Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help.
Chat with a librarian, Monday through Friday, 12-4pm Eastern Time (except Federal Holidays).
The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of primary source materials related to Tennessee, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, motion pictures, photographs, sheet music, and sound recordings. Provided below is a link to the home page for each relevant digital collection along with selected highlights.
Written materials in the Library's digital collections include but are not limited to books, pamphlets, government documents, and manuscripts. Examples of written materials related to Tennessee are provided for the collections listed below.
The complete Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress consists of approximately 20,000 documents. The Lincoln Papers are characterized by a large number of correspondents, including friends and associates from Lincoln's Springfield days, well-known political figures and reformers, and local people and organizations writing to their president.
African American Perspectives gives a panoramic and eclectic review of African American history and culture and is primarily comprised of two collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division: the African American Pamphlet Collection and the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection with a date range of 1822 through 1909. Most were written by African-American authors, though some were written by others on topics of particular importance in African-American history. Eight Tennessee related items are included.
The collection contains more than 11,100 items. This online release presents over 1,300 items with over 4,000 images and a date range of 1824-1931. It includes the complete collection of Sterns contemporary newspapers, Lincoln's law papers, sheet music, broadsides, prints, cartoons, maps, drawings, letters, campaign tickets, and other ephemeral items with over 30 items representing Tennessee.
A collection of over two hundred social dance manuals at the Library of Congress. The list begins with a rare late fifteenth-century source, Les basses danses de Marguerite Autriche (c.1490) and ends with Ella Gardner's 1929 Public dance halls, their regulation and place in the recreation of adolescents. Along with dance instruction manuals, this online presentation also includes a significant number of antidance manuals, histories, treatises on etiquette, and items from other conceptual categories. Many of the manuals also provide historical information on theatrical dance. All illuminate the manner in which people have joyfully expressed themselves as they dance for and with one another. View an early 20th century ballroom dance instruction manual published in Tennessee at the link below.
American Choral Music is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the Choral Directors Association (ACDA). In 2007, the ACDA and the Library of Congress began a collaborative effort to create this Web site devoted to choral music that would present music in the public domain, available for users to download. A hymnal published by Cokesbury Press in Tennessee is included.
The Andrew Jackson Papers is one of twenty-three presidential collections in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The Jackson archival collection contains more than 26,000 items dating from 1767 to 1874. Search the collection to locate Tennessee related items.
The collection contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves including some from Missouri. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration and assembled and microfilmed in 1941. Browse the collection by location to find the Tennessee related slave narrative.
The collection covers the dramatic decades between the Gold Rush and the turn of the twentieth century. It captures the pioneer experience; encounters between Anglo-Americans and the diverse peoples who had preceded them; the transformation of the land by mining, ranching, agriculture, and urban development; the often-turbulent growth of communities and cities; and California's emergence as both a state and a place of uniquely American dreams. The collection contains two narratives from Tennessee natives.
The Capital and the Bay comprises first-person narratives, early histories, historical biographies, promotional brochures, and books of photographs in an attempt to capture in words and pictures a distinctive region as it developed between the onset of European settlement and the first quarter of the twentieth century. One narrative from Tennessee is represented.
The papers of suffragist, political strategist, and pacifist Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947) span the years 1848-1950, with the bulk of the material dating from 1890 to 1920. Suffragists from Tennessee are represented.
The collection consists of a linked set of published congressional records of the United States of America from the Continental Congress through the 43rd Congress, 1774-1875. Search the full text using the search term Tennessee for items relating to the state.
The records of the Confederate States of America span the years 1854-1889, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1861-1865, during the Civil War in America. The collection relates to the formation of the government of the Confederacy and the conduct of its internal, external, and military affairs. The Army of Tennessee is included.
The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress presents the papers of the nineteenth-century African-American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and then risked his own freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher. The special presentations for the collection include a Timeline, Douglass in His Own Words, and a Family Tree. Browse the collection by location to locate four items for Tennessee.
The papers of farmer, writer, reformer, landscape architect, urban and suburban planner, and conservationist Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) who was born in Hartford, Connecticut. Frederick Law Olmsted was the most sought-after landscape architect in the United States, together with his creation of the Olmsted firm.Mr. Olmsted's travels through Tennessee are noted.
The papers of army officer and first U.S. president George Washington (1732-1799) consist of approximately 77,000 items accumulated by Washington between 1745 and 1799, including correspondence, diaries, and financial and military records. Several items related to Tennessee are included.
The Madison Papers consists of approximately 12,000 items, spanning the period 1723-1859, captured in some 72,000 digital images. They document the life of the man who came to be known as the Father of the Constitution through correspondence, personal notes, drafts of letters and legislation, an autobiography, legal and financial documents, and his notes on the 1787 federal Constitutional Convention.
