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The Southern Argument for Slavery [ushistory.org]

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The Civil War In Four Minutes - filmed at Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum

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Butler's slaves were sold in an auction similar to the one in this illustration

In spite of having inherited two plantations, Pierce M. Butler owed a great deal of money. Over two days, Butler auctioned off the human portion of his property to help pay off his debts. It was the largest sale of slaves on record in the United States, and it was referred to as "The Weeping Time." The Largest Slave Auction
March 3, 1859

The 436 men, women, children, and infants, all of whom had been born on his plantations, were brought to a racetrack in Savannah, Georgia, and put in the stalls used for horses. There they waited, some for days, others for weeks, for the auction to begin on March 3, 1859.

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Butler's slaves were sold in an auction similar to the one in this illustration In spite of having inherited two plantations, Pierce M. Butler owed a great deal of money. Over two days, Butler auctioned off the human portion of his property to help pay off his debts.

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40 Acres and a Mule Would Be at Least $6.4 Trillion Today-What the U.S. Really Owes Black America

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Slavery made America wealthy, and racist policies since have blocked African American wealth-building. Can we calculate the economic damage?

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Civil War Map | Scholastic News Online | Scholastic.com

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A map showing the division between North and South in the Civil War

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In September of 1861, the U.S. Coast Survey published a large map, approximately two feet by three feet, titled a "Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States." Based on the population statistics gathered in the 1860 Census, and certified by the superintendent of the Census Office, the map depicted the percentage of the population enslaved in each county. At a glance, the viewer could see the large-scale patterns of the economic system that kept nearly 4 million people in bondage: slavery was concentrated along the Chesapeake Bay and in eastern Virginia; along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts; in a crescent of lands in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi; and most of all, in the Mississippi River Valley. With each county labeled with the exact percentage of people enslaved, the map demanded some closer examination.

The Coast Survey map of slavery was one of many maps drawn from data produced in 19th-century America. As historian Susan Schulten has shown, this particular map was created by a federal government agency from statistics gathered by the Census. Abraham Lincoln consulted it throughout the Civil War. A banner on the map proclaims that it was "sold for the benefit of the Sick and Wounded Soldiers of the U.S. Army." The data map was an instrument of government, as well as a new technology for representing knowledge.

Though thematic mapping had its origins in the 19th century, the technique is useful for understanding history in our own day. One of the fundamental problems of history is scale: how can historians move between understanding the past in terms of a single life and in the lives of millions; within a city and at the bounds of continents; over a period of days and over the span of centuries? Maps can't tell us everything, but they can help, especially interactive web maps that can zoom in and out, represent more than one subject, and be set in motion to show change over time.

To help show the big patterns of American slavery, I have created an interactive map of the spread of slavery. Where the Coast Survey map showed one measure, the interactive map shows the population of slaves, of free African Americans, of all free people, and of the entire United States, as well as each of those measure in terms of population density and the percentage of the total population. The map extends from the first Census in 1790 to the Census taken in 1860 on the eve of the Civil War. You can explore the map for yourself, but below I have created animations to highlight some of the major patterns.

When looking at all of these maps together, it's noticable that even as the total number of enslaved peoples in the United States increased between 1790 and 1860, the multitudes were dispersed across the increasing expanse of the United States, rather than becoming more concentrated in areas where slavery was well established.

In counties along the Atlantic Coast in 1790 and 1800, the population of slaves at any one time was nearly at its peak. (This is all the more remarkable since many slaves fled to the British during the Revolutionary War.) Take for example, Charleston County, South Carolina. In 1790, almost 51,000 people were enslaved in that county. In 1840, the slave population reached its peak of nearly 59,000 people; by 1860, there were 37,000 enslaved people, just 63 percent as many slaves as two decades earlier.

The total number of slaves in the eastern seaboard states did, however, grow slowly over time, but not at anything like the rate of growth for free people in the North. The free white population in the North grew in already settled places and spread to the West.

The slave population had a different dynamic. It grew in intensity in places around the Chesapeake Bay, even as slavery was gradually abolished in the North. But for the most part the slave population spread westward to the lands opened for settlement by the Louisiana Purchase, the dispossession of the Indian nations of the Southeast, the war with Mexico, and the distribution of public lands. Slavery spread rather than grew because it was an agricultural rather than industrial form of capitalism, so it needed new lands.

