[WalterBright]

I put it up on my own website, where it sat for a couple years until some researcher from the Slater Museum found it.

[actionfromafar]

An option not available to black historians in the 19th century.

[WalterBright]

The source material was a large number of letters that were carefully saved.

Quite a bit of the history of the 19th century in America was originally in the form of letters.