%U%,%Alexander, Edward P. (Edward P. Alexander Papers)%,%Letter, Gen. James Longstreet to Col. Edward P. Alexander; and copies of Alexander's battlefield dispatches to Longstreet and Gen. George E. Pickett during the battle of Gettysburg, 3 July 1863.%,%3 July 1863%,%During the first three days of July 1863, Union and Confederate forces met in battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, an encounter that many historians consider the turning point in the Civil War. The culminating event of the battle was Pickett's Charge, the unsuccessful assault on the Union center ordered by Gen. Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) and executed by numerous troops, including an infantry division under the command of Gen. George E. Pickett (1825-1875). Preparations for the famous charge, which occurred on the battle's third day, included the traditional artillery barrage described in these documents. In a letter written on the field of battle, Gen. James Longstreet (1821-1904) informed Col. Edward P. Alexander (1835-1910), reserve artillery commander, of the intended Confederate advance, which he said would be dependent on Alexander's battery providing the necessary artillery support. Longstreet also ordered Alexander to advise General Pickett when to initiate the charge.
Having retained Longstreet's order, Alexander later mounted the item on a larger backing sheet and added to it copies of his battlefield dispatches to both Longstreet and Pickett, which depict the increasing urgency of the Confederate position. At 1:25 p.m., Alexander wrote to Pickett, "If you are to advance at all, you must come at once or we will not be able to support you as we ought . . . " Fifteen minutes later, the artillery commander wrote again to Pickett, "For God's sake come on quick or we cannot support you. Ammunition nearly out."
Although Pickett's name is associated with the failed charge, he did not command the attack, and his troops comprised only a portion of the advancing columns. He was responsible for forming the brigades involved in the charge and conducted himself honorably throughout the engagement. Still, history has treated him unfairly, and he will forever bear the onus of defeat.%,%Janice E. Ruth and John R. Sellers, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/001/0001t%,%mm+78004984%,,%mcc/001%,%A1 (color slide; detail of Longstreet's letter); A2 (color slide; entire page showing Longstreet's letter and copies of dispatches)%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Alexander, Edward P. (1835-1910)/Army officers/Civil War, 1861-1865/Confederate Army/Gettysburg (Pa.)--Battle of, 1863/Lee, Robert E. (Robert Edward) (1807-1870)/Longstreet, James (1821-1904)/Pickett, George E. (George Edward) (1825-1875)%
%U%,%American Party (American Party Collection)%,%Examiner's questions for admittance to the American (or Know-Nothing) Party, July 1854.%,%July 1854%,%Anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic movements in American political life had their inception in the 1840s, due to the arrival of large numbers of Irish immigrants at that time and the increasing role being played by the Catholic Church in education and other areas of public life. The best known of these nativist groups came to be called the American Party, and its adherents as Know-Nothings. The aim of the Know-Nothing movement was to combat foreign influences and to uphold and promote traditional American ways. Sworn to secrecy, the Know-Nothings derived their name from their standard reply to questions about their rituals and mysteries--"I know nothing about it." The movement had considerable success in the 1850s, electing governors in Massachusetts and Delaware, and placing Millard Fillmore (1800-1874) on a presidential ticket in 1856. Thereafter the party went into a swift decline.
The "Obligation" assumed by prospective candidates for membership is spelled out in this document emanating from Newburg, near Shippensburg, in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, July 1854. It required the candidate to "solemnly . . . swear upon that sacred and Holy emblem before Almighty God, and these witnesses, that you will not divulge or make known to any person whatever, the nature of the questions I may ask you here, the names of the persons you may see here or that you know that such an organization is going on as such, whether you become a member or not!" The candidate was then required to pledge to elect only native-born citizens to office, to the exclusion of all foreigners and Roman Catholics.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/062/0001t%,%mm+79004287%,,%mcc/062%,%A3 (color slide)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%American Party/Anti-Catholicism/Catholics/Delaware/Fillmore, Millard (1800-1874)/Irish Americans/Know-Nothings/Massachusetts/Nativism/Pennsylvania/Political parties/Secret societies%
%U%,%Anthony, Susan B. (Susan B. Anthony Papers)%,%Letter, Susan B. Anthony to Adelaide Johnson discussing women ministers and Johnson's sculpture memorializing prominent suffragists, 8 February 1896.%,%8 February 1896%,%On 29 January 1896, sculptor Adelaide Johnson (1859-1955) married English businessman Alexander Frederick Jenkins, in her Washington, D.C., studio, with busts of women's rights leaders Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) serving as "bridesmaids."(1) The ceremony was performed by a woman minister, and the bridegroom assumed his wife's last name. A week later, Anthony wrote this letter of support to Johnson, criticizing the president of the Washington Theosophical Society who had publicly condemned Johnson's wedding. "The man must be next door to an idiot when he says a marriage ceremony performed by a woman is immoral. . . . I am glad you were married by a woman, and I am glad that for the first time in the history of marriages of our woman's rights women, one man has at last been found to give up his own name cheerfully and accept that of the woman he married." Unfortunately, the Johnsons' marriage was short-lived. It was unable to survive the couple's long separations, and Adelaide, eleven years her husband's senior, came to feel that Alexander had lost their shared commitment to spiritualism. She divorced him in 1908.
Three years before her wedding, Johnson had exhibited busts of pioneer physician Caroline B. Winslow (1822-1896) and suffragists Stanton, Anthony, and Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) in the Woman's Pavilion at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In this 8 February 1896 letter, Anthony notifies Johnson of her wish for these busts to be purchased by Congress for installation in the new Library of Congress building, which would open to the public in November 1897. The "busts ought to stand in some of the niches in that mammoth building, the taxes to build which have been wrung from the hard earnings of the women of this nation as well as from those of the men." The busts were not installed in the Library, but portrait busts of Mott, Stanton, and Anthony are part of Johnson's famous sculpture, "The Woman Movement," which was commissioned by the National Woman's Party and given to the nation on 15 February 1921, Anthony's birthday, by the NWP on behalf of all American women. Although the sculpture stands in the United States Capitol, Anthony during her lifetime had opposed placing a women's monument there, arguing instead for a setting more hospitable to women's rights. Her objections led to a rift with Johnson, who in 1904 broke with Anthony's National American Woman Suffrage Association and sought the commission from the NWP.
The Manuscript Division holds the personal papers of both Susan B. Anthony and Adelaide Johnson. This letter was purchased for addition to the Anthony Papers in 1990.