And slavery spread because enslaved African Americans were forced to migrate. Historian Steven Deyle estimates "that between 1820 and 1860 at least 875,000 American slaves were forcibly removed from the Upper South to the Lower South." A minority of that migration happened because white planters migrated along with the people that they owned. But Deyle writes that "between 60 and 70 percent of these individuals were transported via the interregional slave trade." In other words, slavery was not the paternalist institution that its apologists made it out to be: it was an relentlessly exploitative system where the fundamental relation of owner to enslaved was defined by the markets. The unceasing spread of slavery provoked political crises, eventually leading to the Civil War. As Abraham Lincoln put it in is 1858 " House Divided"  speech:

"Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."

Below you can see two animations comparing the density of the slave population and the density of the total population (keep in mind that the scales are different).

This animation of the density of slave population from 1790 to 1860 shows how slavery expanded more than it grew.

An animation of density of the total population from 1790 to 1860. Notice that population in the north both grows in place and spreads westward.

A second observation to make from this map is how pervasive slavery was to the United States. In the first decades of the early republic, the northern states had a significant population of slaves, which only slowly diminished through gradual emancipation laws. In the South, the percentage of the population that was enslaved was extraordinarily high: over 70 percent in most counties along the Mississippi River and parts of the South Carolina and Georgia coast.

This animation shows the percentage of the population enslaved from 1790 to 1860.

A striking way to see the importance of slavery is to look at a map of the total free population: a photo negative, if you will, of slavery. When looking at the population density of all free persons (below in 1860), large swathes of the South appear virtually depopulated.

Finally, the dynamics of the free African American population looked more like the free white population than the slave population. The free African American population settled primarily along the Eastern seaboard and especially in the cities of the northern United States. Free African Americans were almost entirely excluded, in part by an extensive system of patrols, from the majority slave populations of the Deep South. This animation shows the free African American population from 1790 to 1860.

This interactive map and the Census data on which it is based can hardly show most of what should be known about slavery. For example, the Census did not count any slaves in Vermont, which abolished slavery in its 1777 constitution. But Harvey Amani Whitfield has shown that some Vermont African Americans were held in bondage. Nor can these maps express anything of the pain of the whip or the escape to freedom, of the exhaustion of labor or the sounds of preaching and shouting at a religious gathering: for that one must read any of scores of excellent histories. But they do give a large overview of the forced labor system which made the nation "half slave and half free."
Sources
Susan Schulten, Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), writes about maps of slavery in chapter 4; see also the book's companion website which offers images of maps of slavery. Steven Deyle has written a recent history of the domestic slave trade in Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); the figures cited above are from page 289. Of the many excellent histories of American slavery, see one of these: on the settlement of the Mississippi River valley, Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013); on the life of slaves, Erskine Clarke, Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); on the history of slavery generally, Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003).

The data in my maps is drawn from the 1790 to 1860 Censuses compiled by the Minnesota Population Center, [National Historical Geographic Information System], version 2.0 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2011).

U.S. Coast Survey, Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States (Washington, DC: Henry S. Graham, 1861). Image from the Library of Congress.

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These Maps Reveal How Slavery Expanded Across the United States

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As the hunger for more farmland stretched west, so too did the demand for enslaved labor

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Jump To: - Fort Sumter Attacked First Bull Run - Shiloh - Second Bull Run - Antietam - Fredericksburg - Chancellorsville - Gettysburg - Chickamauga - Chattanooga - Cold Harbor - March to the Sea - Lee Surrenders - Lincoln Shot

November 6, 1860 - Abraham Lincoln, who had declared "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free..." is elected president, the first Republican, receiving 180 of 303 possible electoral votes and 40 percent of the popular vote.

December 20, 1860 - South Carolina secedes from the Union. Followed within two months by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.

Auction and Negro sales, Atlanta, Georgia.

1861

February 9, 1861 - The Confederate States of America is formed with Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate and former U.S. Army officer, as president.

March 4, 1861 - Abraham Lincoln is sworn in as 16 th President of the United States of America.

Fort Sumter Attacked

Fort Sumter after its capture, showing damage from the Rebel bombardment of over 3000 shells and now flying the Rebel "Stars and Bars" - April 14, 1861.

