behind AotW

I’m having a magnificent time with stacks of books I’ve just found rendered online. They’re in a (new?) collection of 19th Century American works transcribed and posted as part of the Perseus project at Tufts, and from the University of Georgia library’s collection of Facsimile Books.

I came upon these while looking into a relatively obscure artillery unit, the 6-months 8th Massachusetts Battery and their commander Asa M. Cook.

The first information I’ve found on the battery is in a capsule history written, on behalf of the State, by T.H. Higginson, late of the 51st Massachusetts and Colonel, First South Carolina, USCT. His two volume Massachusetts in the Army and Navy during the war of 1861-1865 (1895-96) is transcribed and posted at Perseus.

The battery’s commander at Antietam was Captain Cook, whose image I found in the Photographic History of the Civil War (1911-12) by Francis T. Miller. This is in the Facimile collection as searchable (uncorrected OCR) text and as full page images. You may have this 10 volume set at your local library, we do, but it’s a delight to find it digital.

But wait, there’s more.

Let me tempt you with some highlights …

Perseus’ 19th-century American collection:

Memoirs, biographies

• Varina Davis Jefferson Davis
• Jefferson Davis Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government
• Jubal Early Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early , C. S. A.
• E P Alexander Military memoirs of a Confederate
• Louisa May Alcott Hospital Sketches: An Army Nurse’s True Account
• U S Grant Personal Memoirs
• W H Herndon Herndon’s Lincoln
• J Longstreet From Manassas to Appomattox
• G G Meade Life and Letters
• Nason, ed. McClellan’s Own Story
• Pinkerton The spy in the rebellion
• Mrs. J A Logan Reminiscences of a Soldier’s Wife
• Jones Rebel War Clerk’s Diary
• Jula Ward Howe Reminiscences: 1819-1899
• Hood Advance and Retreat
• Fremantle Three Months in the Southern States

Compilations, Histories

• J G B Adams Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment
• C A Evans, ed. Confederate Military History (all 12 vols)
• G B Davis, et al The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War
• Johnson & Buell Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (all 5 vols, index)
• D D Porter Naval History of the Civil War
• Moore Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events (day-by-day)
• Jones, ed. Southern Historical Society Papers (37 vols)
• Fox Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, 1861-1865

Other

• Halleck Elements of Military Art and Science
• de Jomini Summary of the Art of War

And among the Georgia Facimile Books &etc:

• Confederate States of America Army and Navy Uniforms (1861 – sample above)
• Historical Broadsides (1738-1989)
  
• Barnard Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign
• Southern Watchman (Athens, Ga.) Civil War era transcripts
• Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• McNeily Religion and Slavery

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Notes

The Facimile Books site is best used with a DjVu plug-in or reader. This is from Lizardtech, the folks that brought us the LoC‘s MrSID viewer. It’ll also run in a Java applet or as PDF (acrobat) documents.

Perhaps it needn’t be said, but some of these publications are history less than objective. In many cases, that’s the point, of course. Caveat Emptor.

I greatly admire the immense work and technology investment that’s gone into these online collections. We can only hope these and others like them keep going.