Black Soldiers Mattered

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Black Soldiers Mattered

April 6, 1917, changed the lives of 21,609 young African American men from North Carolina. The participation of these Black North Carolinians in World War I has been mostly ignored. Black Soldiers Mattered addresses that void with this interactive site. Explore the journey of Black North Carolinians (BNC)—as units and individual soldiers—from induction to demobilization.


Native American South Carolina Archive

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Native American South Carolina Archive

Native South Carolinians have been, and continue to be, an essential part of our state’s history. However, the average South Carolinian would be hard-pressed to name more than one of the state-recognized tribes, and might think of the history of Native South Carolina largely ending with the colonial-era Yamasee War. NASCA looks to correct these misconceptions, helping to tell the story of Native South Carolina with complexity, nuance, and respect. In pursuing the goals, this project will take the form of an evolving website, providing access to significant primary source materials and other resources.

The Native American South Carolina Archive is a joint project of the Native American Studies Center at the University of South Carolina Lancaster, the University of South Carolina’s Institute for Southern Studies, and the University of South Carolina Libraries’ Digital Collections.


Plants and Planters - Henry William Ravenel

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Plants and Planters - Henry William Ravenel

Plants and Planter connects the life, travels, business pursuits, and scientific work of one of the great minds of the 19th century, Henry William Ravenel. A prolific traveler, collector and cataloger of botanical specimens, Ravenel had many species named for him, and was considered to have specific expertise in North American fungi. Besides his scientific work, Ravenel was a prolific diarist, and his diaries provide one of the most complete pictures of daily life in the mid-19th century South we have. Plants and Planter brings together Ravenel's personal diaries, correspondence, and over 6,200 botanical specimens, providing us with a detailed portrait of science, self, and society in the 19th-century South.


Simms Initiatives

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Simms Initiatives

The William Gilmore Simms Initiatives is an online repository for the life and work of the nineteenth-century South's most prolific and important man of letters. Thanks to generous funding from the Watson-Brown Foundation and the University of South Carolina Libraries, the Simms Initiatives brings together four different collections:

  • Simms's published works and the manuscripts of two novels left unfinished at his death,
  • The scrapbooks in which he collected his own serially-published works, wrote down early versions of some poems, and saved clippings of various publications he found intriguing,
  • The complete run of The Simms Review, the leading journal for the study of Simms, and
  • A collection of physical materials owned by, or otherwise connected to, Simms.

When combined with the site's full-text searchability, the ability to read and examine all items closely, and robust metadata and informative headnotes, The Simms Initiatives provides scholars, researchers, and interested readers with unparalleled access to and information about Simms and his work.


South Carolina Encyclopedia

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South Carolina Encyclopedia

A joint project of South Carolina Humanities, the University of South Carolina Press, the USC Libraries, the USC Center for Digital Humanities, the USC College of Arts & Sciences, the USC Institute for Southern Studies, the South Carolina State Library, and many other organizations, the Digital South Carolina Encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference source of the people, places, events, things, achievements, and ideals that have contributed to the evolution of the Palmetto State. Consisting of almost 2000 entries with more than 1100 digital assets, the digital encyclopedia aspires to be an authoritative compilation of essays on topics ranging from politics to the arts, from Hilton Head to Caesars Head, from the Lords Proprietors to Hootie and the Blowfish. In short, we hope it will be the go-to reference for everything South Carolina.

The Digital South Carolina Encyclopedia builds on the 2006 print volume, edited by Dr. Walter B. Edgar and with articles by more than 600 authors. Working with our partner institutions, we have enhanced the print version by adding more than 1200 photos, videos, documents, and audio recordings. In addition to the entries from the print version, we will, over time, add entries as well as update others as needed. Thus, not only is the Digital South Carolina Encyclopedia an essential means of exploring the past and present of the Palmetto State – fostering a deeper appreciation of its richness and complexity – but it also serves as the most complete bibliography on South Carolina ever assembled.


The Burning of Columbia

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The Burning of Columbia

The Burning of Columbia is an interactive map and timeline that both narrates and visualizes the destruction of Colubmia, SC during the waning days of the Civil War. The project draws on William Gilmore Simms's first-person account, Sack and Destruction of the City of Columbia, S.C., alongside Marion B. Lucas's definitive scholarly history, Sherman and the Burning of Columbia. By combining these two sources with nineteenth-century maps and images from the digital collections of the University of South Carolina Libraries, this project provides a robust overview of what happened in February 1865. The extent of the destruction is also superimposed on maps from 1869, 1872, and 1895, helping to contextualize how the burning might have shaped post-War development in South Carolina's capital city.