April 15, 1861 - President Lincoln issues a Proclamation calling for 75,000 militiamen, and summoning a special session of Congress for July 4.

Robert E. Lee, son of a Revolutionary War hero, and a 25 year distinguished veteran of the United States Army and former Superintendent of West Point, is offered command of the Union Army. Lee declines.

April 17, 1861 - Virginia secedes from the Union, followed within five weeks by Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, thus forming an eleven state Confederacy with a population of 9 million, including nearly 4 million slaves. The Union will soon have 21 states and a population of over 20 million.

Map of Allegiances of the States - 1861.

April 19, 1861 - President Lincoln issues a Proclamation of Blockade against Southern ports. For the duration of the war the blockade limits the ability of the rural South to stay well supplied in its war against the industrialized North.

July 4, 1861 - Lincoln, in a speech to Congress, states the war is..."a People's contest...a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men..." The Congress authorizes a call for 500,000 men.

First Bull Run

July 21, 1861 - The Union Army under Gen.Irvin McDowell suffers a defeat atBull Run 25 miles southwest of Washington. Confederate Gen.Thomas J. Jackson earns the nickname "Stonewall," as his brigade resists Union attacks. Union troops fall back to Washington. President Lincoln realizes the war will be long. "It's damned bad," he comments.

Ruins of the Stone Bridge over which Northern forces retreated until it was blown up by a Rebel shell adding to the panic of the retreat, with the Federals returning to Washington as "a rain-soaked mob."

July 27, 1861 - President Lincoln appoints George B. McClellan as Commander of the Department of the Potomac, replacing McDowell.

McClellan tells his wife, "I find myself in a new and strange position here: President, cabinet, Gen. Scott, and all deferring to me. By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power of the land."

September 11, 1861 - President Lincoln revokes Gen. John C. Frémont's unauthorized military proclamation of emancipation in Missouri. Later, the president relieves Gen. Frémont of his command and replaces him with Gen. David Hunter.

November 8, 1861 - The beginning of an international diplomatic crisis for President Lincoln as two Confederate officials sailing toward England are seized by the U.S. Navy. England, the leading world power, demands their release, threatening war. Lincoln eventually gives in and orders their release in December. "One war at a time," Lincoln remarks.

1862

January 31, 1862 - President Lincoln issues General War Order No. 1 calling for all United States naval and land forces to begin a general advance by February 22, George Washington's birthday.

February 6, 1862 - Victory for Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Tennessee, capturing Fort Henry, and ten days later Fort Donelson. Grant earns the nickname "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.

February 20, 1862 - President Lincoln is struck with grief as his beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, dies from fever, probably caused by polluted drinking water in the White House.

The Monitor at dock, showing damage from the battle.

In March - The Peninsular Campaign begins as McClellan's Army of the Potomac advances from Washington down the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay to the peninsular south of the Confederate Capital of Richmond, Virginia then begins an advance toward Richmond.

President Lincoln temporarily relieves McClellan as general-in-chief and takes direct command of the Union Armies.

April 6/7, 1862 - Confederate surprise attack on Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's unprepared troops at Shiloh on the Tennessee River results in a bitter struggle with 13,000 Union killed and wounded and 10,000 Confederates, more men than in all previous American wars combined. The president is then pressured to relieve Grant but resists. "I can't spare this man; he fights," Lincoln says.

June 1, 1862 - Gen. Robert E. Lee assumes command, replacing the wounded Johnston. Lee then renames his force the Army of Northern Virginia. McClellan is not impressed, saying Lee is "likely to be timid and irresolute in action."

June 25-July 1 - The Seven Days Battles as Lee attacks McClellan near Richmond, resulting in very heavy losses for both armies. McClellan then begins a withdrawal back toward Washington.

Young Georgia Private Edwin Jennison, killed in the Seven Days Battles at Malvern Hill - the face of a lost generation.

Second Battle of Bull Run

August 29/30, 1862 - 75,000 Federals under Gen.John Pope are defeated by 55,000 Confederates under Gen. Stonewall Jackson and Gen.James Longstreet at the second battle of Bull Run in northern Virginia. Once again the Union Army retreats to Washington. The president then relieves Pope.