The papers of James K. Polk (1795-1849), governor of Tennessee, representative from Tennessee, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and eleventh president of the United States, contain approximately 20,500 items dating from 1775 to 1891, with the bulk falling in the period 1830-1849. Over 200 items representing Tennessee are included.
The Mary Terrell Papers reflect her as an educator, lecturer, club woman, writer, and political campaigner. Among the issues she addressed were lynching and peonage conditions in the South, women's suffrage, voting rights, civil rights, educational programs for blacks, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Four Tennessee related items are represented.
The records of the National American Woman Suffrage Association span the years from 1839 to 1961 and reflect the activities of precursor organizations involved in the abolition and women's rights movements, state and federal campaigns for women's suffrage, the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and international women's suffrage organizing. Two Items related to the Tennessee Suffragist Association are represented.
The Olmsted Associates Records document the work of the Brookline, Massachusetts, landscape architectural firm and its widespread projects and commissions undertaken for private and public clients in the United States and Canada. Job files from the Tennessee Valley Authority and the University of Tennessee are represented.
The collection contains, among other materials, posters, playbills, song sheets, notices, invitations, proclamations, petitions, timetables, leaflets, propaganda, manifestos, ballots, tickets, menus, and business cards. There are more than 28,000 items in the collection with 10,172 available online. The material dates from the seventeenth century to the present day and covers innumerable topics. The collection contains over 70 Tennessee related items.
Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929 assembles a wide array of Library of Congress source materials from the 1920s that document the widespread prosperity of the Coolidge years, the nation's transition to a mass consumer economy, and the role of government in this transition.
The papers of Rosa Parks (1913-2005) span the years 1866-2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1955 to 2000.The collection, which contains approximately 7,500 items in the Manuscript Division, as well as 2,500 photographs in the Prints and Photographs Division, documents many aspects of Parks private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans. The collection contains more than twenty Tennessee related photographs.
This collection is made up of digital versions of books from the Library of Congress General Collections on a wide range of subjects. Most of the books in this collection were published in the United States before 1923 and are in English, but there are also some materials in foreign languages or that were published elsewhere. The collection features hundreds of works of fiction published between 1800 and 1922, including books intended for children and young adults. The collection will grow over time. Browse the collection by location to find at least ten digitized books on Tennessee.
Spalding's Official Baseball Guides features editorials from baseball writers on the state of the game, statistics, photographs, and analysis of the previous season for all the Major League teams and for many of the so-called minor leagues across the nation. The 15 Official Base Ball Guides included in this online collection were published between 1889 and 1939 and include a few from Tennessee.
Susan B. Anthony's Papers show her interest in abolition and women's education, her campaign for women's property rights and suffrage in New York, and her work with the National Woman Suffrage Association, the organization she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded in 1869 when the suffrage movement split into two rival camps at odds about whether to press for a federal women's suffrage amendment or to seek state-by-state enfranchisement. Three items representing Tennessee are included.
This collection documents Jefferson"s whole life, both public and personal as a delegate to the second Continental Congress, Virginia legislator and governor, diplomat and residence in France, secretary of state, and president. Search the collection to locate several items for Tennessee.
The William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection (ca. 500 items) spans the years 1773 to 1987, with the bulk of the material dating from the Civil War period, 1861-1865. The collection consists of correspondence, pay vouchers, orders, muster rolls, enlistment and discharge papers, receipts, contracts, affidavits, tax records, miscellaneous military documents, and printed matter. There are two Tennessee related items included.
The collections of the Prints & Photographs Division include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people. Search using the subject heading United States--Tennessee to find digital images related to Tennessee, such as prints, photographs, and political cartoons.
The Architecture, Design, and Engineering category covers about 40,000 drawings (described in more than 3,900 catalog records), spanning 1600 to 1989, with most dating between 1880 and 1940. The designs are primarily for sites and structures in the U.S. (especially Washington, D.C.), as well as Europe and Mexico. A few drawings representing Tennessee are included.
This collection represents the photographic files of one of America's earliest news picture agencies. The collection richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, political activities including the woman suffrage campaign, conventions and public celebrations. Over 20 items representing Tennessee are included.
In 1954 the Library of Congress purchased approximately 10,000 original, duplicate, and copy negatives from the daughters of Levin C. Handy who was apprenticed at the age of twelve to his uncle, famed Civil War photographer Mathew B. Brady. The majority of the Brady-Handy negatives are of Civil War and post-Civil War portraits. A few negatives representing Tennessee are represented.
Contains more than four thousand original drawings by American book, magazine, and newspaper illustrators, made primarily between 1880 and 1910. The drawing, View on the Smoky is included.
The Cartoon Drawings filing series spans the late 1700s to the present, primarily from 1880 to 1980. The cartoons cover people and events throughout the world, but most of the images were intended for publication in American newspapers and magazines. Three drawings representing Tennessee are included.
