NEW! Slavery and Anti-Slavery Database

Southwestern College Library now provides access to Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive, a digital primary source collection that includes digitized books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, manuscripts, private papers, and letters touching on all aspects of historical slavery.

This online database is made up of four parts covering slavery from a multinational perspective:

• Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition sheds light on the abolitionist movement, the conflicts within it, the anti- and pro-slavery arguments of the period, and the debates on the subject of colonization. It explores all facets of the controversial topic, with a focus on economic, gender, legal, religious, and government issues.

• Part II: The Slave Trade in the Atlantic World charts the inception of slavery in Africa and its rise as perpetuated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, placing particular emphasis on the Caribbean, Latin America, and United States.

• Part III: The Institution of Slavery explores in vivid detail the inner workings of slavery from 1492-1888. Through legal documents, plantation records, first-person accounts, newspapers, government records and other primary sources, this collection reveals how enslaved people struggled against the institution. This collection explores such topics as slavery as a legal and labor system, the relationship between slavery and religion, freed slaves, the Shong Massacre, and the Dememara insurrection.

• Part IV: The Age of Emancipation includes a range of rare documents related to emancipation in the United States, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean. Included are the activities of the federal government in dealing with former slaves and the Freedmen’s Bureau, views of political parties and postwar problems with the South, documents of the British and French government on the slave trade, and reports from the West Indies and Africa.

SWC students, staff and faculty can access Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive from both on and off campus locations. Visit the Southwestern College Library’s Articles and Databases website for access.