The Union Army, 90,000 strong, under the command of McClellan, pursues Lee.

Confederate dead by the fence bordering Farmer Miller's 40 acre Cornfield at Antietam where the intense rifle and artillery fire cut every corn stalk to the ground "as closely as could have been done with a knife."

September 22, 1862 - Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves issued by President Lincoln.

President Lincoln visits Gen. George McClellan at Antietam, Maryland - October, 1862

"It is well that war is so terrible - we should grow too fond of it," states Lee during the fighting.

1863

January 1, 1863 - President Lincoln issues the final Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves in territories held by Confederates and emphasizes the enlisting of black soldiers in the Union Army. The war to preserve the Union now becomes a revolutionary struggle for the abolition of slavery.

January 29, 1863 - Gen. Grant is placed in command of the Army of the West, with orders to capture Vicksburg.

March 3, 1863 - The U.S. Congress enacts a draft, affecting male citizens aged 20 to 45, but also exempts those who pay $300 or provide a substitute. "The blood of a poor man is as precious as that of the wealthy," poor Northerners complain.

May 1-4, 1863 - The Union Army under Gen. Hooker is decisively defeated by Lee's much smaller forces at the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia as a result of Lee's brilliant and daring tactics. Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson is mortally wounded by his own soldiers. Hooker retreats. Union losses are 17,000 killed, wounded and missing out of 130,000. The Confederates, 13, 000 out of 60,000.

"I just lost confidence in Joe Hooker," said Hooker later about his own lack of nerve during the battle.

Confederate soldiers at the Sunken Road, killed during the fighting around Chancellorsville.

May 10, 1863 - The South suffers a huge blow as Stonewall Jackson dies from his wounds, his last words, "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees."

"I have lost my right arm," Lee laments.

June 3, 1863 - Gen. Lee with 75,000 Confederates launches his second invasion of the North, heading into Pennsylvania in a campaign that will soon lead to Gettysburg.

July 1-3, 1863 - The tide of war turns against the South as the Confederates are defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania.

Read about the Battle of Gettysburg -Battlefield Photos

Union soldiers on the Battlefield at Gettysburg.

July 13-16, 1863 - Anti-draft riots in New York City include arson and the murder of blacks by poor immigrant whites. At least 120 persons, including children, are killed and $2 million in damage caused, until Union soldiers returning from Gettysburg restore order.

July 18, 1863 -'Negro troops' of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment under Col. Robert G. Shaw assault fortified Rebels at Fort Wagner, South Carolina. Col. Shaw and half of the 600 men in the regiment are killed.

August 21, 1863 - At Lawrence, Kansas, pro-Confederate William C. Quantrill and 450 pro-slavery followers raid the town and butcher 182 boys and men.

October 16, 1863 - The president appoints Gen. Grant to command all operations in the western theater.

November 19, 1863 - President Lincoln delivers a two minute Gettysburg Address at a ceremony dedicating the Battlefield as a National Cemetery.

Page one of Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's handwriting
Page two of Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's handwriting

Lincoln among the crowd at Gettysburg - Nov 19, 1863

November 23-25, 1863 - The Rebel siege of Chattanooga ends as Union forces under Grant defeat the siege army of Gen. Braxton Bragg. During the battle, one of the most dramatic moments of the war occurs. Yelling "Chickamauga! Chickamauga!" Union troops avenge their previous defeat at Chickamauga by storming up the face of Missionary Ridge without orders and sweep the Rebels from what had been though to be an impregnable position. "My God, come and see 'em run!" a Union soldier cries.

1864

May 4, 1864 - The beginning of a massive, coordinated campaign involving all the Union Armies. In Virginia, Grant with an Army of 120,000 begins advancing toward Richmond to engage Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, now numbering 64,000, beginning a war of attrition that will include major battles at the Wilderness (May 5-6), Spotsylvania (May 8-12), and Cold Harbor (June 1-3).

In the west, Sherman, with 100,000 men begins an advance toward Atlanta to engage Joseph E. Johnston's 60,000 strong Army of Tennessee.

A council of war with Gen. Grant leaning over the shoulder of Gen. Meade looking at a map, planning the Cold Harbor assault.

Many of the Union soldiers in the failed assault had predicted the outcome, including a dead soldier from Massachusetts whose last entry in his diary was, "June 3, 1864, Cold Harbor, Virginia. I was killed."