(1) Edith Mayo, "Adelaide Johnson," in Notable American Women: The Modern Period (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), 380.%,%Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/063/0001t%,%mm+78011049%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/a/anthony.txt%,%mcc/063%,%A4 (color slide; page 1); A5 (color slide; page 2)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell) (1820-1906)/Artists/Exhibitions/Johnson, Adelaide (1859-1955)/Library of Congress/Marriage/Mott, Lucretia (1793-1880)/National American Woman Suffrage Association/National Woman's Party/Sculptors/Spiritualism/Stanton, Elizabeth Cady (1815-1902)/Suffrage/Winslow, Caroline B. (1822-1896)/Women/World's Columbian Exposition (1893: Chicago, Ill.)%
%U%,%Ballentine, John J. (John J. Ballentine Papers)%,%Naval dispatch from the Commander in Chief Pacific (CINCPAC) announcing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941.%,%7 December 1941%,%The United States entered World War II on 7 December 1941 when Japanese planes launched a surprise attack on the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The first official word of the attack that reached the rest of the United States came in a hurried dispatch from the ranking United States naval officer in Pearl Harbor, the Commander in Chief Pacific (CINCPAC), sent to all major navy commands and fleet units. This is a copy of the dispatch sent to the Commander in Chief Atlantic (CINCLANT) and received by the USS Ranger, an aircraft carrier that was returning to Norfolk, Virginia, from an ocean patrol when the attack occurred. The dispatch is one of five thousand items in the papers of Adm. John J. Ballentine (1896-1970), aviator and naval officer, deposited in the Manuscript Division by the Naval Historical Foundation.%,%John E. Haynes, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/002/0001t%,%mm+89078663%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/b/ballenti.txt%,%mcc/002%,%A6 (color slide); LC-MSS-78663-1 (B&W negative)%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Ballentine, John J. (1896-1970)/Japan/Naval Historical Foundation/Naval officers/Pearl Harbor (Hawaii)/United States Navy/Ranger (Aircraft carrier: CVA-6)/World War, 1939-1945%
%U%,%Batchelder, John Davis (John Davis Batchelder Autograph Collection)%,%Petition for bail from accused witches, ca. 1692.%,%ca. 1692%,%Many American colonists brought with them from Europe a belief in witches and a fascination with alleged conspiracies with the devil. During the seventeenth century, people were executed for witchcraft throughout the colonies, especially in Massachusetts. Many of the accused were women, prompting some recent historians to suggest that charges of witchcraft were a way of controlling women who threatened the existing economic and social order. In 1692 the famous Salem, Massachusetts, witchcraft trials took place, and that summer hundreds of people in the colony were arrested. Shown here is an appeal from ten women "besides thre or foure men" who were confined without trial in the Ipswich jail for many months. The petitioners--some "fettered with irons," some pregnant, and all "weake and infirme"--request that they be released on "bayle" to stand trial the following spring so that they do not "perish with cold" during the winter months.%,%Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/003/0001t%,%mm+78012021%,,%mcc/003%,%A7 (color slide of original); LC-MSS-12021-1 (B&W negative of original); LC-MSS-12021-2 (B&W negative of typescript)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Imprisonment/Law/Massachusetts/Prisons/Salem (Mass.)/Witchcraft/Women%
%U%,%Bell, Alexander Graham (Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers)%,%Alexander Graham Bell's design sketch of the telephone, ca. 1876.%,%ca. 1876%,%This sketch made its way from Boston, Massachusetts, to Australia and back to the United States in time for its display at a 1976 Library of Congress exhibition celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the first successful telephone experiment conducted by inventor and educator Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922). Drawn by Bell himself and inscribed "To Miss Frances M. Symonds, from A. G. B.," the sketch shows the essentials of Bell's dramatic new invention. During the summer of 1876, Edward Symonds and his three daughters were visiting his sister, Bell's mother Eliza Grace, and it was at this time that Bell gave his cousin the sketch, of which he wrote, "As far as I can remember these are the first drawings made of my telephone--or 'instrument for the transmission of vocal utterances by telegraph.'"
The middle sketch perhaps best explains Bell's invention in that it resembles a rough draft of the finished drawing submitted by him in his 1876 patent. On the left, a person is shown speaking into the wide end of a cone, which focuses the sound vibrations onto a membrane at its narrower, opposite end. These sound waves vibrate the membrane or diaphragm, which is attached to an armature connected to an electromagnet (the small, rectangular box at the narrow end of the cone). When the diaphragm vibrates, the armature also vibrates, inducing electrical signals via the electromagnet, which travel across the circuit (shown by Bell's wavy, up-and-down lines across a straight line) to the electromagnet on the right. These signals induce the armature on that side to copy the vibrations sent by the left armature, and these vibrations, in turn, are mimicked by the diaphragm on the wide end of the cone on the right. A listener at its other, narrow end thus hears a true reproduction of the original utterance.
This sketch, a unique piece of communications history, was a long-treasured Bell family heirloom that somehow left the United States. It was recovered in Australia by Bell's grandson, Melville Bell Grosvenor (1901-1982), who gave it to the Library of Congress, stating, "I was indeed lucky to locate this hand-pencilled sketch of the telephone which was treasured for years by the Australian members of the Bell family."%,%Leonard C. Bruno, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/004/0001t%,%mm+76051268%,,%mcc/004%,%A8 (color slide; front); A9 (color slide; verso); LC-MSS-51268-6 (B&W negative; front)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Australia/Bell, Alexander Graham (1847-1922)/Communications/Electromagnetism/Inventions/Inventors/Symonds, Edward/Symonds, Frances M./Telegraph/Telephone%
%U%,%Bell, Alexander Graham (Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers)%,%"Autumn," poem by Helen Keller, 27 October 1893.%,%27 October 1893%,%This poem was written by thirteen-year-old Helen Keller (1880-1968) who, only six years before, was "a wild little creature" who lived in the chilling emptiness and confusion of having been deaf and blind since she was nineteen months old. In early 1887, Keller's father brought her to the attention of Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), the inventor of the telephone and a teacher and advocate of the deaf. Bell recommended Keller to the Perkins Institute, stating that she was certainly capable of being taught. There she began a lifelong association with teacher Annie Sullivan (1866-1936), who, in less than three weeks, used finger spelling to communicate with Keller by manually pressing the alphabet onto the child's palm. This enabled Keller to make her famous breakthrough in understanding--realizing the simple but profound notion that people and things had names. Keller called this awakening her "soul's birthday," and attributed its occurrence to Bell, whom she later described as "the door through which I should pass from darkness into light."
Significantly, it was also Bell who encouraged Keller to attend a regular school, thus permitting her eventually to graduate cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1904. All her life she remained a grateful, close friend of Bell, visiting his home and family, and in this case, dedicating this intensely descriptive poem to her kind and loving mentor. Bell also had taken early note of Keller's "marvelous knowledge of language" and believed she had a future in literature. Many called Keller's achievements a miracle, but Bell, ever the scientist, insisted that Sullivan's success with the child was not supernatural but rather a brilliantly successful experiment.%,%Leonard C. Bruno, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/064/0001t%,%mm+76051268%,,%mcc/064%,%A10 (color slide)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Bell, Alexander Graham (1847-1922)/Communication--blind-deaf/Education of the blind-deaf/Finger spelling/Inventors/Keller, Helen (1880-1968)/Poems/Sullivan, Annie (1866-1936)/Women%
%U%,%Blackwell Family (Blackwell Family Papers)%,%Letter, Elizabeth Blackwell to Baroness Anne Isabella Milbanke Byron concerning women's rights and the education of women physicians, 4 March 1851.%,%4 March 1851%,%I do not wish to give [women] a first place, still less a second one--but the most complete freedom, to take their true place whatever it may be," asserted pioneer physician Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) in this spirited response to a suggestion by Lady Noel Byron (1792-1860) that women doctors should assume a secondary position in the medical profession. Blackwell, who against great odds became the first woman in the United States to obtain a medical degree, took umbrage at Byron's "fatal error" of ranking human beings according to sex instead of character."
Only two years earlier, in January 1849, Blackwell had completed a rigorous medical education at Geneva College in west central New York, the only school to have accepted her application, despite the fact that she had studied medicine privately for four years. Blackwell later learned that the Geneva medical students, who had been given the final say on her admission, had voted to accept her because they believed her application was a joke perpetrated by a rival school. When Blackwell arrived for classes in November 1847, however, she earned her fellow students' respect and acceptance. She later wrote in her autobiography that the medical students' behavior was "admirable" and "that of true gentlemen," but she noted that other students and the townspeople were less accepting and had determined that she was either "a bad woman whose designs would gradually become evident, or that, being insane, an outbreak of insanity would soon be apparent."(1) In applying to Geneva College, Blackwell had resisted advice to study abroad or to disguise herself as a man to attend an American school. She felt strongly that challenging the educational barriers faced by prospective women doctors was a "moral crusade . . . a course of justice and common sense,"(2) a belief apparent in her letter to Lady Byron when discussing the obstacles she faced.
