The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

The September 2005 issue includes an essay specifically on the role of African American women in the abolitionist movement, and my resources page there may be helpful:

/historynow/09_2005/historian3.php

Let me add one relevant book on that subject that appeared after I compiled the 2005 list:

King, Wilma. The Essence Of Liberty: Free Black Women During The Slave Era. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, c2006.

These books look at African-American abolitionists in general:

Blackett, R. J. M. Building An Antislavery Wall: Black Americans In The Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c1983.

Goodman, Paul. Of One Blood: Abolitionism And The Origins Of Racial Equality. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1998.

Horton, James Oliver and Lois E. In Hope Of Liberty: Culture, Community, And Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Stauffer, eds. Prophets Of Protest: Reconsidering The History Of American Abolitionism. New York: New Press: Distributed by W. W. Norton, 2006. Essays focusing on African Americans and women in the movement.

Rael, Patrick, ed. African-American Activism Before The Civil War: The Freedom Struggle In The Antebellum North. New York: Routledge, 2008. Collection of essays.

Rael, Patrick. Black Identity & Black Protest In The Antebellum North. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c2002.

Stauffer, John. The Black Hearts Of Men: Radical Abolitionists And The Transformation Of Race. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. Focuses on two pairs of abolitionists: two African-American, two white men.

And I’ll recommend (as I have in the past) a wonderful documentary resource on all African American abolitionists. Not only does it include printed texts of their speeches, pamphlets, and correspondence, but it also provides biographical sketches and other background information you won't find elsewhere:

Ripley, C. Peter et al., eds. The Black Abolitionist Papers. Five volumes. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985-1992).

You can “preview” the first volume on Google Books. Take a look at the sample and decide whether it’s worth your time to get the set on interlibrary loan. And if any of you don’t know about interlibrary loan, “Ask the Archivist,” and I’ll introduce you to this magic trick of every public library in the United States.

These books focus on Lincoln’s relations with Frederick Douglass, the best-known African-American abolitionist of his time:

Kendrick, Paul and Stephen. Douglass And Lincoln: How A Revolutionary Black Leader And A Reluctant Liberator Struggled To End Slavery And Save The Union. New York: Walker & Company, 2008. The father-and-son collaborators are, respectively, the assistant director of the Harlem Children's Zone and a Boston minister. The book won’t be out until the end of this month, so I haven’t seen it yet.

Oakes, James. The Radical And The Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, And The Triumph Of Antislavery Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., c2007. By the author of another contributor to this issue.

Here are some good biographies of Douglass and other abolitionists mentioned in Professor Sinha’s essay:

The Works Of William Wells Brown: Using His "Strong, Manly Voice". Ed. by edited by Paula Garrett and Hollis Robbins. Oxford: New York: Oxford University Press, c2006.

Farrison, William Edward.William Wells Brown: Author & Reformer. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1969.

Adeleke, Tunde. Without Regard To Race: The Other Martin Robison Delany. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, c2003.

Griffith, Cyril E. The African Dream: Martin R. Delany And The Emergence Of Pan-African Thought. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, c1975.

Sterling, Dorothy. The Making Of An Afro-American: Martin Robison Delany, 1812-1885. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1971.

McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. New York: Norton, c1991.
Quarles, Benjamin. Frederick Douglass. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997.

Pasternak, Martin B. Rise Now And Fly To Arms: The Life Of Henry Highland Garnet. New York: Garland Pub., 1995.

Schor, Joel.. Henry Highland Garnet: A Voice Of Black Radicalism In The Nineteenth Century. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977.

Donald, David Herbert. Charles Sumner. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.
A paperback edition that combines two earlier works, Charles Sumner And The Coming Of The Civil War and Charles Sumner And The Rights Of Man.

Palmer, Beverly, ed. The Selected Letters Of Charles Sumner. Boston: Northeastern University Press, c1990. First rate combination of documents and annotation.

Cheek, William F. and Aimee Lee. John Mercer Langston And The Fight For Black Freedom, 1829-65. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c1989.

For the colonization movement, you’ll find suggestions in my resource page for our September 2005 issue, “Religion and Abolitionism” essay. That same resource page has suggestions for materials on the African-American clergy and William Lloyd Garrison. However, your best resource for stimulating ideas on this topic is Eric Foner’s “Lincoln and Colonization” an essay appearing on p. 135-66 of Our Lincoln.
Allen Guelzo’s essay on the Emancipation Proclamation and my resource page in our December 2005 issue provide materials not only on the Proclamation but on emancipation in the District of Columbia, confiscation acts, and other moves toward freing slaves during the War:
/historynow/12_2005/historian.php
/historynow/12_2005/ask2b.php

For the Radical Republicans, this book is old, but never out of date:

Trefousse, Hans Louis. The Radical Republicans: Lincoln's Vanguard For Racial Justice. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975, c1968.

As for African-American soldiers in the Civil War – there’s so much material that we could do two or three issues on the subject and not exhaust all of the possibilities. These are just some of the more recent, general works:

Berlin,Ira, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, eds. Freedom's Soldiers: The Black Military Experience In The Civil War. Cambridge, U.K.: New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Absolutely terrific documentary history based on original sources.

Glatthaar, Joseph T. Forged In Battle: The Civil War Alliance Of Black Soldiers And White Officers. New York: Free Press: London: Collier Macmillan, c1990. Scholarly account of the interaction of white officers and African-American troops.

Hargrove, Hondon B. Black Union soldiers in the Civil War. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, c1988. Workmanlike, comparatively brief overview.

Redkey, Edwin S. A Grand Army Of Black Men: Letters From African-American Soldiers In The Union Army, 1861-1865. Cambridge: New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Fascinating primary source material.

Smith, John David, ed. Black Soldiers In Blue: African American Troops In The Civil War Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Interesting collection of essays.

Trudeau, Noah Andre. Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865. Boston: Little, Brown, c1998. Full accounts of battlefield experiences of these units.

This remains the best study of the free African-American community in New Orleans during and after the War:

Blassingame, John W. Black New Orleans, 1860-1880. Chicago, University of Chicago Press [1973]

Internet Resources

In addition to the resources you’ll see recommended in my “Archivist” pages for the September and December 2005 issues on Abolitionism and Lincoln, you may want to look at these:

American Memory’s new segment on the Library of Congress’s Frederick Douglass Papers:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/doughtml/

And “Learning Page” with suggestions for classroom use:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/collections/douglass/history.html

American Abolitionism Website at Indiana-Perdue University:
http://americanabolitionist.liberalarts.iupui.edu/

American Memory’s “Learning Page” on black soldiers in the Civil War is well worth a visit as is the National Archives “Teaching with Documents” lesson plan on the subject:
http://rs6.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/civilwar/aasoldrs/soldiers.html
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war/

The eMints Center at the University of Missouri has a good list of Websites useful for the classroom on the subject of these same troops:
http://www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00001303.shtml

Finally, while we try not to toot our own horn too often, sometimes it can’t be avoided. The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, a part of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, has a killer website:

http://www.yale.edu/glc/info/links.html

The Online Resources page is great:

http://www.yale.edu/glc/info/links.html

And keep an eye on their “Classroom” which is always subject to revision and expansion:

http://www.yale.edu/glc/classroom/index.htm