ALERT: Updates to the links are ongoing.
The Civil War Sesquicentennial has increased the pace of digitization of historical artifacts. Of course these projects will never be complete — there is always more to find when visiting a library, museum, or archive — and of course there is a difference between having a historical document, sculpture, or artifact in your hand, rather than viewing it online.
But the websites of the Missouri History Museum (including their Genealogy and Local History index) and the Missouri State Archives, among others, have provided spectacular new access to their collections.
The State Historical Society’s “Civil War in Missouri” site has collected many great resources, in written and visual material.
And the blog of the Missouri State Genealogical Association has great leads on city directories, house histories, cemetery indexes, and more. (Attached here is a list of those mentioned in the book buried in Bellfontaine Cemetery, thanks to Jerry Garrett.)
Below are links to documents essential to the writing of The Great Heart of the Republic, organized by the book chapter for which they are most relevant. I invite you to read the original sources, and to continue the crucial study of St. Louis within the West, the North, and the South during the Civil War Era. (These are only manuscript and visual sources; for those published as books, there is near-complete coverage in Google Books.)
Please contact me with any questions, and as you find other sources online.
Chapter 1 The Destruction of the Past
Henry Lewis, St. Louis Panorama
J.C. Wild, Panorama of St. Louis in 1841
J.C. Wild, image of the Chouteau Mansion, 1841
Chapter 2 Thomas Hart Benton’s Failed Compromise
St. Louis Mercantile Library — printed archival items including annual reports and more from steamboat and railroad collections
St. Louis petition on the Compromise of 1850 efforts
Chapter 3 Building the National Future in the West
Charter for Eliot Seminary, 1854
St. Louis University catalogs and student registers
William Greenleaf Eliot proposes Mary Institute to Hudson Bridge
William Greenleaf Eliot frees a slave from John Kasson
William Greenleaf Eliot’s journal for these years
Chapter 4 Antislavery Derailed
Effie Afton and the Rock Island Bridge
Chapter 5 The Limits of Dred Scott’s Emancipation
Negotiations over the sale of Chouteau Family slaves
William Greenleaf Eliot frees Sarah Green from Lynch’s slave pen
George Caleb Bingham, Jolly Flatboatmen at Port
Chapter 6 Germans and the Power of Wartime Union
Account of Camp Jackson, Badger Family Papers
John Fremont’s Proclamation of Martial Law and a lesson plan with more links
Comments from Fort Vancouver on Fremont, Badger Family Papers
Chapter 7 Building Union from Neutrality
William Greenleaf Eliot argues to endow Washington University amidst the war
George J. Engelmann, Confederate sympathizer
Collision between troops and citizens on Seventh Street
Edward Bates to Abraham Lincoln, efforts to hold the Southwest
James Broadhead’s account of St. Louis and the Civil War
Fremont order creating the Western Sanitary Commission
Calling for the Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair
Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair raffle prize quilt
Ladies Union Aid Society event in the Mercantile Library Hall
Chapter 8 Abraham Lincoln’s Lost Legacies
Ed Dwight, Soldiers’ Memorial at Lincoln University
Thomas Satterwhite Noble, The Slave Mart (“The Last Sale of Slaves”)
Charles Drake defends Radical Reconstruction
Chapter 9 The Capital Failures of Reconstruction
The Eliot Family attends the opening of Harrier Hosmer’s Thomas Hart Benton statue
William Greenleaf Eliot’s journal for these years
The Chicago Great Fire exhibition
Chapter 10 Separating the City, County, and Nation
Freedmen’s Memorial Inaugural Ceremonies
Archer Alexander’s pocket watch
Epilogue The Forgotten Civil War