After graduating from Geneva College, Blackwell studied briefly in Paris and then in London, where she became acquainted with that country's leading literary and scientific figures. She also began lifelong friendships with Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), a self-taught expert in nursing who had not yet achieved fame for her work during the Crimean War, and Anne Isabella Milbanke, the mathematician and heiress known as Lady Byron since her short and unsuccessful marriage to romantic poet Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), who in happier times had affectionately dubbed his wife the "princess of Parallelograms."(3)
Lady Byron learned of Blackwell through mutual friends and the two initiated a correspondence when the young doctor interned at a London hospital. Blackwell wrote to her sister that she had never met a woman with greater scientific interests and knowledge. She greatly admired the older women's "rare intelligence" and "long experience" and described for her sister an invigorating three-day visit to Byron's fashionable home in Brighton. There Blackwell met noted Irish author Mrs. Anna Jameson (1794-1860) and flamboyant Shakespearean actress Fanny Kemble (1809-1893). She also conversed with Byron on a variety of topics in a lively manner characteristic of their subsequent correspondence.(4)
Byron and other supporters wanted Blackwell to establish a practice in England based on her interests in preventive medicine, sanitation and moral reform, personal hygiene, and natural remedies like hydrotherapy and fresh-air treatments. Blackwell, however, believed that she would meet with less resistance in America, where medical schools had begun admitting more women. Unfortunately she miscalculated the difficulty of her endeavor. Arriving in New York in August 1851, Blackwell found herself barred from practice in city hospitals and considered comparable to a notorious abortionist, who also identified herself as a "female physician." In 1853 Blackwell opened a small dispensary in one of the city's tenement districts, where she was later joined, first by her sister, Dr. Emily Blackwell (1826-1910), and then by Dr. Marie Zakrzewska (1829-1902), both recent medical school graduates. The following year, the three women opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.
Throughout this difficult time in her life, Blackwell kept in touch with Byron and other British friends, some of whom contributed financially to the hospital. In 1858 she returned to England to help advance women's medical training there and supposedly delivered a lecture that prompted British medical pioneer Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) to become a doctor. In 1869, having achieved her goal of establishing a medical college for women in the United States, Blackwell entrusted the hospital and college to her sister and "retired" to England, where she later died in 1910.
(1) Elizabeth Blackwell, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women: Autobiographical Sketches by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), 70-73.
(2)Ibid., 62.
(3)Joan Baum, The Calculating Passion of Ada Byron (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1996), 14.
(4)Blackwell, Pioneer Work, 181-183.%,%Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/065/0001t%,%mm+78012880%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/b/blackwel.txt%,%mcc/065%,%A11 (color slide; pages 1 and 4); A12 (color slide; pages 2 and 3)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett (1836-1917)/Blackwell, Elizabeth (1821-1910)/Blackwell, Emily (1826-1910)/Byron, Anne Isabella Milbanke Byron, Baroness (1792-1860)/Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron (1788-1824)/Education/Jameson, Anna Brownell Murphy (1794-1860)/Kemble, Fanny (1809-1893)/Medicine/Nightingale, Florence (1820-1910)/Physicians/Women/Zakrzewska, Marie (Marie Elizabeth) (1829-1902)%
%U%,%Blair Family (Blair Family Papers)%,%Letter (pages 13-20), Varina Davis to Montgomery Blair describing the capture of her husband, Jefferson Davis, 6 June 1865.%,%6 June 1865%,%As the Civil War drew to a close, Jefferson Davis (1808-1889), president of the Confederate States of America, fled Richmond with his cabinet in early April 1865 and began a trek southward with federal troops in pursuit. While still weighing the merits of forming a government in exile, Davis was captured by Union soldiers near Irwinville, Georgia, in early May 1865 and was indicted for treason against the United States government on 24 May. Whether by accident or design, Davis was wearing his wife's dark gray raglan (a short-sleeved cloak) and black shawl when he was captured. Although one of Davis's own aides was persuaded his chief had indeed disguised himself as a woman to abet his escape, First Lady Varina Howell Davis (1826-1906) was incensed at accusations of her husband's cowardice in the Northern press. Her letter to the powerful Montgomery Blair (1813-1883), a friend of earlier years and postmaster general under President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), provides a firsthand, detailed account of her husband's capture. Readers must decide for themselves whether the sequence of events was entirely coincidental or the efforts were calculated to deceive and were subsequently misconstrued by a wife's protective instincts.
After his capture, Davis was imprisoned in Fort Monroe, Virginia, until May 1867 when he was released on bail. He was never brought to trial and refused to request a pardon or the restoration of his citizenship. Varina Davis, captured with her husband, was detained as a regional prisoner in Savannah until she was permitted to join Jefferson at Fort Monroe, where she worked to secure his freedom. Following Jefferson Davis's release, the couple lived apart for long intervals, with Varina spending time in Europe and Memphis, Tennessee. After several unsuccessful business ventures, Jefferson Davis retired to Beauvoir, his home near Biloxi, Mississippi, and began writing his two-volume memoir The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, which Varina later helped edit.%,%Janice E. Ruth and John R. Sellers, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/005/0001t%,%mm+79012930%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/b/blair.txt%,%mcc/005%,%A13 (color slide; page 16); A14 (color slide; page 17)%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Arrest/Blair, Montgomery (1813-1883)/Civil War, 1861-1865/Davis, Jefferson (1808-1889)/Davis, Varina (1826-1906)/Disguise/Imprisonment/Prisoners of war/Women%
%U%,%Bluxome, Isaac D. (Isaac D. Bluxome Collection)%,%Letter, California vigilante committee to John Stephens, 5 September 1856.%,%5 September 1856%,%San Francisco in the 1850s epitomized the turbulence of California's Gold Rush era. The discovery of gold in 1848 transformed what had been a small Spanish settlement into a boom town, as thousands of young men flocked to California to make their fortunes as miners or by supplying goods and services to gold seekers. Rapid population growth (from approximately eight hundred residents in 1848 to nearly twenty-five thousand in 1851) brought increased crime typical of other mid-nineteenth century American cities. In response to the seeming incapacity of the young city's institutions to deal with urban disorder, San Francisco merchants established a "Committee of Vigilance" in 1851.
The seven-hundred-member organization declared San Francisco's elected government incapable of protecting the life and property of the city's citizens, claiming that role for itself. Its primary target was Australian immigrants, whom committee members considered responsible for much of the city's crime. In addition to preventing undesirable Australians from landing in San Francisco, the committee deported more than two dozen other individuals for various crimes and hanged four men accused of murder. The 1851 vigilance committee disbanded after sixty days, but the organization reemerged in 1856.
Numbering eight thousand and run by members of the city's business community, the 1856 committee expanded its mission to stamping out perceived political corruption in San Francisco as well as bringing criminals to justice. Like its predecessor, the 1856 committee turned over individuals accused of minor crimes to law enforcement authorities but otherwise had a contentious relationship with elected officials. The committee hanged four men for murder, including two who were forcibly removed from the local jail, and deported thirty others, most for alleged political impropriety. The latter targets were largely Democratic Party supporters, political opponents of the Whig and Know Nothing Party members who generally comprised the vigilance committee. Despite its popularity with most San Franciscans, the 1856 committee dissolved within three months. But its former members created the People's Party, which dominated city politics for the next decade.
