Library Collections
Ways to find sources in the library

• Browse: Many (though not all) of the library’s books about abolitionism are shelved under the call numbers E449 and E450 on the fourth floor of Fondren. You can browse these books online by entering in those call numbers here, but I also strongly recommend going to the stacks and scanning the shelves for books that might catch your interest.
• Search: You can also browse and search books by subject in Fondren’s online catalog. Try searching for “antislavery” or “antislavery movements” in the “subject” box and see what you get. Then, if you find a book that looks promising, notice that on its individual page there is a list of the subject headings associated with that book. Click on one of these subject headings to browse related titles. If you have more specific information about what you are looking for, like the title of a newspaper or the name of a particular abolitionist, try doing searches in the “keyword” box.

Digital Periodical Collections

• America’s Historical Newspapers (RICE ONLY; contains some abolitionist newspapers, including the Emancipator and the full 34-year run of William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator)
• American Periodical Series Online (RICE ONLY; “contains digitized images of the pages of over 1,100 American magazines and journals that originated between 1740 and 1940,” including some abolitionist newspapers like The Liberator and The Liberty Bell; fully searchable by publication or by the full-text of articles)
• Freedom’s Journal (digitized images of all 103 issues of Freedom’s Journal, the first African American newspaper in the United States, published between 1827 and 1829 in New York City)
• African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century (RICE ONLY; includes Frederick Douglass’s The North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper)
• HarpWeek (includes images of Harper’s Magazine published between 1857 and 1877)

Digital Primary Source Collections
Specific to abolitionism and slavery

• Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection (huge, searchable collection of over 10,000 publications by and about abolitionists)
• Black Abolitionist Archive (images of speeches, editorials, and other writings produced by African American abolitionists)
• From Slavery to Freedom: African-American Pamphlet Collection at the Library of Congress
• Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860 at the Library of Congress
• Boston African Americana Project
• Perseus Collection of 19th Century Americana (includes some titles related to abolitionism)
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture Collection at the University of Virginia
• The Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection
• The Antislavery Literature Project
• Boston Public Library Anti-Slavery Collection at Internet Archive has about 3,000 digitized items from their huge antislavery collection, including many handwritten letters by Garrisonian abolitionists

Other Digital Collections
Not specific to abolitionism, but may have related material

• Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln has the full text of Lincoln’s published works, digitized for searching
• Making of America has scanned versions of 10,000 nineteenth-century books, including some by or about abolitionists (e.g., Wendell Phillips’s Speeches, Lectures and Letters)
• Project Gutenberg contains over 25,000 free e-books, including some by or about abolitionists (e.g., Lydia Maria Child’s The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act)
• Documenting the American South contains transcriptions of texts related to Southern history, including many fugitive slave narratives and some antislavery writings (e.g. George Bourne’s Condensed Anti-Slavery Bible Argument)
• Google Books is a constantly expanding, searchable database of full books, including nineteenth-century imprints that you can read from cover to cover (e.g., Parker Pillsbury’s Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles)
• Sabin Americana (RICE ONLY; contains works published between 1500 and 1900)

Scholarly Indexes and Journals
Bibliographic databases of secondary sources on American history

• America: History and Life (RICE ONLY)
• JSTOR (RICE ONLY)
• Project MUSE (RICE ONLY)
• Academic Search Complete (RICE ONLY)
• History Cooperative (RICE ONLY)

Secondary Overview Works
These books offer overviews of abolitionism

• James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976)
• Stanley Harrold, American Abolitionists (New York: Longman, 2001)
• Julie Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), not on reserve, but available in an e-book version through the Fondren catalog
• Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969)
• James McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964)

When looking for secondary sources, you can also consult the extensive bibliography of books and articles on abolitionism compiled by Jack McKivigan, Richard Newman, and Stanley Harrold.

Tertiary Reference Works

• American National Biography (RICE ONLY)