Herbert L. Block (1909-2001), known to the world as Herblock, was one of the most influential political commentators and editorial cartoonists in American history. His long chronicle of major social and political events began to appear in newspapers in 1929, and he continued to document domestic and international events for 72 years. Three drawings from Tennessee are represented.
This collection of more than 500 prints made in America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries encompasses several forms of political art, including five Tennessee related items.
This collection explore the faces, places and events of the U.S. Civil War through photographs, prints and drawings. Browse the collection by location to access hundreds of items related to Tennessee.
There are approximately 700 daguerreotypes in the Prints & Photographs Division. The majority of the images are portraits, but the collection does include a few early architectural views, outdoor scenes, and copies of works of art. Three 19th century congressmen from Tennessee are represented.
Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company Collection includes over 25,000 glass negatives and transparencies as well as about 300 color photo lithograph prints, mostly of the eastern United States. Subjects strongly represented in the collection include city and town views, including streets and architecture; parks and gardens; recreation; and industrial and work scenes. Over 150 items from Tennessee are represented.
The Documentary Drawings category includes more than 3,000 drawings made between 1750 and 1970. Eye-witness sketches made during the U.S. Civil War are the most frequently used images. Search the collection for over 30 Tennessee related items.
The images in the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection consist of about 175,000 black-and-white negatives of American people and places. The collection of photographs, taken by a group of U.S. government photographers, fall into the public domain and contain more than 2,000 black-and-white photographs of Tennessee.
Photographers working for the U.S. government's Farm Security Administration and later the Office of War Information between 1939 and 1944 made approximately 1,600 color photographs that depict life in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Over 50 photographs of Tennessee are included.
The William A. Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs provides almost 350 images showing African Americans and related military and social history. Two items from Tennessee are represented.
The Gottscho-Schleisner Collection is comprised of over 29,000 images primarily of architectural subjects, including interiors and exteriors of homes, stores, offices, factories, historic buildings, and other structures. Although subjects are concentrated chiefly in the northeastern United States, more than 130 Tennessee related items are represented.
More than 13,000 groups of photographs, prints, drawings, and other visual material offer access to 1.5 million items dating primarily from the 1800s through the present. The groups, called LOTs gather images related to one another by provenance, creator, subject, or format into manageable sets. A few items representing Tennessee are represented.
The Harris & Ewing, Inc. Collection of photographic negatives includes glass and film negatives taken by Harris & Ewing, Inc., which provide excellent coverage of Washington people, events, and architecture, during the period 1905-1945. Over 70 items related to Tennessee are represented.
The online presentation of the Carol M. Highsmith Archive features photographs of landmark buildings and architectural renovation projects in Washington, D.C., and throughout the United States. The first 23 groups of photographs contain more than 2,500 images and date from 1980 to 2005, with many views in color as well as black-and-white. Highsmith, a distinguished and richly-published American photographer, has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. Her generosity in dedicating the rights to the American people for copyright free access also makes this Archive a very special visual resource. The archive contains more than ninety Tennessee photographs.
The collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types and engineering technologies. Browse the collection by location to locate over 400 hundred items for Tennessee.
This online presentation offers images of nearly 2,500 design sketches for stained glass windows, murals, mosaics, furnishings, metalwork, and interior architecture. The drawings feature striking watercolors created from the 1860s to the 1990s, primarily for churches, synagogues, and other sacred spaces from Tennessee.
More than 3,000 special portrait photographs, called ambrotypes and tintypes, and small card photos called cartes de visite represent both Union and Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War (1861-1865). The portraits often show weapons, hats, canteens, musical instruments, painted backdrops, and other details that enhance the research value of the collection. Search by location to find more than twenty items related to Tennessee.
More than 5,100 photographic prints and 355 glass negatives in the Prints and Photographs Division's holdings, together with the often extensive captions that describe the photo subjects, reflect the results of this early documentary effort, offering a detailed depiction of working and living conditions of many children--and adults--in the United States between 1908 and 1924. The collection includes more than eighty Tennessee prints and negatives.
This collection documents virtually all aspects of Washington, D.C., life. During the administrations of Presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, the National Photo Company supplied photographs of current news events in Washington, D.C Photos of interest from other states are included. Thirteen photos from Tennessee are included.
The Panoramic Photograph Collection date from 1851 to 1991 and features American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. Subject strengths include: agricultural life; beauty contests; disasters; engineering work such as bridges, canals and dams; fairs and expositions; military and naval activities, especially during World War I; the oil industry; schools and college campuses; sports; and transportation. All 50 states including Tennessee are represented.