Shown here is an example of the kind of document employed by the vigilance committees in pursuing their goals. Both the 1851 and 1856 groups were highly organized and operated according to defined procedures, which included trials for those accused of crimes. Most of the quasi-legal documents issued by the committee were drafted by Isaac Bluxome, Jr., secretary of the executive committees of both the 1851 and 1856 organizations. Rather than signing his name, Bluxome endorsed committee papers with "33 Secretary," indicating his serial number and office. This high degree of organization and adherence to procedure distinguished the San Francisco vigilance committees from popular avenues of justice like lynch mobs. Historians have been divided in their overall assessment of the committees. Many historians, especially in the nineteenth century, considered the vigilance committees legitimate alternatives to a corrupt government that failed to protect its citizens. Other historians portrayed the committees as politically motivated, anti-immigrant, and thirsty for power. Whatever their nature, the committees were imitated throughout the West during the second half of the nineteenth century and helped to shape both nineteenth- and twentieth-century conceptions of the American West.%,%Stephen H. Urgola, Junior Fellow, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/066/0001t%,%mm+79002913%,,%mcc/066%,%A15 (color slide)%,%Miscellany/Miscellany Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Bluxome, Isaac D./California/Gold Rush/San Francisco (Calif.)/San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851/San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1856/Vigilantes%
%U%,%Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Records (Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Records)%,%Letter, Martin Luther King, Jr., to A. Philip Randolph concerning King's Nobel Peace Prize, 2 November 1964. Reproduced subject to LICENSE GRANTED BY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES MANAGEMENT, ATLANTA, GEORGIA, AS MANAGER OF THE KING ESTATE.%,%2 November 1964%,%Nineteen sixty-four was an eventful year for civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), the director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In the summer, he was arrested after joining other SCLC workers in St. Augustine, Florida, who were demonstrating for the desegregation of public accommodations; his book Why We Can't Wait was published by Harper and Row; and he was present when President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) signed the Public Accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In fall 1964, King visited Pope Paul VI (1897-1978) at the Vatican and Mayor Willy Brandt (1913-1992) in West Berlin, Germany. His year was capped off, however, on 10 December when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, an award which acknowledged the international acclaim accorded him as leader of the crusade for full citizenship rights for African Americans. In his acceptance speech, King said, "I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when twenty-two million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award in behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice."(1)
On 14 October 1964, upon learning that King would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, black labor leader A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) sent his younger colleague a congratulatory telegram, telling King that he "richly deserved" the prize "as one of the great prophets and moral leaders of the world." Randolph added, "Your life and leadership not only reflect great credit and honor upon yourself and the Negro race but [are] also an inspiration of Negro youth of this and future generations." He hailed King for his "brilliant and matchless leadership" and bid him "forward in the battle for racial and social justice for black and white Americans."(2) King responded to Randolph's telegram in the 2 November 1964 letter shown here. He saluted the elder statesman's work and stated that the prize was "an award for the whole civil rights movement and its dedicated leaders" and that it "should inspire all of us to work a little harder and with more determination to make the American Dream a reality."
(1)New York Times, 11 December 1964, 33.
(2) A. Philip Randolph to Martin Luther King, 14 October 1964, A. Philip Randolph Papers, Box 2, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.%,%Debra Newman Ham, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/067/0001t%,%mm+73048439%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/b/brother.txt%,%mcc/067%,%A16 (color slide); LC-MSS-48439-1 (B&W negative)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%African Americans/Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters/Civil rights movement/King, Martin Luther (1929-1968)/Nobel Prizes/Randolph, A. Philip (Asa Philip) (1889-1979)%
%U%,%Buford, Charles (Charles Buford Papers)%,%Letter with colored sketch, James W. Duke to an unidentified cousin, written from a Union prison camp, 31 August 1864.%,%31 August 1864%,%There were about 150 military prisons on both the Confederate and Union sides during the American Civil War. The type of structures used to house prisoners of war included forts and fortifications, jails, penitentiaries, altered warehouses and factories, and enclosed barracks and tents. Only the South used open stockades. The facilities most dreaded by Confederate prisoners were the bleak and inaccessible fortifications at Fort Delaware in the Delaware River and Fort Warren in Boston harbor, Massachusetts, but no northern prison equaled the horrors of the Andersonville stockade in southern Georgia where more than thirteen thousand men died from exposure, malnutrition, and disease.
This color sketch of the federal prison on Rock Island, a small strip of land in the Mississippi River between Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, was found in a letter written by Confederate soldier James W. Duke to his cousin (presumably a woman) in Georgetown, Kentucky. The sketch was drawn by a soldier identified only as H. Junius, and it apparently is the item described in Duke's letter as "the picture of our row of Barracks." Duke likely inserted it as a keepsake and token of his gratitude for his cousin's "kind letter." As Duke's letter suggests, prisoners often sent various items, including prison-made jewelry, to civilians who wrote to them or supplied such comfort commodities as tobacco and baked goods.
Rock Island prison was authorized in July 1863. When finished, it consisted of eighty-four barracks, 82 feet long and 22 feet wide, arranged in six rows of fourteen each, and surrounded by a high fence. Each barrack contained two stoves for cooking, but potable water was scarce and at times nonexistent. From December 1863 until the end of the war, Rock Island held between five thousand and eight thousand Confederate prisoners, many of whom arrived before the facility was completed. Obviously, this idyllic sketch of men strolling peacefully on the grounds or performing routine chores among the neatly maintained barracks reveals more about the restrictions placed on outgoing mail than on actual conditions within the prison. Knowledgeable viewers can only assume that the artist was obliged to show the prison in as good a light as possible in order to get it by the guards, many of whom also served unofficially as censors.%,%John R. Sellers, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/068/0001t%,%mm+79000300%,,%mcc/068%,%A17 (color slide of letter); A18 (color slide of sketch)%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Civil War, 1861-1865/Drawings/Duke, James W./Imprisonment/Junius, H./Prisoners of war/Prisons/Rock Island (Ill.)/Soldiers%
%U%,%Burr, Aaron (Aaron Burr Papers)%,%Subpoena served on Thomas Jefferson to testify at Aaron Burr's trial for treason, 13 June 1807.%,%13 June 1807%,%Although relationships between presidents and their vice-presidents have often been strained or at best perfunctory, the situation between Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and Aaron Burr (1756-1836) was perhaps even more tense than most. Both men had vied for the presidency in 1800 and received an equal number of votes, forcing the election into the House of Representatives, which, on the thirty-sixth ballot, elected Jefferson president and Burr vice-president. Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), former secretary of the treasury and one of Burr's political rivals, played a key role in Jefferson's victory and later hindered Burr's bid for the New York governorship. While still vice-president, Burr retaliated by challenging Hamilton to a duel. On 11 July 1804, the two met at Weehawken, New Jersey, where Burr mortally shot Hamilton. The vice-president of the United States was indicted for murder in both New York and New Jersey, but the charges were later dropped.
After completing his term and discredited by the duel with Hamilton, Burr sought to regain political power by a filibustering adventure, which led instead to his indictment for treason. He was accused of leading an expedition to create an independent nation along the Mississippi River by separating territories from the United States and Spain. With Chief Justice John Marshall (1755-1835) sitting as circuit judge, Burr was tried for treason in federal court in Richmond, Virginia, in 1807. In the document displayed here, Burr sought to subpoena Jefferson, who was serving his second term as president, to produce documents for Burr's defense, including War Department orders and copies of the letter and other papers sent to Jefferson by Gen. James Wilkinson (1757-1825), Burr's co-conspirator who had betrayed Burr and alerted Jefferson to his former vice-president's scheme. Without directly confronting the judiciary, Jefferson refused to honor either this subpoena or the second one he received later in the summer. Instead he chose to supply only parts of some of the items requested and upheld the presidential right to withhold documents that could jeopardize the public interest. Burr was eventually acquitted for lack of evidence, a verdict many historians attribute to Marshall's jury instructions, which included a narrow interpretation of the Constitution's treason clause.
By mid-1808 Burr had exiled himself to Europe where he engaged in various filibustering schemes to overthrow Jefferson, unite France and Great Britain against the United States, and return Canada to France. In 1812, Burr returned to New York and resumed the practice of law. He died in 1836.%,%Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/069/0001t%,%mm+73004263%,,%mcc/069%,%A19 (color slide)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Arrest/Burr, Aaron (1756-1836)/Elections/Hamilton, Alexander (1757-1804)/Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)/Law/Marshall, John (1755-1835)/Presidents/Subpoena/Treason/Trials/Vice-Presidents/Wilkinson, James (1757-1825)%
%U%,%Calhoun, John C. (John C. Calhoun Papers)%,%John C. Calhoun's speech to the United States Senate against the Compromise of 1850, 4 March 1850.%,%4 March 1850%,%The famous South Carolinian John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) made his last Senate speech during the course of the great debate over the Compromise of 1850, a complicated and controversial set of resolutions sponsored by Henry Clay (1777-1852) of Kentucky. At age sixty-eight, emaciated and spectral in appearance, Calhoun was clearly a dying man as he was assisted to his desk on the Senate floor a few minutes past noon on 4 March 1850. A black cloak, which he had pulled around him, added to the drama of the scene. The tension that had been mounting between the North and the South had now brought the Union close to the breaking point, and Calhoun was present before crowded galleries to assert that the equilibrium that had long existed between the two sections had been destroyed. The elements of Clay's compromise calling for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and the admission of California as a free state were not negotiable to Calhoun and his followers. In his view, the sovereignty of the states was at stake, and the slavery question was moved squarely to the forefront of the debate.
