Mr Lincoln's High Tech War was written at the dawn of a golden age for finding things out. The amount of information available on the Internet is utterly overwhelming. Here are a few of the most valuable resources for studying the Civil War. Note: The addresses and contents of websites are subject to change. Listed below are web resources that are of especially high value for general research into the Civil War, and that are also likely to remain available for the foreseeable future.
Note: Unless otherwise noted, the links will open in separate windows or pages.
The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, and Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion are commonly referred to as the Official Records and Official Records, Navy. They are often abbreviated as OR and ORN. They represent the primary source for virtually any research into the Civil War. The xxx volumes of the OR and ORN are available in searchable form at Cornell University's Making of America Site, http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/. This resource was invaluable in the writing of Mr Lincoln's High Tech War. (Many other texts are available at the same site, including 19th-century editions of Scientific American and Harper's Monthly. The pages of the original volumes can be displayed as fascimiles, or as plain text (though the conversion to text is sometimes unreliable) and the full text of the OR and ORN is searchable. The OR (but not, apparently the ORN) is available as searchable text at http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/sources/records/, along with the Atlas to Accompany the Official Records including many spectacular maps, along with diagrams of weapons, uniforms, equipment and flags used in the war.
The multivolume work Battles and Leaders of the Civil War contains many first-hand accounts of famous actions, including many discussed in Mr. Lincoln;s High-Tech War. The text of Battles and Leaders is available online at http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/books/battles/index.cfm. The four volumes are also available via books.google.com (see below).
The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. There are many online versions of DANFS, but the definitive one, maintained by the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command (formerly the Naval Historical Center), is at http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/index.html. This is just one of many resources available at http://www.history.navy.mil/online_resources.html. DANFS provides histories of virtually every U.S. and Confederate Ship. The above site link to a vast selection of photographs and other images, and links to accounts of important battles and actions.
The Lincoln Log: a day-to-day record of Lincoln's life is available at www.thelincolnlog.org provides a day-by-day, and sometimes hour-by-hour account of Lincoln's life. Searchable by date and keyword, it provides citations and links to many other resources.
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, with searchable text is available at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/.
The full text of all of Harper's Weekly for the wars years is available at http://www.sonofthesouth.net/. Many other resources, such as political cartoons from the magazine, are featured at http://www.harpweek.com.
The website http://www.monitorcenter.org from The Monitor Center provides a look at many aspects of the U.S.S. Monitor and the C.S.S Virginia. The privately run site www.cssvirginia.org is a good source as well. A personal web page on "Ironclads and Blockade Runners of the Civil War is at http://www.wideopenwest.com/~jenkins/ironclads/ironclad.htm. The Friends of the Hunley site at http://www.hunley.org details the doomed sub's career, along with information on her rediscovery, recovery, and ongoing reconstruction—and a Hunley simulator. See also http://home.att.net/~JVNautilus/Hunley/reconstruction.html for a fascinating ongoing effort to do a digital reconstruction of the Hunley.
http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/ provides maps, diagrams, histories and a great deal more. besides.
Any number of 19th Century books, many to do with the Civil War, have been placed online as text and/or in scans of the original books pages. See archive.org, books.google.com, and gutenberg.org. Most texts are downloadable in one form or another, though others must be viewed online.
Here is a list of books that we made use of in the writing of Mr. Lincoln's High-Tech War.
The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Govt. Print. Office, Washington D.C.Volumes: Series I, 1-53; Series II, 1-8; Series III, 1-5; Series IV, 1-4 (1880 - 1901) (see note in online resources section .)
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion , Govt. Print. Office, Washington D.C. Volumes: Series I, vols. 1-27; Series II, vols 1-3 (1894 - 1922) (see note in online resources section below.)
Axelrod, Alan. The War Between The Spies: A History of Espionage During the American Civil War , New York, 1992, Atlantic Monthly Press.
Axelrod, Alan. Lincoln's Last Night: Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, and the Last 36 Hours Before the Assassination , New York, 2005, Chamberlain Bros (Penguin Group).
Blackman, Ann. Wild Rose: Rose O'Neale Greenhow, Civil War Spy A True Story , New York, 2005, Random House.
Bruce, Robert V. Lincoln and the Tools of War, Urbana and Chicago, 1956, University of Illinois Press.
Bulloch, James D. The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe: or, How the Confederate Cruisers were Equipped , New York, 1883 Reprinted 2001 by Modern Library, Bentley and Son.
Catton, Bruce, A Stillness At Appomatox, New York, 1953, Simon & Schuster.
Cochran, Hamilton. Blockade Runners of the Confederacy, New York, 1958, Bobbs-Merrill.
Coffin, Charles Carleton. Freedom Triumphant: The Fourth Period of The War of the Rebellion , New York, 1890, Harper & Brothers.
Crouch, Tom D. The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Balloon in America , Washington DC, 1983, Smithsonian Press.
deKay, James Tertius. Monitor, New York, 1997, Walker.
Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln, New York, 1995, Simon & Schuster.
Evans, Charles M. War of the Aeronauts: A History of Ballooning in the Civil War , Mechanicsburg PA, 2002, Stackpole Books.
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative Volume 1 Fort Sumter to Perryville, New York, 1958, Random House.
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative Volume 2 Fredericksburg to Meridian, New York, 1963, Random House.
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative Volume 3 Red River to Appomattox, New York, 1974, Random House.
Fowler, Jr., William M. Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War , New York, 1990, W.W. Norton.
Gallman, J. Matthew (editor). The Civil War Chronicle, New York, 2000, Crown Publishers (Random House).
Haydon, F. Stansbury. Military Ballooning during the Early Civil War, 2000, Johns Hopkins University Press.
Howarth, Stephen. To Shining Sea, New York, 1991, Random House.
Jones, Virgil Carrington. The Civil War at Sea: Volume One: The Blockaders, New York, 1960, Holt, Reinhart Winston.
Jones, Virgil Carrington. The Civil War At Sea: Volume Two: The River War, New York, 1961, Holt Rinehart Winston.
Jones, Virgil Carrington. The Civil War At Sea: Volume Three: The Final Effort , 1962, Holt, Rinehart Winston.
Luraghi, Rainondo. A History of the Confederate Navy, Annapolis, Maryland, 1996, Naval Institute Press.
Marvel, William (editor). The Monitor Chronicles: One Sailor's Account -- Today's Campaign to Recover the Civil War Wreck , New York, 2000, Simon & Schuster.
McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, 1988, Oxford University Press.
Milligan, John D. Gunboats Down the Mississippi, Annapolis, Maryland, 1965, Naval Institute Press.
Ross , Charles D. Trial By Fire: Science, Technology, and the Civil War, 2000, White Mane Books.
Scharf, J. Thomas. History of the Confederate States Navy, New York, 1887, Rogers & Sherwood.
Sears, Stephen W. To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsular Campaign , New York, 1992, Ticknor & Fields.
Soderberg, Susan Cooke. A Guide to Civil War Sites in Maryland: Blue and Gray in a Border State, Shippenburg PA, 1998, White Mane Books.
Stokesbury, James L. A Short History of the Civil War, New York, 1995, William Morrow.
Sullivan, George. The Civil War at Sea, Brookfield, Connecticut, 2001, Twenty-First Century Books.
Tidwell, William A. April '65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War, Kent, Ohio & London, England, 1995, Kent State University Press.
Weber , Jennifer L. Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North , Oxford, New York , 2006, Oxford University Press.
Wise, Stephen R. Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War , 1988, University of South Carolina Press.