Slavery
Collection Description See Also: Collection Description Cornell's Anti-Slavery and Civil War Collections The Cornell University Library owns one of the richest collections of anti-slavery and Civil War materials in the world, thanks in large part to Cornell's first President, Andrew Dickson White, who developed an early interest in both fostering, and documenting the abolitionist movement and the Civil War. Even before his arrival at Cornell, White used his lectures at the University of Michigan to respond to the issues of the War by pointing out to his students as many examples as he could of societies that valued the rights of free men over the shallow benefits of slavery. A.D.
The Caribbean Documents Collection is comprised of correspondence and original financial and legal documents from the various islands of Antigua, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts, St. Christopher, Trinidad and Tobago from the 16th to the 19th century. The collection consists of individually acquired items such as letters narrating travelers' impressions but also groupings of transactional papers from plantations and slave registers. Selected items from the Caribbean Documents Collection are digitized and available online.
New Haven resident William H. Townsend made pen-and-ink sketches of the Amistad captives while they were awaiting trial. Twenty-two of these drawings were given to Yale in 1934 by Asa G. Dickerman, whose grandmother was the artist's cousin. Townsend, who was about 18 years old when he made the drawings, is buried in the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut, beside the Yale University campus. Call Number: GEN MSS 335