Featured Primary Sources

Sortable List of All Featured Primary Sources

Gilder Lehrman’s Featured Primary Sources draw from the wealth of letters, diaries, maps, pamphlets, printed books, newspapers, and photographs in the Gilder Lehrman Collection, a unique archive of more than 60,000 American historical documents. Each Featured Primary Resource has an introduction, transcript, image, and questions for discussion. You can access them within each Sub-era in the History by Era section of the website, or see the entire list below, filtering the results by Era, Theme, or Creator.

Title Yearsort icon
Poem on a Civil War death: “Only a Private Killed,” 1861 1861
A proposed Thirteenth Amendment to prevent secession, 1861 1861
Patriotic Postal Covers: “Lincoln & Davis in 5 Rounds,” 1861 1861
Confederate reaction to “Beast” Butler’s orders, 1862 1862
On the emigrant trail, 1862 1862
Lincoln on the execution of a slave trader, 1862 1862
The price of war: A letter from Mary Kelly to Sarah Gordon, 1862 1862
A proclamation on the suspension of habeas corpus, 1862 1862
Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1863 1863
African American soldiers at the Battle of Fort Wagner, 1863 1863
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant on the Siege of Vicksburg, 1863 1863
Civil War condolence letter for General Paul Semmes, 1863 1863
The Civil War and early submarine warfare, 1863 1863
Death of a soldier, 1863: Paul Semmes 1863
“Men of Color, To Arms! To Arms,” 1863 1863
Civilian describes pillaging near Gettysburg, 1863 1863
The Gettysburg Address, 1863 1863
Union soldier turns medic at Gettysburg, 1863 1863
Slave Children of New Orleans, 1863 1863
The Western Sanitary Commission reports on suffering in the Mississippi Valley, 1863 1863
The Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863 1863
Sergeant Francis Fletcher of the 54th Massachusetts on equal pay for black soldiers, 1864 1864
The Fort Pillow Massacre, 1864 1864
The service of Medal of Honor recipient Dr. Mary Walker, 1864 1864
A political cartoon of Grant and Lee, 1864 1864