Calhoun's speech, covering forty-two pages in manuscript, had been prepared with great care, in spite of his feeble condition. He had, however, been unable to write it out himself and dictated it over the course of two days to his secretary, Joseph Alfred Scoville (1815-1864), who would later be his biographer. Calhoun then revised the text, making corrections and emendations in his own hand that are apparent in the manuscript. He was also too weak to deliver the speech himself and had Sen. James Murray Mason (1798-1871) of Virginia read from a printed version for him. The emphasis was wholly on northern aggressions and against the trend for conciliation and compromise. Two separate nations now existed, and if the differences between them could not be settled, the two should agree to part in peace. One biographer has written that as the South Carolinian's final words were read, Calhoun "sat motionless in his chair, sweeping the chamber now and again with deeply luminous eyes."(1) Calhoun would return to the Senate on 7 March to listen to the speech given by Daniel Webster (1782-1852) in favor of Clay's resolutions, and he appeared there for the final time on 13 March. He died on 31 March 1850.
(1) Charles M. Wiltse, John C. Calhoun: Sectionalist, 1840-1850 (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1951), 465.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/009/0001t%,%mm+75014787%,,%mcc/009%,%A20 (color slide; page 1)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Abolitionism/Antislavery movements/Calhoun, John C. (John Caldwell) (1782-1850)/Clay, Henry (1777-1852)/Compromise of 1850/Congress/Legislators/Mason, J. M. (James Murray) (1798-1871)/Scoville, Joseph Alfred (1815-1864)/Sectionalism (U.S.)/Slavery/Speeches/Webster, Daniel (1782-1852)/United States Senate%
%U%,%Chanute, Octave (Octave Chanute Papers)%,%Letter, Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute concerning the Wright brothers' aviation experiments, 13 May 1900.%,%13 May 1900%,%Engineer Octave Chanute (1832-1910), a friend and supporter of Wilbur Wright (1867-1912) and his brother Orville Wright (1871-1948), is considered by many to be the patriarch of American aviation pioneers. Chanute's correspondence with the Wright brothers consists of several hundred letters touching on every phase and stage of aeronautical development between 1900 and 1910. This literary exchange records the development of practical flight with clarity and candor. And since the Wrights generally kept no copies of their outgoing letters, researchers are indebted to Chanute, who saved virtually everything he received from them. The brothers' correspondence, which provides data on their thinking, experiments, and aerodynamic designs, assists researchers in determining how they produced a successful airplane while others failed.
In the 13 May 1900 letter shown here, Wilbur Wright articulates his belief that manned flight is attainable and states that intelligence and skill are more important prerequisites for success than perfected machinery. Wright declares that flight pioneers need to share insights and successes, and he argues that doing so will cause them no financial harm, since he believes it is unlikely that the inventor of the first flying machine will make a profit. Also contained in the letter is a description of Wright's projected training regimen and a request for advice on geographical locations boasting strong wind velocities and other attributes needed in a test site.%,%Marvin W. Kranz, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/006/0001t%,%mm+78015560%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/c/chanute.txt%,%mcc/006%,%A21 (color slide; first page); A22 (color slide; last page); LC-MSS-15560-1 (B&W negatives; pages 1-5)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Aeronautics/Airplanes/Chanute, Octave (1832-1910)/Engineering/Inventions/Inventors/Transportation/Wright, Orville (1871-1948)/Wright, Wilbur (1867-1912)%
%U%,%Clay, Henry (Henry Clay Family Papers)%,%Henry Clay's appointment as secretary of state, 7 March 1825.%,%7 March 1825%,%In the presidential campaign of 1824 the candidates were John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), Henry Clay (1777-1852), William Harris Crawford (1772-1834), and Andrew Jackson (1767-1845). Clay received the smallest number of votes cast and was eliminated from the race. Since none of the other candidates had received a majority of the electoral college votes, the outcome was decided by the House of Representatives. Clay used his influence to help deliver the vote of Kentucky's congressional delegation to Adams, in spite of a resolution by the Kentucky state legislature that instructed the delegation to vote for Jackson. When Clay was subsequently appointed to the first place in Adams's cabinet--secretary of state--the Jackson camp raised the cry of "corrupt bargain," a charge that was to follow Clay thereafter and thwart his future presidential ambitions.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/007/0001t%,%mm+78016105%,,%mcc/007%,%A23 (color slide)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Diplomacy and Foreign Policy/Diplomacy and Foreign Policy Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848)/Cabinet officers/Clay, Henry (1777-1852)/Congress/Crawford, William Harris (1772-1834)/Elections/Jackson, Andrew (1767-1845)/Presidential appointments/Presidents/United States House of Representatives%
%U%,%Cushing, Caleb (Caleb Cushing Papers)%,%Watercolor by George R. West of the Buddhist Temple of the Goddess of Mercy, Macao, China, where the first Sino-American treaty was signed in 1844.%,%1844%,%The Buddhist Temple of the Goddess of Mercy, located in the settlement of Wang-Hsia on the island of Macao, the Portuguese colony lying off the delta of the Canton River, was the site of the signing of the Treaty of Wang-Hsia. Caleb Cushing (1800-1879), of Newburyport, Massachusetts, a United States representative prior to his mission to China, successfully negotiated this first treaty between the United States and China. Signed on 3 July 1844, it won the same concessions that the British had gained in the Treaty of Nanking following the conclusion of the Opium War in 1842. Five treaty ports were to be opened to United States trade, and the principle of extraterritoriality was set forth, whereby United States citizens living in China would be tried by the United States consul in accordance with the laws of the United States. The watercolor on paper of the Buddhist Temple at Wang-Hsia was painted by George R. West (1811-1877), who was included in Cushing's diplomatic entourage as an official painter. It is one of many paintings in the Cushing Papers relating to the 1844 mission.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/008/0001t%,%mm+78017509%,,%mcc/008%,%A24 (color slide); LC-MSS-17509-4 (B&W negative and color transparency)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Diplomacy and Foreign Policy/Diplomacy and Foreign Policy Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Artists/China/Cushing, Caleb (1800-1879)/Diplomacy/Diplomats/Exterritoriality/Foreign relations/Macao/Painters/Treaties/Treaty of Wang-Hsia (1844)/Wang-Hsia, Macao/West, George R. (1811-1877)%
%U%,%Cushing, Caleb (Caleb Cushing Papers)%,%Letter, Roger Brooke Taney to Caleb Cushing thanking Cushing for his support of Taney's decision in the Dred Scott case, 9 November 1857.%,%9 November 1857%,%Dred Scott v. Sanford, 19 How. 393, was decided by the United States Supreme Court on 6 March 1857. Scott (1809-1858), a slave, had been taken many years before from Missouri, a slave state, to the free state of Illinois and to Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was forbidden by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. After returning to Missouri, he sued for his freedom on the grounds that his residence in a free state and in free territory had released him from bondage. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (1777-1864), delivering the opinion of the Court, held that a slave's status was fixed by the laws of the state in which he lived. Scott, as a slave, could not be a citizen and could not sue in the federal courts. Furthermore, since slaves were only property, they could not be regulated by Congress and excluded from any territory. The Missouri Compromise, which had already been repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, was "not warranted by the Constitution, and [was] therefore void." Scott had not been made free by being carried into territory north of the compromise line. This decision greatly inflamed the sectional controversy and was denounced by antislavery elements everywhere.