About 15,000 historical prints (ca. 1700-1900) created to document geographic locations such as Tennessee or popular subjects that are sometimes used for advertising and educational purposes. Most are by American printmakers (e.g., Baillie, Currier & Ives, Sachse & Co.).
The online Artist Posters consist of a small but growing proportion of the more than 85,000 posters in the Artist Poster filing series. This series highlights the work of poster artists, both identified and anonymous. It includes posters from the nineteenth century to the present day.
The Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project was a field project conducted in 1978 by the American Folklife Center, in partnership with the National Park Service. The quilt images convey the range of contemporary quiltmaking styles in the United States, while the recorded interview segments provide information on the quiltmakers and their work within the context of their lives and region and a more in-depth portrait of quiltmaking in daily life. Images of four quilts from Tennessee residents are highlighted.
Stereographs consist of two nearly identical photographs or photomechanical prints, paired to produce the illusion of a single three-dimensional image, usually when viewed through a stereoscope. Over 40 Items from Tennessee are represented.
The photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party, a collection housed in the Manuscript Division, document the National Woman's Party's push for ratification of the 19th Amendment as well as its later efforts for passage of the Equal Rights. Several Tennessee related photographs are available.
The Library of Congress has custody of the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world with collections numbering over 5.5 million maps, 80,000 atlases, 6,000 reference works, over 500 globes and globe gores, 3,000 raised relief models, and a large number of cartographic materials in other formats, including over 19,000 CDs/DVDs.
The Library oversees one of the largest collections of motion pictures in the world. Acquired primarily through copyright deposit, exchange, gift and purchase, the collection spans the entire history of the cinema. The following moving image collections contain materials related to Tennessee.
The National Screening Room showcases the riches of the Library's vast moving image collection, designed to make otherwise unavailable movies, both copyrighted and in the public domain, accessible to the viewers worldwide. Two Tennessee related items are included.
The National Film Registry is a list of movies deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant that are earmarked for preservation by the Library of Congress". One film associated with the Tennessee Valley Authority is included
The Library of Congress holds the nation's largest public collection of sound recordings (music and spoken word) and radio broadcasts, some three million recordings in all.
This collection presents approximately 12 hours of opinions recorded in the days and months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor from more than two hundred individuals in cities and towns across the United States. The result is a portrait of everyday life in America as the United States entered World War II. Several interviews from Tennesseans are included.
The core of this presentation consists of arrangements for bands or small orchestras of popular songs written by African Americans and a smaller selection of historic sound recordings illustrating these songs and many others by the same composers. Three items from Tennessee are represented.
The collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches. The collection includes recordings from forty-three states including Tennessee.
The Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress dates back to 1943 and contains nearly two thousand recordings - of poets and prose writers participating in literary events at the Library's Capitol Hill campus as well as sessions at the Library's Recording Laboratory. In digitizing the archive and presenting it online, the Library hopes to greatly broaden its use and value. Search the collection for recordings of poets affiliated with Tennessee
The Songs of America allows you to explore American history as documented in the work of some of our country's greatest composers, poets, scholars, and performers. From popular and traditional songs, to poetic art songs and sacred music, the relationship of song to historical events from the nation's founding to the present is highlighted through more than 90,000 online items. Dolly Parton and the Roots of Country Music and other Tennessee related items are represented.
The Library of Congress National Jukebox, makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives. Search the National Jukebox to locate items pertaining to Connecticut.
The Library's sheet music collection include popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra.
This collection spans the period from the turn of the nineteenth century to the 1880s, although a majority of the song sheets were published during the height of the craze, from the 1850s to the 1870s.
The Civil War Sheet Music Collection consists of over 2500 pieces culled from the Library's collections. This collection is unique in that it offers a contemporary perspective from both sides of the conflict, unfiltered by generations of historical interpretation. The collection is limited to music about the war and therefore does not include every piece of sheet music published during the war. Tennessee themed sheet music is available.
This sheet music collection consists of approximately 9,000 items published from 1800 to 1922, although the majority is from 1850 to 1920. The bulk was published in many different cities in the United States, but some of the items bear European imprints. Most of the music is written for voice and piano; a significant minority is instrumental.
The Songs of America presentation allows you to explore American history as documented in the work of some of our country's greatest composers, poets, scholars, and performers. From popular and traditional songs, to poetic art songs and sacred music, the relationship of song to historical events from the nation's founding to the present is highlighted through more than 80,000 online items. Over 200 Tennessee related items are represented.
Consists of over 15,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1820 to 1860. This collection complements an earlier American Memory project, Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music 1870-1885 as well as the Band Music from the Civil War Era and Sheet Music from the Civil War Era and includes more than twenty Tennessee themed pieces.
Consists of over 47,000 pieces of sheet music, including Connecticut items registered for copyright during the years 1870 to 1885. Included are popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra. Two-hundred Tennessee themed items are included.