Primary Source Material for the Piedmont
You will discover a variety of primary source materials specifically curated for the Piedmont region of North Carolina. These resources may include historical documents, letters, photographs, political cartoons, and other items.
Primary Sources
Reynolds’s Political Map of the United States, Designed to Exhibit the Comparative Area of the Free and Slave States, and the Territory Open to Slavery or Freedom by the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, with a Comparison of the Principal Statistics of the Free and Slave States, from the Census of 1850. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003627003/
Map Showing the Distribution of the Slave Population of the Southern States of the United States, Compiled from the Census of 1860. (Washington, September 1861). Also see an enlargement from the map, as well as the NC portion of the map, printed separately. “Sold for the benefit of the Sick and Wounded Soldiers of the U.S. Army.” https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3861e.cw0013200/
Editorial from The Semi-Weekly Standard, Raleigh, NC, July 11, 1860. (For information on this newspaper and its leadership, see https://www.digitalnc.org/newspapers/semi-weekly-standard-raleigh-n-c/.)
“Mass Meeting in Hillsborough.” The Hillsborough Recorder, Jan 2, 1861. https://basic.newspapers.com/image/466147867
“Runaway Caught.” The Hillsborough Recorder, May 14, 1862. https://basic.newspapers.com/image/64874826
Letter from Zebulon B. Vance to Jefferson Davis, Dec 30, 1863. https://cwnc.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/items/show/2778
Excerpt from John B. Gordon, Reminiscences of the Civil War (New York: Scribner’s, 1904), pp. 13-15. [Gordon was a native of Georgia, and served as a General in the Confederate army. https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/gordon/gordon.html
Letter from John S. Mosby to Samuel Chapman, June 4, 1907. Mosby, a native Virginian, had fought for the Confederacy, though he was personally antislavery. He writes long after the war, aged 73. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/ready.03921%2021_FPS.pdf
Letters from Guilford County native and US Congressman John A. Gilmer to William Henry Seward, incoming US Secretary of State, March & April, 1861. Reprinted in the appendix of Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/The_life_of_William_H._Seward_%28IA_lifeofwilliamhse01banc%29.pdf
Other Resources and Links
North Carolina Piedmont Talk – Presentation by Dr. Barton Myers, Washington and Lee University
Reconstruction in the NC Piedmont – Presentation by Dr. Hilary Green, Davidson College
Reconstruction in the Piedmont Lecture – Presentation by Dr. Mark Elliot, UNC Greensboro