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HIST 304: Civil War and the Making of America

Finding Journal Articles

Periodicals published at the time are another type of primary source. To locate 19th century periodical literature, consult the following indexes:

JSTOR
A full-text archive of core scholarly journal literature in the social sciences and humanities dating back tothe 1850s.

19th Century Masterfile
Resource for studies of Anglo-American literature published before 1930, including periodicals, newspapers, books, patents, image archives, government documents and more

Periodicals Archive Online
Facsimile page images and searchable full-text for apporoximately 500 international and scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences from 1802-1995.

Some popular magazine titles from the time period:

The Atlantic Monthly, 1857 - 1901
Debow's Review, 1846-62, 1866-69
Harpers, 1850-1988 in print and online from 1900-
Harper's Weekly, 1857-1876, 1886
The Ladies' Repository, 1841-76
The New Englander, 1843-92
The Old Guard, 1863-67
The Princeton Review, 1830-82
The Southern Literary Messenger, 1834-64

Plus more journal titles at Making of America from the digital archives of Cornell University.

Finding Newspaper Articles

Newspapers are a good source of primary information. Stauffer library has a few American newspapers from the 19th centuryon microfilm (located on the lower level).

To find out what newspapers he library has, search Omni by newspaper title or search by subject heading , for example:

  ♦ boston mass newspapers
  ♦ new york n.y. newspapers

The Library has access to the following digital newspapers through Proquest Historical Newspapers.

Atlanta Constitution, 1868-1945
Boston Globe, 1872-1927
Chicago Defender, 1910-1975
Chicago Tribune, 1849-1987
Christian Science Monitor
The Globe and Mail, 1844-
Hartford Courant 1764-1985
Los Angeles Times, 1881-1987
New York Times, 1851-2007
Toronto Star, 1894-
Wall Street Journal, 1889-1993
Washington Post, 1877-1994

Featured Resource

 Accessible Archives

This database provides full text access to a diverse range of primary source materials from 18th & 19th century America.

The collection includes:letters, advertisements, editorials, sketches, county records, complete runs of important periodicals and more. Titles of interest include: The Pennsylvania Gazette, the Virginia Gazette, The South Carolina Gazette, Godey's Lady Book, and The North Star

Subject Guide

See also American History Primary Sources guide.

"Ruins in Richmond" Damage to Richmond, Virginia from the American Civil War. Photography by Andrew Russell, April 1865 (Wikicommons). 

More Newspapers

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Search historic newspapers from 1789 to 1949.