Source:United States. War of the Rebellion : A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies

Watchers
Source The War of the Rebellion
a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies
Author United States. War Department
Coverage
Place United States
Year range 1861 - 1865
Subject Military records
Publication information
Type Miscellaneous
Publisher Government Printing Office
Date issued 1880-1901
Place issued Washington, District of Columbia
Number of Volumes 70
Citation
United States. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies. (Washington, District of Columbia: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901).
Repositories
Internet Archivehttps://www.wiu.edu/libraries/govpubs/war_ofthe_..Free website
Cornell University Libraryhttps://collections.library.cornell.edu/moa_new/..Free website
HathiTrusthttps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=1..Free website
Ohio State Universityhttps://ehistory.osu.edu/books/war-rebellion-off..Free website
FamilySearch Record Searchhttps://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/3151..Family history center

Contents

Overview

The War of the Rebellion compilation was the first general publication of the military records of the American Civil War, with the goal to "embrace all official documents that can be obtained by the compiler, and that appear to be of any historical value."

By an act approved on June 23, 1874, Congress made an appropriation "to enable the Secretary of War to begin the publication of the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, both of the Union and Confederate Armies," and directed him "to have copied for the Public Printer all reports, letters, telegrams, and general orders not heretofore copied or printed, and properly arranged in chronological order."

The War of the Rebellion volumes are a compilation of primary source materials in printed form. They contain records that were written at the time the events described were taking place. The volumes contain reports of battles, military operations, correspondence, orders, reports and responses of both the Union and Confederate Armies.

Wikipedia has an article on The War of the Rebellion. Note: The current title seems to reflect the Union and Confederate navies series rather than the published name for Union and Confederate armies. This title was used in early circulars advertising the future publication of the series, but the War of the Rebellion title was used on all the publications, except the atlas, for Civil War army records.

Organization

The War of the Rebellion was published beginning in 1880, with the final volume published in 1901. It is comprised of 70 volumes in four series. The 70 volumes, however, do not appear in 70 individual books. Many volumes were long enough for it to be more practical to divide them into parts. Altogether, there are 128 books in the whole set. Books 112 and 113 were intended to be a detailed index to Series 1, but they were never published. Due to this, the books are actually numbered from book number 1 up to book 130, with 112 and 113 missing.

The four series are:

  • Series 1 (Books 1–111, 53 volumes) Military Operations — Contains reports dealing with Union and Confederate military operations in addition to correspondence, orders, and responses ("returns") related to those operations.
  • Series 2 (Books 114–121, 8 volumes) Prisoners — Contains correspondence, orders, reports, and returns related to prisoners of war, prisoners of State, and other political prisoners.
  • Series 3 (Books 122–126, 5 volumes) Union Authorities — Contains correspondence, orders, reports, and returns of Union authorities that are not related to military operations and prisoners.
  • Series 4 (Books 127–129, 3 volumes) Confederate Authorities — Contains correspondence, orders, reports, and returns of Confederate authorities that are not included in the previous series.

Atlas

An atlas was published between 1891 and 1895 under the title Atlas to accompany official records of the Union and Confederate armies. The atlas can be found at the Library of Congress website.

Indexes

An index to Series I was actually published in 1899, the year after the 53rd volume of Series I was published. This, in effect, takes the place of Books 112 and 113.

Comprehensive Index

A comprehensive index to the entire War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies was published in 1901 as Book 130. It appeared in both two parts and as a single volume. Additions and Corrections were published in 1902.

Online Volumes

Western Illinois University Libraries has created a comprehensive website linking to all the volumes of The War of the Rebellion available on the Internet Archive site. It includes scanned contributions from Cornell University Library, Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, University of California Libraries, Stanford University Library, University of Virginia Library, Oxford University, Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, and the Library of Congress.


Cornell University has transferred its digital collection to HathiTrust Digital Library. Links to all the volumes of The War of the Rebellion on HathiTrust can be found at Cornell University's Making of America online collection.

Transcript of the series

Ohio State University has created an online transcript of this large series.

Other Repositories

WorldCat library catalog lists over 100 libraries with copies of The War of the Rebellion.

 

The War of the Rebellion may be ordered through the nearest Family History Center.

FHL film numbers

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