
John C. Calhoun Pro-Slavery U.S. Senator
Jefferson Davis
Alexander H. Stephens
Mildred Rutherford Historian General of the United Daughters of the Confederacy
Strom Thurmond
R.L. Dabney
Confederate General Robert E. Lee
Newsletter Signup
Browse the Documents
The Gathering Storm (1787-1860)
The Gathering Storm
(1787 – 1860)
Secession (1859-1861)
(1859 – 1861)
Civil War (1861-1865)
Civil War
(1861 – 1865)
Reconstruction and Fusion (1866-1890)
The Civil Rights Era (1940-Present)
The Civil Rights Era
(1940 – Present)





PDF Print


The historical documents selected are not those of marginal individuals or groups in society. Instead they are documents produced by prominent individuals, leaders both political and otherwise, elected officials, governmental bodies, and major organizations, including neo-Confederate organizations and publications. They can be said to be representative of Confederate and neo-Confederate opinion or a major segment of it.


The selections prior to the Civil War are those which foreshadow the Civil War or involve prominent future leaders in the Confederacy.


The selections are not intended to comprehensively document the history of race or slavery in America, but limit themselves to the historical meaning of the Confederacy and the neo-Confederate movement afterwards.


Editorial Decisions

Some of the documents had typos and errors in spelling. Where it was fairly clear that it was a printing error or simple misspelling we corrected it, but didn’t not indicate it with “[sic]” to maintain easy readability. However, we didn’t change 18th, 19th and early 20th century spellings to have them conform to modern usage. For example, “defence” meaning “defense” was not changed. Unless we were fairly sure it was an error we assumed it was a variant spelling from the past and left it as it was. Primary historical documents can tell other stories besides the intended story of the text, and though it isn’t the purpose of this web site or the book, we decided that the story the documents had to tell on past spellings of words was worth preserving.


We did not capitalize the word “Negro” if it was not capitalized in the original. How this word was used in historical texts is a story in itself and we wished it to be communicated to the reader.


If we had to have clarifying text with the document, we enclosed it with square brackets [] and used the same font as for bibliographic note for the text.



Though we are starting primarily with text and images, we want to incorporate other media in this web site as a resource, if not as a primary historical object, then something that illuminates the meaning of the historical text and images.

