                              

                                                               University Library homepage

                                               Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library


                     Search Special Collections.   "Advanced Catalog Search":  Library = Special Collections
                                                                                                         Format = Manuscript
                                                                                                         Keyword = diary AND confederate


                                              Search:   Catalog + Articles =  "Civil War" "West Virginia"

                                     Note limiters on the results screen that will help you filter your results.

Finding Scholarly Articles

 A list of all our major online databases is found in Virgo.  Remember, to access our databases from off-Grounds you need a proxy server account, or a UVA Anywhere or Anywhere-Lite account.

 

America History and Life Covers the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to present with records from 2,000 English-language journals published worldwide. Includes book reviews.

                                                       Search:     Irish  AND  "Civil War"

                                                       Search:     slavery AND courts
                                                                      
Historical Period = 1855 to 1870


JSTOR  Full-text backfiles of many important scholarly journals. Coverage is usually from the first issue to 3-5 years before the present.
                                            Advanced Search:  
"Civil War"  AND  colleges
                                                                         
Item Type = Article      Discipline = History

U.S. History in Context  An excellent starting point to get an overview of a topic.  Consists of historical encyclopedia articles, journal articles, and some primary source materials.

                                                           Search:  Dred Scott v. Sandford

Historical Newspapers & Magazines

A list of all our major online databases is found in Virgo.  Remember, to access our databases from off-Grounds you need a proxy server account, or a UVA Anywhere or Anywhere-Lite account.


Accessible Archives  Text from the Pennsylvania Gazette (1728-1800), seven African American newspapers from 1827-1860, and three Civil War newspapers (see Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective, below).


American Periodicals Series  Full text of over 1,000 magazines and journals published in the U.S. between 1740 and 1900.

                                   Advanced Search:  Lincoln AND Grant        Date Range = 1880-1900

America's Historical Newspapers, 1690-1922  Searchable full text collection of U.S. newspapers.  Can limit by location.

                                   Search:    Lincoln and election       Date Range = 11/01/1860 - 12/31/1860
                                                               Places of Publication = Virginia,  New York
                                           

The Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective - 1860-1865   Searchable text and page images from The New York Herald, the Richmond Enquirer, and The Charleston Mercury, published between November 1, 1860 and April 30, 1865, including many battlefield maps and other illustrations.

                                    Search:   "Bull Run"       Source = Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective


HarpWeek Full Text Database, 1857-1912 Searchable online text and images from Harper's Weekly.  Searches can be limited to editorials, cartoons, illustrations, etc.

                                    Standard Search:     Search String - women and (nurses or hospitals)
                                                                 
Date Range = 01/01/1860 to 12/31/1865

             

Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers  Searchable full text and page images of several hundred U.S. newspapers from the 19th century. You can limit your search to particular states or cities.

                                              Keyword Search:  Gettysburg    Limit by date = 1863
              
Place of Publication = Massachusetts,  Georgia   [press Ctrl + click to highlight each state you wish to select]

                                

 ProQuest Historical Newspapers  Searchable backfiles of the New York Times (1851-2006), Wall Street Journal (1889-1991), Chicago Tribune (1849-1986), Los Angeles Times (1881-1986)and Washington Post (1877-1992).

                        Search 'NY Times'     Advanced Search:  war AND (Jews or Jewish)      Date Range = 1860 - 1865

Additional Online Resources

A list of all our major online databases is found in Virgo.  Remember, to access our databases from off-Grounds you need a proxy server account, or a UVA Anywhere or Anywhere-Lite account.


American Civil War
  A collection of letters and diaries from UVA's Special Collections Library that pertain to the Civil War.

American Civil War Letters and Diaries Letters, diaries and memoirs from the American Civil War, many still in manuscript form. Also includes selected biographies, a bibliography and a chronology of the War.

                           Advanced Search:   Search texts = Lincoln|president assassination
                                     
                    B. Proximity Searching = in the same sentence
                                                         
Year written = 1865


Documenting the American South Primary sources that document the cultural history of the American South from the Southern point of view. Includes diaries, autobiographies, travel accounts, titles about slavery, and regional literature.  Emphasis is on the 19th century.  Browse the Subject Index to get an idea of contents.

                        

Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978  Over 240,000 Supreme Court documents, many of them briefs, from the final years of John Marshall through the early years of Warren Burger.  Can search by keyword or by names of specific cases.
                                                         Search:   slave and runaway


North American Women's Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950  
Searchable database of American and Canadian women's letters and diaries written from the Colonial period until the mid-20th century.

                                           Advanced Search:  starvation     Year written = 1864


UVA History File   A guide to newspaper clippings, pamphlets, etc. pertaining to UVA history collected and filed in Shannon Reference. Holdings are filed alphabetically by topic in folders.  Materials cover all time periods, but were published between 1940 and 1990.     


Valley of the Shadow Details life in Augusta County, Va. and Franklin County, Pa. during the Civil War and Reconstruction.  Contains letters, diaries, newspapers, speeches, census records, church records, etc.


                                                                     Slave Narratives

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains over 2300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 photographs of former slaves.  These narratives were collected in the 1930's as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). We also have the print volumes in Shannon Stacks E441 .A58, and in microfilm  Micfilm 145.

North American Slave Narratives collects books and articles that document American slavery.  It includes autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as books, broadsides or pamphlets, as well as many biographies of fugitive and former slaves, and fictionalized slave narratives published before 1920.

Note: A Virgo search on "slave narratives" will turn up print collections of narratives in our collections.

Print Sources

Microform Collections: The Library has a number of significant microform collections that may be relevant to this class, including American Women's Diaries: Southern States; New England States; Southern Women and Their Families in the 19th Century: Papers and Diaries; Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations; State Slavery Statutes; State Secession Debates, 1859-1862; and Pamphlets in American History: Civil War; etc.  See a general listing of American history collections in U.S. history and the list of collections in Civil War history.

Black Slavery in the Americas: An Interdisciplinary Bibliography, 1865-1980.   Compiled by John Smith
Shannon Stacks Z7164 .S6 S63 1982   A good sources for locating articles about the social and cultural aspects of slavery and slave communities.

Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History.  Edited by David and Jeanne Heidler.
Shannon Reference E468 .H47 2000    Good overview articles about Civil War monuments, the "Lost Cause", United Daughters of the Confederacy, etc.  Use the Index volume.

Encyclopedia of the Confederacy.  Edited by Richard Current.  Shannon Reference E487 .E55 1993   Use the Index volume. Under "Lost Cause" articles are listed about Lost Cause iconography, Protestantism and the Lost Cause, etc.

Harvard Guide to African-American History.  Edited by Evelyn B. Higgenbotham, Leon F. Litwack, Darlene Hine, and Randall Burkett.  Shannon Reference E185 .H326 2001  An extensive compilation of citations to the most important works published in African American history, covering political, social and cultural issues.  Arrangement is mostly chronological.  The table of contents is useful for finding material.  Covers such areas as resistance to slavery, law, crime and punishment, slave families, slave society, medicine and health, etc.

History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919.  Philip Alexander Bruce.  5 volumes  Shannon Reference and Shannon Stacks  LD5678 .B7 1920  Also available as an ebook via a Virgo title search. The classic work on the University's early history. The index is in volume 5.