The Editorials on Secession Project

When completed, this site will provide access to over 2,000 newspaper editorials detailing the shifting tides of emotion and opinion in the 16 months leading to Southern secession and the American Civil War. The site is intended primarily as a teaching resource, to enrich students' exploration and understanding of the period, and assist teachers by expanding the available primary sources that they can incorporate into their pedagogy.

The project has its origins in a three volume series prepared for the American Historical Association in the 1930s, by Dwight Dumond (Southern editorials) and Harold Perkins (Northern editorials). However, in reviewing the series, staff were troubled by the selectivity of the coverage and uneven distibution. The completed site will expand the coverage and range of from the period by including editorials from regions neglected in the original series—particularly in the West, where newspapers from California, Texas, and the Missouri-Kansas border region formerly known as "Bleeding Kansas". Staff will expand beyond the voices of the editors by incorporating additional supplementary materials—letters to the editor, diaries, and basic demographic data—to provide a wider context for reading the editorials that takes into account recent historiography and remind readers that there were many other voices engaged in the debate.

The editorials in the site are organized in two ways—chronologically and geographically. We use an animated map with a three-stage taxonomy to provide easier access to this data, as readers can identify particular stages in the evolution toward Civil War, or click on a particular locality to review editorials from a particular city or town.

The current project is planned in three stages:

Phase 1) Preparation of the original volumes for the Web. Regardless of their limitations, the original volumes provide an exceptionally rich source of materials for study of the period. The first iteration of the site will include all structural elements, and the full range of editorials from the period.
(Estimated completion, August 31, 2002)

Phase 2) Expansion of the editorial source base. After production of the the original series is completed staff will turn to the selection and preparation of additional editorials from the period. We will expand the editorials included in the site to provide a wider geographical range, as well as a more comprehensive selection of editorials from newspapers included in the original series. A preliminary survey of newspapers in the Library of Congress, suggests that this will mean selecting, editing, annotating, and encoding, approximately 1,400 additional editorials for the site. (Estimated completion, May 15, 2003)

Phase 3) Extension of contextual and pedagogical information. Simultaneous with the expansion of the core editorials, staff will also be developing additional contextual information extending from the demographics of those writing the editorials to general information about the societies and populations reading and responding to them. (Estimated completion, indeterminate)