Civil War News
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April 2021 Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, and instructor, who remains a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians.
Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@gmail.com or request speaking engagements via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net. Follow Michael on Facebook www.facebook.com/michael.k.shaffer, and Twitter @michaelkshaffer.
The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant Grant in Mississippi! The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant reside at Mississippi State University in Starkville, home of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library. (http://www.usgrantlibrary.org) Check out this excellent museum via their website and plan a visit
Ulysses S. Grant figure at the Grant Presidential Library.
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when safe. As most readers will know, in an attempt to provide financial security for his family, Grant finished his memoirs while dying. More on this later. The general’s memoirs provide an excellent primary source for researchers, as do the multi-volume collection of his papers. Digitalization efforts have placed Grant’s words online and available to researchers! John F. Marszalek, Executive Director and Managing Editor of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, indicated: “This digital edition, consisting of the first thirty-two volumes of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, was conceived by the Mississippi State University’s Mitchell Memorial Library professionals. It is another fruit of John Y. Simon’s forty-four years of outstanding documentary scholarship at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The Ulysses S. Grant Association is honored to dedicate this digital edition to a major leader in the fields of American history and documentary editing, John Y. Simon.” Beginning in 1964, Simon, and later Frank J. Williams, compiled the papers. Commence your journey of
the Papers at https://msstate. contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/USG_volume. One note before proceeding. While the site does not require an account, utilizing a WorldCat account (again, free to create) and logging in with the WorldCat information allows researchers to save search results and retrieve them in an orderly fashion. See the main database page image Fig. 1. The site offers various search options as well as tweaks to the layout. This writer prefers the list view as shown above and conducts keyword searches via the search box shown in the image’s top right; the more specific the keyword, the more significant the focus of the results. For example, a search of “Sherman” nets results from almost every volume of the collection. However, Sherman and Atlanta (use the ‘advanced search’ function to query multiple keywords) yielded a manageable starting position. Users should filter the search to The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, as shown in Fig. 2. The search results page lists the various volumes in the central part of the page. On the left of the page, scroll down to ‘Title’ (see Fig. 3) and click an entry. Note the page number listed, as one may need to navigate to the specific page once inside the referenced volume. For this example, the writer selected ‘volume 11: June 1-August 15, 1864, page 249.’ The resultant record appears in page format and includes a text version. See the example shown in Fig. 4. When selecting a search result link, please allow a few seconds for the page to load, as the files prove quite large. Take advantage of this source, visit the Grant Presidential Library, and checkout Marszalek’s edited edition of The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, available from most booksellers. Kudos to John and the Mitchell Memorial Library professionals for their continuing efforts! Until next month, continued good luck in researching the American Civil War!
Civil War News
Fig. 1. Grant Papers search page.
Fig. 3. Search results. Fig. 2. Search filters.
Fig. 4. Search result actual page, keywords will appear highlighted.
April 2021