Expansion & Reform, 1800-1860
Expansion & Reform, 1800-1860
The conflict over slavery, the growth of federal power, and the territorial expansion of the United States figure prominently in the Collection. Thousands of letters, documents, broadsides, and pamphlets focus on slavery and abolition. Other materials in this period cover a wide range of topics including the Bank of the United States, removal of American Indians from tribal lands, the Nullification Crisis, Jacksonian politics, settlement of the Mormons in Utah, the Mexican-American War, and Texas.
Selected Searches in the Collection’s catalog
- Abolition
- Slave sale materials
- Bank of the US
- Images
- Materials relating to slave life
- Indian removal
- Texas history including colonization, independence from Mexico, and annexation by the United States
- The papers of Army Surgeon John B. Moore written during the Utah Expedition and the Mormon Wars
- Maps
- The slave revolt on the Amistad, including handwritten transcripts of testimony given by the Africans during the trial in Connecticut
- John English’s Mississippi plantation journals totaling more than 400 pages, including lists of enslaved people and how much cotton they picked per day
- Nullification Crisis
- The US Navy’s African Squadron’s efforts to suppress the illegal import of Africans for the purpose of enslaving them
- Runaway slave broadsides
- Rare petitions from free Black people in Texas who were forced into slavery