June 15, 1864 - Union forces miss an opportunity to capture Petersburg and cut off the Confederate rail lines. As a result, a nine month siege of Petersburg begins with Grant's forces surrounding Lee.

The 13-inch Union mortar "Dictator" mounted on a railroad flatcar at Petersburg. Its 200-pound shells had a range of over 2 miles.

August 29, 1864 - Democrats nominate George B. McClellan for president to run against Republican incumbent Abraham Lincoln.

November 8, 1864 - Abraham Lincoln is re-elected president, defeating Democrat George B. McClellan. Lincoln carries all but three states with 55 percent of the popular vote and 212 of 233 electoral votes. "I earnestly believe that the consequences of this day's work will be to the lasting advantage, if not the very salvation, of the country," Lincoln tells supporters.

December 21, 1864 - Sherman reaches Savannah in Georgia leaving behind a 300 mile long path of destruction 60 miles wide all the way from Atlanta. Sherman then telegraphs Lincoln, offering him Savannah as a Christmas present.

1865

January 31, 1865 - The U.S. Congress approves the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, to abolish slavery. The amendment is then submitted to the states for ratification.

February 3, 1865 - Apeace conference occurs as President Lincoln meetswith Confederate Vice PresidentAlexander Stephens at Hampton Roads in Virginia, but the meeting ends in failure - the war will continue.

Only Lee's Army at Petersburg and Johnston's forces in North Carolina remain to fight for the South against Northern forces now numbering 280,000 men.

March 4, 1865 - Inauguration ceremonies for President Lincoln in Washington. "With malice toward none; with charity for all...let us strive on to finish the work we are in...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations," Lincoln says.

March 25, 1865 - The last offensive for Lee's Army of Northern Virginia begins with an attack on the center of Grant's forces at Petersburg. Four hours later the attack is broken.

At Petersburg, Virginia, well supplied Union soldiers shown before Grant's spring offensive.

A Confederate boy, age 14, lies dead in the trenches of Fort Mahone at Petersburg.

Lee Surrenders

"After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources," Lee tells his troops.

General Lee surrendered in the parlor of this house.

Lee posed for this photo by Mathew Brady shortly after the surrender.

April 10, 1865 - Celebrations break out in Washington.

Final portrait of a war weary president - April 10, 1865

April 14, 1865 - The Stars and Stripes is ceremoniously raised over Fort Sumter. That night, Lincoln and his wife Mary see the play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater. At 10:13 p.m., during the third act of the play, John Wilkes Booth shoots the president in the head. Doctors attend to the president in the theater then move him to a house across the street. He never regains consciousness.

April 18, 1865 - Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrenders to Sherman near Durham in North Carolina.

Funeral Procession on Pennsylvania Ave. - April 19, 1865

April 26, 1865 - John Wilkes Booth is shot and killed in a tobacco barn in Virginia.

May 4, 1865 - Abraham Lincoln is laid to rest in Oak Ridge Cemetery, outside Springfield, Illinois.

In May - Remaining Confederate forces surrender. The Nation is reunited as the Civil War ends. Over 620,000 Americans died in the war, with disease killing twice as many as those lost in battle. 50,000 survivors return home as amputees.

A victory parade is held in Washington along Pennsylvania Ave. to help boost the Nation's morale - May 23/24, 1865.

December 6, 1865 - The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, is finally ratified. Slavery is abolished.

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See also: The History Place - Abraham Lincoln Timeline

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The History Place - U.S. Civil War 1861-1865

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At The History Place, an easy to use Timeline with many photos and interesting quotes.

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Infographic

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An infographic displaying information on the human costs associated with the biggest battles of the American Civil War.

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Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America March 4, 1861 to April 15, 1865. (Library of Congress)

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America February 22, 1861 to May 10, 1865. (Library of Congress)

Robert E. Lee, March 1864. (Library of Congress)

George B. McClellan, 1861. (Library of Congress)

Ulysses S. Grant, between 1860-1870. (Library of Congress)

Tent life of the 31st Pennsylvania Infantry (later, 82d Pennsylvania Infantry) at Queen's farm, in the vicinity of Fort Slocum, 1861. (Library of Congress)

Union general Benjamin F. Butler's signal tower on the Bermuda Hundred peninsula outside of Richmond, Virginia. (Library of Congress)

Confederate military prison at Andersonville, Georgia, August 17, 1864. (Library of Congress)

Civil War Pictures In Articles From History Net Magazines

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Pictures, photos, and images from The American Civil War Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America March 4, 1861 to April 15, 1865. (Library of Congress) Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America February 22, 1861 to May 10, 1865. (Library of Congress) Robert E.

