- Item Type > Diary/Letter (x)
- Historical Eras > Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877) (x)
- Theme > Slavery and Abolition (x)
We found 6 items that match your search
A Plantation Mistress Decries a "Monstrous System"
Mary Boykin Chestnut was the wife of a wealthy South Carolina planter who kept a diary during the Civil War. Published long after the war, the diary included many insightful and pointed criticisms of slavery, such as this passage, in which she calls [...]
Union Soldiers Condemn Slavery
Although the attitudes of many white Union soldiers toward slavery and emancipation ranged from indifference to outright racial hostility, others viewed the issue as central to their participation in the war. The following quotations, taken from [...]
Harriet Tubman Warns "Kill the Snake Before It Kills You" (with text supports)
Harriet Tubman was among the best known conductors of the Underground Railroad, a network of enslaved people, free blacks, and white sympathizers that assisted thousands of runaway slaves escape north. During the Civil War, Tubman offered her [...]
A Runaway Slave Predicts "Freedom Will Reign" (with text supports)
During the Civil War, John Boston took advantage of the nearby presence of Union troops to runaway. But in this case, Boston had run into a Union camp in Maryland, a slave state fighting on the side of the Union. This meant that the regiment from [...]
Piedmont Farmer: The Journals of David Golightly Harris
Before the Civil War, David Golightly Harris (1824-1875) had been a small slaveholder in Spartanburg District, South Carolina. According to the 1860 census, he owned ten slaves and 550 acres of land, 100 of which he had under cultivation. Though not [...]
A Committee of Freedmen on Edisto Island Reveal Their Expectations
This letter was written by a group of freedmen to the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Land (known as the Freedmen’s Bureau). The freedmen were from Edisto Island, South Carolina, an area that came under Union [...]