Disunion Feed

Overview

Disunion Feed sets the real newspaper arguments of 1854 to 1861 as a scrollable social feed. You read the road to the Civil War one voice at a time - Northern papers, Southern papers and the Black abolitionist voices who answered them, in the same stream.

Five events so far, 134 passages: the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), the caning of Charles Sumner (1856), the Dred Scott decision (1857), John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (1859) and the secession winter, from election night 1860 to Fort Sumter. A card marked condensed shows the source's own words right under the post, with any cuts marked. Every card links to the scan or transcript it was checked against.

No login, no install, nothing to pay. A Method page explains how each passage is checked, and a public verification record lists the known differences between the cards and their archives - including the changes the site made itself - and any passage the checker could not compare.

Why I built it

People keep telling me America has never been more divided. I wanted to know if that's true, and the only evidence that settles it is what Americans actually said to each other while the country came apart. Those words are scattered across archives and hard to read in order. So I put them in the format we already scroll every day, and left the arguments alone.

How it works

1. Pick an event - the feed opens on Harpers Ferry; switch to Kansas-Nebraska, Sumner, Dred Scott or the secession winter. 2. Scroll the posts - real editorials, speeches and letters, in date order, from both sides. 3. Open the original - under a condensed post, read the source's own words, cuts marked [...]. 4. Check it yourself - follow the link to the scan or transcript the card was verified against. 5. Share a card - the image carries the quote, the newspaper, the date and the citation.

Feature highlights

• Primary sources only - every card links to the document it was checked against; nothing is paraphrased into existence.
• Five events, 134 passages - Kansas-Nebraska, the Sumner caning, Dred Scott, Harpers Ferry and the secession winter (told in five chapters).
• The whole argument - pro-slavery voices never appear without abolitionist and Black voices in the same feed.
• Original words one tap away - a condensed post shows the source text underneath, with cuts marked.
• A public verification record - a dated check of all 134 passages, listing the known differences from the archives and any passage it could not compare.
• Shareable cards - each passage exports as an image with its citation baked in, so the quote travels with its receipt.
• Open corpus - every passage is published in one JSON file with its author, date and source link.
• No account, no install - free, in any browser.

Notes

• For whom: History readers, teachers, students - anyone who'd rather read what people wrote at the time than a summary of it.
• How it's built: A static site. Before a passage ships, a checking program fetches the cited document and compares each fragment with it; any accepted difference or unreadable source is disclosed on the verification page.