Manuscript Research

Civil War manuscript collections are excellent primary resources which frequently offer revealing and insightful eye-witness accounts including diaries, home-front letters, memoirs, and contemporary research files. One of the best collections can be found at the Library of Congress.

Library of Congress Manuscript Division
The Manuscript Division's holdings, more than fifty million items in eleven thousand separate collections, include some of the greatest manuscript treasures of American history.

Helpful links to the Library of Congress collections:
Search the Catalog
Online Finding Aids
Online Manuscript Collections
Civil War Guide

The Library of Congress manuscript collection may be consulted by any person engaged in serious research who presents proper identification bearing his or her photograph and current or permanent address, completes the Manuscript Division's registration process, and agrees to adhere to the division's rules for the use of rare materials. To locate manuscript collections not in the custody of the Library of Congress, consult the National Union Catalog of Manuscript collections.

National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections
The NUCMC program provides bibliographic access to the nation’s documentary heritage. NUCMC offers descriptions of archival and manuscript collections held by cooperating repositories through the United States and its territories through free access to the RLG and OCLC union catalogs.

Note: To do the most comprehensive search of all archival and manuscript repositories holdings, you will need to search in both RLG and OCLC. Some archival and manuscript repositories catalog their materials in RLG, while others are members of OCLC and catalog materials there.

For more information:
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections
Search the RLG Union Catalog
Search the OCLC Union Catalog

Manuscript Resource Links
The Civil War is a major collecting focus for many college and university libraries and many have large Civil War era manuscript collections. Large reference libraries and historical societies are another excellent source. This is not a complete list, but provides links to some of the larger Civil War manuscript collections.

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To learn more about the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress
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