Military Research : Civil War

This page is the introduction to a bibliography of published books and articles of unit histories of Tennessee Confederate and Tennessee Union units. The bibliography is divided into two sections: Confederate and Federal.

The images found in this section have been gathered from various manuscript collections and offer a glimpse at the wide variety of material available at the Tennessee State Library and Archives that may be of interest to those researching Civil War history and genealogy. These images illustrate the extensive record-keeping system at work during the Civil War and demonstrate the complex organizational structure needed to handle the massive accumulation of records.

The American Civil War that shattered families and tore the nation asunder has continued to capture the imagination of generations and to fascinate researchers. Tracing Civil War ancestors has been of particular interest to Tennesseans; therefore, it is hard to envision a time when this type of research wasn’t possible. This resource guide lists books, microfilm, and manuscript resources and represents some of the vast collection of materials that the Tennessee State Library and Archives has amassed which makes tracking Civil War soldiers and citizens possible.

The “Civil War Visual Culture” unit of the Tennessee Virtual Archive showcases a wide variety of Civil War-related materials: sheet music covers, professionally designed lithographs, flags, hand-drawn letters, military drawings, and other images. These items represent some of the ways in which a tragic era in America’s history was experienced by contemporaries and interpreted by subsequent generations.

This page is part of an index to Tennessee Confederate Pension Applications. This index is arranged by the county where the individual applied for the pension.

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War (2011-2015), the Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA) is sending teams of archivists and conservators across the state of Tennessee to document and preserve Civil War-era materials. Thus far, the team has digitized thousands of original items that have rarely been viewed by the public.

The Oliver Caswell King and Katherine Rebecca Rutledge King Papers, 1856 - 1893 is a roughly 200-item collection documenting the courtship, marriage and social lives of a Sullivan County, Tennessee, couple before, during and after the Civil War.

Aerial photos, topography, road systems, and land plots are all linked to narrative information about events of the Civil War.

This page is an index to Tennessee Civil War battle flags.

This page is an introduction to a listing of Tennessee Confederate physicians. It includes a listing of the print and manuscript sources used when creating the index.

During the Civil War, the Provost Marshal was the Union Army officer charged with maintaining order among both soldiers and civilians. The Provost Marshal records microfilmed by the National Archives include many records related to Tennesseans. This Union Provost Marshal Database was created to index those documents that were from provost marshal offices in Tennessee and that relate to Tennesseans during the Civil War. The fully searchable database includes name, location (city or county), year, file number (if provided), and a brief description of the document(s).