This page provides a link to an index of the Tennessee African American ("Colored") Confederate pension applications. This index contains the following information: (1) applicant’s surname, (2) applicant’s first name, (3) county of residence at the time that he applied, (4) unit in which he served, and (5) pension application number. There is also a link to a page with additional information about this collection.
This index linked to this page contains a state-by-state listing of Civil War rosters and published roster indexes held by the Tennessee State Library and Archives.
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.
A collection of pamphlets and newspapers, which document the diverse perspectives of the Civil War Era (1840-1865). The service is provided by ProQuest and available only to Tennessee residents.
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.
When the Civil War erupted, the new medium of photography had only been in existence for a little over twenty years. The daguerreotype had emerged as the most common early photographic type, but each image was unique (a positive image rather than a negative) and proved to be a challenge to reproduce. Most of the Civil War photographers were accustomed to working with daguerreotypes; one scholar notes that “the roots of Civil War photography came out of the daguerreian era and coursed through the lives of the men who made the pictures” (Zeller 5).
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.
A searchable collection of over 7,000 articles chronicling the Civil War in Tennessee from September 1, 1861 through September 30, 1865. This sourcebook aims at chronicling the military, economic, social and political history associated with the Civil War as it happened in Tennessee. The sources consulted were diaries, period newspapers, official Civil War records, diaries, ship deck logs, letters, and historical articles.
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.
The items in this collection offer new perspectives into the lives of numerous non-combatants during the Civil War in Tennessee and throughout the southeast. The correspondence and primary writings touch on several themes relating to the home front, including the diverse roles of women, the relationship between occupying/invading forces and civilians, personal beliefs regarding secession and the war, and the effect of the war on African American Tennesseans.
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.
This page is an index to records on microfilm. It includes an introduction to the employment rolls and nonpayment rolls of slaves and free black workers involved in the construction of Fort Negley.
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.
This page is an introduction to the index of individuals who were members of the Confederate Relief and Historical Association of Memphis. The index gives the soldier's name, rank, regiment, company, the army in which he served, and the page number.
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.
This page is an introduction to the index to the Southern Claims Commission. The index lists only Tennesseans who applied to the commission. The index gives the name of the individual, the county of residence, and it the claim was allowed, disallowed, or barred.
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.
This page is an introduction to the index of Confederate Civil War veterans who applied for residence in the Tennessee Confederate Soldiers' Home. The materials in this collection consist of veterans' applications to the home and two ledgers recorded by the home.
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).
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the seeds of Southern mythology idealizing the service of the South’s aging Confederate veterans began to take root. Defeated militarily, in the decades following 1865 the South struggled to vindicate the decisions that had led to secession and to an armed conflict that had cost so many men their lives. From the ashes of war and the turbulence of the Reconstruction period, a cultural identity took shape, grounded in ideas and attitudes referred to collectively as the Lost Cause.
