Offerings include 2,000 documents on ordinary people’s lives during the Civil War

Haskell Monroe, former Chancellor of the University of Missouri, was a man of many passions, but historians, teachers, students, and the general public may remember him best for his collection of more than 2,000 documents, photos, books, diaries, letters, etc., that tell the stories of ordinary people during the Civil War. (https://library.missouri.edu/confederate)

Stories in the collection include “My Dear Husband,” which is an enslaved Texas woman’s love letter to her spouse, written in 1862. Or “A Confederate Girl’s Diary,” which is about a young woman in Louisiana and her struggle to understand the situation of war as she experienced it. 

There are accounts from southern merchants, a woman who worked in the hospitals in New Orleans, stories about a soldier walking through the deep South, or documents about the Civil War in and around Columbia, Missouri, and so much more.

To read about the donations and history of the project, click https://history.missouri.edu/node/197