Caleb Cushing (1800-1879), who had served as attorney general under President Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), represented a minority voice raised in the North in support of Taney. In a major speech in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in October 1857, Cushing defended Taney as "the very incarnation of judicial purity, integrity, science and wisdom."(1) Grateful for this support, Taney thanked Cushing in this letter of 9 November 1857, indicating that the "public mind" was not "in a condition to listen to reason" and noting that "wild passions ruled the hour." The Dred Scott decision was eventually made obsolete by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. The aged Taney, considered to have been in the service of the "slave power," came to be judged in the light of the Dred Scott decision, and the prestige he had earned over a long and productive career in public service disappeared.
(1) Caleb Cushing, Speech Delivered in City Hall, Newburyport, October 31, 1857 (Boston: The Boston Post, 1857), 45.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/070/0001t%,%mm+78017509%,,%mcc/070%,%A25 (color slide; pages 1 and 2); A26 (color slide; pages 3 and 4)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%African Americans/Antislavery movements/Cushing, Caleb (1800-1879)/Dred Scott v. Sanford/Law/Missouri compromise (1820)/Scott, Dred (1809-1858)/Slavery/Taney, Roger Brooke (1777-1864)/United States Supreme Court%
%U%,%De Forest, Lee (Lee De Forest Papers)%,%Lee De Forest's schematic diagrams and scientific notes on hotel stationery, ca. 1915.%,%1915%,%The prolific American inventor Lee De Forest (1873-1961), is one of several contenders for the title "Father of Radio." Having obtained a doctorate from Yale University in 1899 after writing what was possibly the first dissertation on the newly discovered Hertzian (or radio) waves, De Forest experimented with receiving long-distance radio signals and in 1907 patented an electronic device named the audion. Until this time, radio was considered little more than "wireless telegraphy," since it sent Morse code (dots and dashes) instead of conveying actual sound like the telephone does. De Forest's new three-electrode (triode) vacuum tube boosted radio waves as they were received and made possible what was then called "wireless telephony." To the great surprise and pleasure of nearly everyone, De Forest's invention allowed the human voice, music, or any broadcast signal to be heard loud and clear. De Forest went on to make other contributions to radio and motion pictures, but his audion remains undoubtedly the most important development in electronics until the transistor was invented in 1948. Shown here are examples of De Forest's schematic diagrams and notes scribbled hurriedly on hotel stationery around 1915.%,%Leonard C. Bruno, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/010/0001t%,%mm+78018168%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/d/deforest.txt%,%mcc/010%,%A27 (color slide; page 1); A28 (color slide; page 2)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Audion/Communications/De Forest, Lee (1873-1961)/Electronics/Inventions/Inventors/Radio/Sketches/Telegraph%
%U%,%Douglass, Frederick (Frederick Douglass Papers)%,%Chapter from Frederick Douglass's draft manuscript of his autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, ca. 1880.%,%ca. 1880%,%The Washington, D.C., home and personal papers of abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895) were preserved by the tireless efforts of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Association, a group composed almost entirely of African-American women. When the association had raised enough money to preserve "Cedar Hill," the house in Anacostia where Douglass lived from 1877 until his death in 1895, it turned the site over to the United States National Park Service. The Park Service, in turn, asked the Library of Congress to house the papers found in the Douglass home.
The Frederick Douglass Papers span the years 1841-1967, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1862-95. The collection includes a draft of Douglass's much-reprinted autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). Life and Times is the final form of an autobiography first published as the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and later expanded in My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). In this chapter from the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Douglass recounts how he used the papers of a free African-American sailor to escape from slavery.%,%Adrienne Cannon, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/011/0001t%,%mm+75011879%,,%mcc/011%,%A31 (color slide; page 1); LC-MSS-11879-1 (B&W negative; page 1)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Abolitionists/African Americans/Autobiography/Cedar Hill (Washington, D.C.)/Douglass, Frederick (1817?-1895)/Historic preservation/Literature/Slave narratives/Slavery%
%U%,%Feinberg-Whitman (Charles E. Feinberg-Walt Whitman Collection)%,%Letter, Ralph Waldo Emerson to Walt Whitman extolling Whitman's poetry, 21 July 1855.%,%21 July 1855%,%Probably the most important letter in American literary history, both its generous writer and its grateful recipient were in the middle of their lives in 1855. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), however, was already established as the intellectual scion of the "Boston Brahmins"--descendants of the New England Puritan worthies of the seventeenth century--and had become the most respected essayist, philosopher, and lecturer of his generation. "Walter Whitman, Esq." (1819-1892), on the other hand, was a relatively unknown journalist and New York dandy who in 1855 burst upon the major literary scene with his anonymous first edition of Leaves of Grass.
Though Whitman would spend the rest of his life revising and enlarging his compendium of poetry, Leaves of Grass first appeared as a simple, slim volume of untitled poems exhibiting a revolutionary style and content. Whitman's arresting, long free verse lines with irregular accents and his radically new celebration of the human body and of the common man were to shape the direction of American poetry for the next century. For the great Emerson to praise the self-published book of an unknown author as "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed," was a coup of inestimable value to the younger poet. Whitman had carefully planted his name on the copyright page and identified himself within a verse on page twenty-nine, which enabled Emerson to contact him through the distributor, Fowler and Wells. With incredible foresight, Emerson greeted Whitman "at the beginning of a great career." He took "great joy" from Whitman's "free brave thought," in which he found "incomparable things said incomparably well."
Emerson's letter radically altered the critical diffidence, and Leaves of Grass quickly became a favorite among the cognoscenti, including leading abolitionists, though it never gained the favor of the masses in the poet's lifetime. Whitman, who was perhaps America's first self-publicist, allowed Emerson's letter to be published without the writer's permission in the New York Tribune and as a broadside. He then used parts of it on the cover of his next edition of Leaves of Grass, which in 1856 included new poems of a more erotic nature. Emerson was incensed, but Whitman was launched. He continued to publish major revisions of the book throughout his life--eleven different editions in all. As his opus developed through the Civil War years, it reflected major nineteenth-century events while continuing the celebration of self. With the last, big "Deathbed Edition" in 1892, Whitman's emphasis had shifted from the early erotic eclat to the heralding of poet as prophet and the celebration of a mystical democracy in lofty, philosophical tones.
This original Emerson letter, which perhaps saved America's greatest poet from oblivion, was the object of intense competition among major Whitman collectors--chiefly Charles E. Feinberg (1899-1988) and Oscar Lion. Feinberg obtained it from one of the heirs of Horace Traubel (1858-1919), a Whitman literary executor, and he eventually included it among the twenty thousand original items in the Charles E. Feinberg-Walt Whitman Collection in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division. The Feinberg-Whitman Collection is the largest such collection of Whitman papers in existence.%,%Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/012/0001t%,%mm+82018630%,,%mcc/012%,%A32 (color slide; page 1); A33 (color slide; pages 2 and 3); A34 (color slide; pages 4 and 5); LC-MSS-18630-5 (B&W negatives; pages 1-5)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)/Feinberg, Charles E. (1899-1988)/Literature/Leaves of Grass/Poets/Publishers/Traubel, Horace (1858-1919)/Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)%
%U%,%Fitch, John (John Fitch Papers in the Peter Force Papers)%,%John Fitch's sketch and description of piston for steamboat propulsion, ca. 1795.%,%ca. 1795%,%A pioneer in the application of steam for boat propulsion, John Fitch (1743-1798) constructed four different steamboats between 1785 and 1796 that successfully plied rivers and lakes and demonstrated, in part, the feasibility of using steam for water locomotion. His models utilized various combinations of propulsive force, including ranked paddles (patterned after Indian war canoes), paddle wheels, and screw propellers. While his boats were mechanically successful, Fitch failed to pay sufficient attention to construction and operating costs and was unable to justify the economic benefits of steam navigation. Robert Fulton (1765-1815) built his first boat after Fitch's death, and it was Fulton who became known as the "father of steam navigation."
