LibGuides: HIST 3100 Civil War and Reconstruction: Newspapers

Free Newspaper Databases on the Internet

Free newspaper databases are often the efforts of individual local, state, and university libraries and archives, and because of that, coverage and quality of both images and indexing, if any, vary widely.

True Issue (LaGrange, Texas), 1863-1864
Images of the February 12, 1863; March 5, 1863; May 9, 1863; and November 12, 1864 issues.
Texas and other Southern States Civil War newspapers
Transcriptions of selected articles, mostly dealing with the homefront. "Topical files" includes files on particular topics, while "Files by Newspaper Titles" allows simple searches across titles and browsing through individual titles chronologically.
Richmond Daily Dispatch, 1860-1865
There are currently 1384 issues of the paper available online, ranging in date from November 1860 through December 1865.
Florida Digital Newspapers Library
Includes scattered issues of Cotton States [Micanopy], New Era [Key West], Florida Home Companion [Ocala], and Peninsula [Fernandina], Columbian [Lake City]. Full image.
California Digital Newspaper Collection
Full image--search by dates
Valley of the Shadow project
Selected articles from newspapers in Augusta County [Staunton], Virginia, and Franklin County [Chambersburg], Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania Civil War Era Newspaper Collection
Selected articles from 19 cities and towns, "era" defined somewhat broadly.
Hawaiian Language Newspapers
Search and date features.....if you can read Hawaiian!
Quincy IL Historical Newspaper Archive
Full image, searchable.
New Orleans Bee, 1827-1881
No indexing--just scanned page images in chronological order. French and English.
Maryland Newspapers from Early State Records Online
Scanned newspapers from microfilm with no indexing. User name: aaco; Password aaco#.
Barnstable [MA] Patriot, 1830-1930
News from Cape Cod
Historic Missouri Newspaper Project
Border Star (1858-1869), Liberty Weekly Tribune (1852-1867)
Atlantic County [NJ] Digitized Newspapers
Atlantic Journal (1860), Hammonton Farmer (1863), South Jersey Republican (1863-5), Atlantic Democrat and Cape May County Register (1864-5). A really poor search engine, but it's free.
Brooklyn [NY] Daily Eagle, 1841-
From the nation's second largest city at the time.
New York Historical Newspapers
The New York Historic Newspapers project exists to digitize and make freely available for research significant runs of historic newspapers for every county in the state.
Rochester [NY] Area Historic Newspaper Collection
Suffolk County [NY] Historic Newspapers
The Corrector (Sag Harbor), 1839-1871
Digital Archives of Green Free Library [PA]
Wellsboro Agitator/Tioga County Agitator
Hamlin Memorial Library of Smithport
Citizen, McKean Citizen, McKean County Democrat, M'Kean Miner
The New South [Port Royal and Beaufort, SC], 1862-1866
Excellent resource for the Port Royal experiment.
Utah Digital Newspapers
Deseret News, June 1850-December 1898; Union Vedette, November 1863-November 1867; Valley Tan, November 1858-February 1860
Washington Historic Newspapers
Pioneer and Democrat [Olympia], Seattle Gazette, Seattle Weekly Gazette, Washington Statesman
Wisconsin Local History & Biography Articles
Selected articles, full image
Illustrated London News
Excerpts, 1861-1865, html format, some maps and illustrations
Chicago Tribune Index
The index is free--you will be charged to see the articles.
Hartford [CT] Courant
The index is free--you will be charged to look at the articles.
The Scotsman [Edinburgh]
The index is free--you will be charged to see the article.
Complete Transcripts of Tyler, Texas Newspapers, 1861-1864
All local items, from the masthead to the advertisements.
Selected newspaper articles on Smith County, Texas, 1852-1900
Includes scattered Tyler newspapers for 1852-1874, articles clipped from other Texas newspapers 1860-1875, and articles from the Texas Christian Advocate (Methodist), 1851-1900.
Macon [GA] Telegraph, 1905-1926
Note the need for a free DjVu browser plug-in.