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Interactive!

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Key Events of the Civil War by Peggy Sung

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TOUCH this image to discover its story. Image tagging powered by ThingLink

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Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). At the conclusion of the Slave Narrative project, a set of edited transcripts was 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. In 2000-2001, with major support from the Citigroup Foundation, the Library digitized the narratives from the microfilm edition and scanned from the originals 500 photographs, including more than 200 that had never been microfilmed or made publicly available. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs divisions of the Library of Congress.

The Volumes

The published volumes containing edited slave narratives are arranged alphabetically by the state in which the interviews took place and thereunder by the surname of the informant. Administrative files for the project are bound at the beginning of Volume 1. These files detail the instructions and other information supplied to field workers as well as subjects of concern to state directors of the Federal Writers' Project.

Vol. 1

Vol. 2, Arkansas

Vol. 4, Georgia

Vol. 11, North Carolina

Vol. 14, South Carolina

Vol. 16, Texas

Historical Overview

In the Depression years between 1936 and 1938, the WPA Federal Writers' Project (FWP) sent out-of-work writers in seventeen states to interview ordinary people in order to write down their life stories. Initially, only four states involved in the project (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia) focused on collecting the stories of people who had once been held in slavery. John A. Lomax, the National Advisor on Folklore and Folkways for the FWP (and the curator of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress), was extremely interested in the ex-slave material he received from these states. In 1937 he directed the remaining states involved in the project to carry out interviews with former slaves as well. Federal field workers were given instructions on what kinds of questions to ask their informants and how to capture their dialects, the result of which may sometimes be offensive to today's readers (see A Note on the Language of the Narratives). The field workers often visited the people they interviewed twice in order to gather as many recollections as possible. Sometimes they took photographs of informants and their houses. The interviewers then turned the narratives over to their state's FWP director for editing and eventual transfer to Washington, D.C. The administrative files accompanying the narratives detail the information supplied to field workers as well as subjects of concern to state directors of the FWP. For more information about the interviewers, the people interviewed, and the processes of collection and compilation, see Norman Yetman's essay which accompanies this online collection.

In 1939, the FWP lost its funding, and the states were ordered to send whatever manuscripts they had collected to Washington. Once most of the materials had arrived at the Library of Congress, Benjamin A. Botkin, the folklore editor of the FWP who later became head of the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress, undertook the remaining editing and indexing of the narratives and selected the photographs for inclusion. As noted above, he organized the narratives by state, and then alphabetically by name of informant within each state, collecting them in 1941 into seventeen bound volumes in thirty-three parts under the title Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves (Washington, D.C., 1941). The multivolume set and other project files, including some earlier unbound annotated versions of the narratives, are housed in the Manuscript Division and described in the finding aid for the records of the WPA.

Other records relating to the ex-slave project are among the FWP files at the National Archives and Records Administration (Record Group 69.5.5) and are described in the Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States, Vol. I. (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1995). Volumes 2-17 of The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, edited by George P. Rawick and others (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972-79), present these narratives with a slightly different organization; the later volumes of Rawick's series also include ex-slave interviews housed in other archives. Anthologies containing selections from the Library of Congress collection include the Federal Writers' Project's Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery, edited by B. A. Botkin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945) and Voices from Slavery (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), edited by Norman R. Yetman, author of An Introduction to the WPA Slave Narratives under the Articles and Essays tab. For additional works using these narratives as well as other slave narratives, please see the list of Related Resources.

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About this Collection | Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA).

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Soldiers' Diaries and Letters - Essential Civil War Curriculum

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Author: Ian Delahanty. Title: Soldiers' Diaries and Letters. Civil War soldiers' diaries and letters | Sullivan Ballou | Library of Congress | Huntington Library | United States Army Military History Institute | John L.