National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The Making of African American Identity: Vol I: 1500 1865: Emancipation
Primary source material on the how enslaved Africans envisioned and pursued freedom and how these ideas affected them after the Civil War.
University of Groningen
American History: Essays: Black Lost Cause. Colored Service in Confederate Army
This well-researched extensive essay by Peter Stam looks at the issue of the number of African Americans serving in the Confederate Army as soldiers. By examining information from many historians, some of whom turn out to be unreliable,...
National Institutes of Health
National Library of Medicine: African Americans in Civil War Medicine
Exhibition documenting the participation of African Americans as nurses, surgeons, and hospital workers during the Civil War.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: The Enslaved and the Civil War
National Humanities Center lesson plan on how enslaved African Americans in the South undermined the Southern cause during the Civil War. Lesson contents includes primary sources material, strategies for text analysis, vocabulary, and...
Virginia Historical Society
Virginia Historical Society: Home Front: How Did Slaves Support the Confederacy?
Read about the different roles that slaves and freed blacks took on in Virginia during the Civil War. They provided labor while the white men were away fighting and they helped with the military efforts. Many took the opportunity to...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Civil War I: Slaves, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
Photographs of slaves during the Civil War and war memories of former slaves during that conflict. Links to two separate resources can be found here, each focusing on the war memories of former slaves.
Library of Congress
Loc: Prints & Photograph: Photographs of African Americans During the Civil War
A Library of Congress collection of digitized photos of African Americans during the Civil War, including photos of soldiers and freedmen. From the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress
Loc: African American Odyssey: The Civil War
Prints, photographs and documents form the Library of Congress collections tell a story of African Americans and the Civil War including contrabands of war, emancipation, soldiers and missionaries, and fighting for freedom.
University of Groningen
American History: Essays: The Black Lost Cause: Examples of Colored Service
African American slaves are known to have fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, which many people may not realize. Why they would fight on the side of slavery, and the evidence that they did, are discussed in this section of...
University of Groningen
American History: Essays: The Black Lost Cause:critical Analysis of Examples
Discusses the research by historians to try to determine the extent to which African Americans fought for the Confederate cause. They examined letters, service records, anecdotes, photographs, pension records, etc. but were unable to say...
University of Groningen
American History: Essays: The Black Lost Cause: Elaboration
Explains how the idea of African Americans fighting in large numbers for the Confederate cause is a wrong one that has been propagated by untrained historians who used unreliable sources.
Alabama Humanities Foundation
Encyclopedia of Alabama: African American Union Troops
Following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, African Americans were granted the right to join the U.S. Army, but this article takes a closer look at how this new right worked.
Digital Public Library of America
Dpla: American Civil War: African American Lives
Collection of digital resources gathered from public libraries, archives, and museums about African American lives in the Civil War. Here you can discover the variety of African American experiences of the Civil War.
University of Groningen
American History: Essays: Black Lost Cause: Implications of Colored Service
Discusses the difficulties involved in developing a true picture of how many African Americans actively supported the Confederate cause.