Printer and historian Peter Force (1790-1868) assembled a collection of surviving Fitch manuscripts, including letters, account books, and mechanical sketches, which were later sold to the Library of Congress in 1867 along with the rest of Force's holdings. The diagram and description shown here provides a schematic of a piston designed to force air or water through the boat's keel, propelling it without allowing water to swamp the engine. It is not known whether Fitch's revolutionary design was ever fabricated.%,%Marvin W. Kranz, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/072/0001t%,%mm+79020727%,,%mcc/072%,%A35 (color slide); LC-MSS-20990-14 (B&W negative)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Boats and boating/Engineering/Fitch, John (1743-1798)/Force, Peter (1790-1868)/Fulton, Robert (1765-1815)/Inventions/Inventors/Navigation/Pistons/Steamboats/Transportation%
%U%,%Foulke, William Dudley (William Dudley Foulke Papers)%,%"The Tristram's Saga," vellum fragment in Icelandic, 15th century.%,%15th century%,%During the twelfth century, Norwegian kings sent scribes to France to transcribe Charlemagne tales and other contemporary romances. Among these was the Celtic-French Tristram or Tristan legend, which in part told of the love between a handsome nephew and his uncle's beautiful wife. Translated into Old Nordic, the Tristram saga evolved into a Scandinavian myth independent of the Celtic-French-English one. From the Old Nordic, the saga has been preserved in three versions, one of which was Icelandic. This vellum fragment represents a late-fifteenth-century Icelandic version.
The Library's fragment has two leaves, of which half the first is missing. Another fragment, in the Copenhagen University Library, has three leaves, one of which is incomplete. Both manuscripts measure 16.4 x 11.9 centimeters and have the same number of lines to a side. The Library's manuscript is known in some scholarly circles as "The Reeves Fragment" because it was found stitched into the back of a bound volume by Icelandic scholar Arthur Middleton Reeves (1856-1891), brother of Mrs. William Dudley Foulke. The manuscript, donated to the Library of Congress in 1965 by Reeves's grandniece Phoebe Cates of Paris, France, was placed in the papers of his brother-in-law William Dudley Foulke (1848-1935), a lawyer, public official, and Progressive-era reformer. Other Reeves material in the Foulke Papers includes the scholar's diary of his 1879 Iceland trip.%,%Marvin W. Kranz, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/013/0001t%,%mm+78021170%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/f/foulke.txt%,%mcc/013%,%A96 (color slide); LC-MSS-21170-1 (B&W negative)%,%Miscellany/Miscellany Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Foulke, William Dudley (1848-1935)/Icelandic language/Legends/Reeves, Arthur Middleton (1856-1891)/Sagas/Tristram saga/Tristan (Legendary character)%
%U%,%Frankfurter, Felix (Felix Frankfurter Papers)%,%Felix Frankfurter's draft decree to enforce the Brown v. Board of Education decision, [8 April 1955].%,%8 April 1955%,%On 17 May 1954 Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891-1974) delivered the Supreme Court's unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which declared school segregation in the United States unconstitutional. After the Brown opinion was announced, the Court heard additional arguments during the following term on the decree for implementing the ruling. When Warren announced the remedy in Brown II in 1955, he utilized an equitable conception that originated years earlier with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935)--"with all deliberate speed." In this draft of the decree prepared by Justice Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965) on 8 April 1955, which Warren subsequently adopted, Frankfurter used the phrase "with all deliberate speed" to replace "forthwith," the word proposed by National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lawyers to achieve an accelerated desegregation timetable. This draft decree, along with related unique documents in the Frankfurter Papers, has helped scholars analyze the evolution of Brown.
Frankfurter wanted to anchor the decree in an established doctrine associated with the revered Holmes, but his endorsement of "all deliberate speed" sought to advance a consensus held by the entire Court. Each justice thought that the decree should provide for flexible enforcement, should appeal to established principles, and should suggest some basic ground rules for judges of the lower courts, who would implement the Brown decision. Shortly after he retired from the Court, Warren acknowledged that "all deliberate speed" was chosen as a benchmark because "there were so many blocks preventing an immediate solution of the thing in reality that the best we could look for would be a progression of action." When it became clear, however, that critics of desegregation were using the doctrine to delay and avoid compliance with Brown, the Court began to express reservations about the phrase. In 1964, less than a decade after "all deliberate speed" was prescribed, Justice Hugo LaFayette Black (1886-1971) declared in a desegregation opinion that "[t]he time for mere 'deliberate speed' has run out."%,%David Wigdor, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/073/0001t%,%mm+73047571%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/f/frnkfrtr.txt%,%mcc/073%,%A36 (color slide; pages 1 and 2); LC-MSS-47571-3 (B&W negative; page 2)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%African Americans/Black, Hugo LaFayette (1886-1971)/Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas/Civil rights movement/Education/Frankfurter, Felix (1882-1965)/Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1841-1935)/Integration/Law/NAACP/National Association for the Advancement of Colored People/Schools/United States Supreme Court/Warren, Earl (1891-1974)%
%U%,%Freud, Sigmund (Sigmund Freud Collection)%,%Prescription written by Sigmund Freud for the wife of Sergius Pankejeff, the patient known as the "Wolf-Man," 22 November 1919.%,%22 November 1919%,%Raised as a Russian nobleman and treated by a series of neurologists for depression, Sergius Pankejeff (1887-1979) was twice analyzed by Viennese psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856- 1939), whose theories about the motivations and workings of the human mind revolutionized, for many, the meaning of human behavior. Pankejeff was one of Freud's best-known patients and has become famous in psychoanalytic history as the "Wolf-Man," because of his childhood dreams involving wolves and his self- revelatory painting of a pack of wolves sitting in a tree. Information about Pankejeff and his treatment by Freud may be found in his own collection of papers and in the voluminous Sigmund Freud Collection, both of which are held by the Manuscript Division.
Apparently in addition to treating Pankejeff, Freud also had dealings with the patient's family, as is suggested by the prescription shown here, which Freud wrote for Pankejeff's wife, Therese. Using one of his typical prescription blanks, Freud prescribed a solution of iodine in absolute (97
pure) alcohol for external use. Such a solution was typically used as a counter-irritant for skin problems. Few off-the-shelf medicines were available in the early 1900s, and pharmacists routinely hand-mixed most of the items they dispensed, following the guidelines given to them by the prescribing doctor.
The prescription is just one of the more than forty thousand items that make up the division's Freud Collection. In addition to holograph drafts of many of Freud's books and articles, the collection contains correspondence (including family and personal letters), school and university materials, patient case files, and miscellaneous materials relating to Freud and his associates and to the history of psychoanalysis. The Library's acquisition of the largest extant Freud collection is in itself an unusual story. In the aftermath of World War II, a group of psychoanalysts recognized that Freud's legacy was being dissipated because he kept no copies of his outgoing correspondence. Led by Dr. Kurt Eissler (1908- ) in New York, a group of Freud's admirers took action and created the Sigmund Freud Archives dedicated to collecting and preserving surviving Freud manuscripts. Lacking space and archival expertise, the group concluded an agreement in 1951 with Librarian of Congress Luther Harris Evans (1902-1981) to transfer its holdings to the Library. Since then the Sigmund Freud Archives has continued to enrich the Library's collections by obtaining Freud items and by encouraging other analysts to donate their papers. The most substantial addition to the collection came from Freud's daughter, Anna Freud (1895-1982), who bequeathed to the Library a substantial body of her father's papers as well as her own important collection documenting her career as a psychologist following in her famous father's footsteps.%,%Marvin W. Kranz, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/014/0001t%,%mm+80039990%,,%mcc/014%,%A37 (color slide)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Eissler, K. R. (Kurt Robert) (1908- )/Evans, Luther Harris (1902-1981)/Freud, Anna (1895-1982)/Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939)/Medicine/Pankejeff, Sergius (1887-1979)/Prescriptions/Psychoanalysts/Sigmund Freud Archives%
%U%,%Frissell, Toni (Toni Frissell Collection)%,%Letter, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy to Toni Frissell discussing Frissell's photographs of the Kennedys' September 1953 wedding reception in Newport, Rhode Island, [1953].%,%1953?%,%On 12 September 1953, President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), then a dashing young senator on-the-rise from Massachusetts, married Jacqueline Bouvier (1929-1994), a bright, witty, and stylish reporter for the Washington Times-Herald, who would later become one the most famous women in the world. The Kennedy-Bouvier wedding was the major social event of the year. Ten bridesmaids, fourteen ushers, and six hundred guests assembled in St. Mary's Church, Newport, Rhode Island, where Archbishop Richard Cushing (1895-1970) performed the ceremony. The reception, attended by fourteen hundred guests, was held at nearby Hammersmith Farm, the summer home of Jackie's mother, Janet Lee Auchincloss (1907-1989), and stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss (1897-1976), a wealthy Washington, D.C., lawyer and stockbroker.
