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zAmerican History: Slave Life Research Paper: Secondary Sources

This guide is built for academic library patrons (community college level) researching the lives of people who were slaves in the United States prior to, during, and just after the Civil War.

Image of Civil War era slaves in a field. Text: Secondary Sources

What is a Secondary Source?

Oxford Learner's Dictionary defines "secondary source" as follows: 

a book or other source of information where the writer has taken the information from some other source and not collected it himself or herself

Secondary sources can help you to make sense of primary sources. Analysis, criticism, comparisons, interpretations, and other types of commentary are secondary sources. A second-hand account, or hearsay, would also be considered a secondary source.