February 2017
Civil War News
8
The Source By Michael K. Shaffer
Online Civil War Newspapers During the American Civil War, citizens North and South, along with the soldiers and officers in the field, kept up with constantly changing events through the pages of newspapers. In rural areas, for those fortunate to have a newspaper, most often the broadsheets appeared weekly. In the larger cities located primarily in the east, daily editions carried reports from distant battlefronts. As the war progressed, and Federal armies penetrated more deeply into the Southland, many editors, short on newsprint, turned to wallpaper and other substitute materials for printing. Whatever the stock, the newspapers provided a connection for loved ones at home, a way to monitor troop movements and, unfortunately for many, learn of the loss of a father, husband, brother, or another kinfolk. Today, with the rapid digitization of period newspapers, researchers can access many of them, online, via various repositories across the country. In this month’s article, we will examine a few of the more prominent collections, and at the end of the column, readers will find links to many of the websites housing assorted collections. Users can access many of the sites for free, while others require a subscription. If a site requires a subscription, a notation will appear next to the source information. As holds true with any online searches, researchers may need to experiment with spelling to find the best results, as editors occasionally misspelled an individual’s name or place name. In modern times, we see
clarifications or corrections when these mistakes occur (one appears at the end of this article in fact), but in the nineteenth century, editors seldom clarified errors. Chronicling America, a section of the Library of Congress website, offers over 2,100 digitized newspapers, and more than 200,000 pages printed during the war. The advanced search feature allows researchers to query by state, or newspaper, and select date ranges for the search. One can also include keywords or search phrases, and sort results according to the relevance (default), state, newspaper title, or date, and view images as they appeared in print, or convert them to text, a PDF, or a JP2 file —all downloadable. Bookmark this site, and use as a starting point in researching Civil War era newspapers. The University of Richmond offers access to the Richmond Daily Dispatch editions from 1860-1865. Keyword or phrase searches return all pages containing a hit, and one may sort the results by date (in ascending or descending order), or per the number of times a keyword appears. These resultant search pages appear as text; the ‘Browse’ feature of this site enables users to look through the various images of the newspapers. Many states have digitized their historic newspapers and placed them online for easier access to researchers. Georgia, for example, through the state’s university system, provides several collections from across the Peach State. As with most websites, one may use search terms and sort the results.
Visualizing the key players of the war, and viewing maps of battlefields, allowed those on the home front to maintain a closer connection with transpiring events. Illustrated newspapers, Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News among the most popular, offered images of many occurrences during the war. Although the technology needed to reproduce photographs in newspapers did not yet exist, woodcuts—as copied from photographs or sketches made by the various artists in the employ of many newspapers—brought the war to life. Thanks to the University of Pennsylvania, researchers can access the wartime issues of Harper’s Weekly. One can search for terms, or browse through pages of each edition, and users can download search results in various forms, including e-book formats. In last month’s column, a reference to a meeting of the Southern Historical Society should have correctly listed the location as White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Thanks to the readers for calling attention to this mistake! Next month, we will continue to explore other Civil War source material. Please keep suggestions for future ‘The Source’ columns coming, send them to the e-mail address shown below, and continued good luck in researching the Civil War! Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, and instructor, who remains a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@gmail.com, or to request speaking engagements via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net. Follow Michael on Facebook www.facebook. com/michael.k.shaffer and Twitter @ michaelkshaffer.
Following, a listing of the sites detailed in this article, plus several other valuable sources for Civil War era newspapers. Library of Congress Chronicling America (free): http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ Richmond Daily Dispatch (free): http://dlxs.richmond.edu/d/ddr/ Digital Library of Georgia (free): http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/MediaTypes/Newspapers.html?Welcome&Welcome&Welcome Harper’s Weekly (free): http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=harpersweekly Harper’s Weekly (free): http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/the-civil-war.htm Virginia Tech, American Civil War Newspapers (free): https://dcr.emd.vt.edu/vital/access/manager/Index Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News (free): https://archive.org/details/franklesliesilluv1112lesl The Countryman (free): http://djvued.libs.uga.edu/AP2xC84/tcmenu.html Accessible Archives (through a university or library): http://www.accessible-archives.com/collections/the-civil-war/anewspaper-perspective/ • Newspapers.com (subscription): https://www.newspapers.com/ • GenealogyBank (subscription): http://www.genealogybank.com/explore/newspapers/all Visiting theses websites above will yield a tremendous amount of information, which will assist in your research, but to locate many smaller newspapers, a trip to a local historical society or library, and time spent with microfilm, might prove necessary in your quest. Most libraries and historical organizations list their holdings on their respective websites, so you can verify they have the newspaper(s) you seek before visiting. If unsure after checking their website, a call to them might save you a wasted trip! • • • • • • • • •
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Harper’s Weekly cover.
Washington Evening Star, July 3, 1863.
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Southern Confederacy front page, June 10, 1864.