Among those attending the wedding was Jackie's friend Toni Frissell (1907-1988), the celebrated photographer whose work graced the pages of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Sports Illustrated magazines throughout a long and exciting career that included a stint as a foreign correspondent in Europe during World War Two and several photojournalism assignments in England in the 1950s. While working for Harper's Bazaar, Frissell was assigned to take photographs at the Kennedy-Bouvier wedding reception. Frissell later wrote that she had difficulty getting the couple alone for photographs. "The Kennedy family was somewhat overwhelming. There are so many of them and they are so vital that they are bound to take over any place like a swarm of locusts."(1) Jackie saw to it that Frissell got some good shots, but Carmel Snow (1890-1961), Harper's editor phoned Frissell after the wedding to say that she had changed her mind about publishing the photographs, stating "There's been such notoriety they are worthless to Harper's Bazaar."2 When the magazine also refused to pay Frissell for her time or expenses, the photographer resigned and shortly thereafter took a position with Harper's rival, Vogue, for whom she had worked previously.
Although deemed unpublishable by Snow, Jackie wrote in this handwritten undated letter to Frissell that the photographs "were unbelievably perfect," and she had a hard time deciding which proofs to have printed. Many readers of this letter shake their heads in disbelief when Jackie suggests she may have to cross some selections off her list if the projected cost is "too fabulously expensive." Perhaps some of Mrs. Auchincloss's well-known thriftiness uncharacteristically surfaced in her daughter, but whatever the reason, most readers have difficulty reconciling Jackie's statement with the fact that she had just married into one of the country's wealthiest families and that her own personal estate, at the time of her death in 1994, was valued at approximately $50 million.
Before her death, one of the last books Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis worked on while a senior editor at Doubleday was Toni Frissell Photographs: 1933-1967, which Frissell's daughter produced from the extensive collection of photographs and personal papers that her mother had donated to the Library of Congress in 1971. Sidney Frissell Stafford dedicated this book to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
(1) Toni Frissell as quoted by George Plimpton in his Introduction to Toni Frissell Photographs: 1933-1967 (New York: Doubleday, 1994), xxxiv.
(2) Ibid.%,%Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/074/0001t%,%mm+79003983%,,%mcc/074%,%A39 (color slide; page 1) A40 (color slide; page 2)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Auchincloss, Hugh (1897-1976)/Auchincloss, Janet Lee (1907-1989)/First ladies/Frissell, Toni (1907-1988)/Harper's Bazaar (Magazine)/Journalists/Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald) (1917-1963)/Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy (1929-1994)/Photographers/Photojournalism/Presidents/Snow, Carmel (1890-1961)/Vogue (Magazine)/Weddings/Women%
%U%,%Gertz, Elmer (Elmer Gertz Papers)%,%Note, Jack Ruby to attorney Elmer Gertz revealing the assassin's despair and paranoia, 9 September 1965.%,%9 September 1965%,%On 24 November 1963, Dallas, Texas, police were transferring Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963), who had been arrested for murdering President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) two days earlier, from one jail to another. In the jail's basement garage, a crowd of journalists, photographers, and police watched as Oswald emerged and was about to be placed in a police car. In an action caught on television cameras, Jack Ruby (1912-1967), an owner of a Dallas nightclub and admirer of President Kennedy, edged forward in the crowd, drew a gun, and killed Oswald. Convicted of murder, Ruby was sentenced to be executed. He appealed and won a retrial on the basis that procedural errors had occurred. Before the retrial could be held, however, Ruby died in prison in 1967 of natural causes.
After his original conviction and during the appeal process, Ruby's mental condition disintegrated, and he increasingly became subject to delusions. At an appeal hearing in 1965 in Dallas, Ruby gave Elmer Gertz (1906- ), one of his attorneys, this note. In it, Ruby expressed despair and voiced his belief that government authorities in the courthouse were killing and torturing "our people," a reference to Jews. In a similar fashion, Ruby told his sister that government authorities were engaged in murdering twenty-five million Jews.%,%John E. Haynes, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/075/0001t%,%mm+82022665%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/g/gertz.txt%,%mcc/075%,%A41 (color slide; page 1) A42 (color slide; page 2)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Arrest/Assassinations/Dallas (Tex.)/Gertz, Elmer (1906- )/Imprisonment/Jews--Persecutions/Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald) (1917-1963)/Law/Lawyers/Oswald, Lee Harvey (1939-1963)/Prisons/Ruby, Jack (1912-1967)/Presidents/Texas/Trials%
%U%,%Gobitas, William (William Gobitas Papers)%,%Letter, Billy Gobitas to Minersville, Pennsylvania, school directors, explaining why the young Jehovah's Witness refused to salute the American flag, 5 November 1935.%,%5 November 1935%,%"I do not salute the flag because I have promised to do the will of God," wrote ten-year-old Billy Gobitas (1925-1989) to the Minersville, Pennsylvania, school board in 1935. His refusal, and that of his sister Lillian (age twelve), touched off one of several constitutional legal cases delineating the tension between the state's authority to require respect for national symbols and an individual's right to freedom of speech and religion.
The Gobitas children attended a public school which, as did most public schools at that time, required all students to salute and pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States. The Gobitas children were members of the Jehovah's Witnesses, a church that in 1935 believed that the ceremonial saluting of a national flag was a form of idolatry, a violation of the commandment in Exodus 20:4-6 that "thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, nor bow down to them. . . ." and forbidden as well by John 5:21 and Matthew 22:21. On 22 October 1935, Billy Gobitas acted on this belief and refused to participate in the daily flag and pledge ceremony. The next day Lillian Gobitas did the same. In this letter Billy Gobitas in his own hand explained his reasons to the school board, but on 6 November 1935, the directors of the Minersville School District voted to expel the two children for insubordination.
The Watch Tower Society of the Jehovah's Witnesses sued on behalf of the children. The decisions of both the United States district court and court of appeals was in favor of the right of the children to refuse to salute. But in 1940 the United States Supreme Court by an eight-to-one vote reversed these lower court decisions and ruled that the government had the authority to compel respect for the flag as a key symbol of national unity. Minersville v. Gobitis [a printer's error has enshrined a misspelling of the Gobitas name in legal records] was not, however, the last legal word on the subject. In 1943 the Supreme Court by a six-to-three vote in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, another case involving the Jehovah's Witnesses, reconsidered its decision in Gobitis and held that the right of free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution denies the government the authority to compel the saluting of the American flag or the recitation of the pledge of allegiance.
There had been strong public reaction against the Gobitis decision, which had been written by Justice Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965). In the court term immediately following the decision, Frankfurter noted in his scrapbook that Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980) told him that Justice Hugo LaFayette Black (1886-1971) had changed his mind about the Gobitis case. Frankfurter asked, "Has Hugo been re-reading the Constitution during the summer?" Douglas replied, "No--he has been reading the papers."(1) The Library's William Gobitas Papers showcase the perspective of a litigant, whereas the abstract legal considerations raised by Gobitis and other cases are represented in the papers of numerous Supreme Court justices held by the Manuscript Division.
(1) Quoted in H. N. Hirsch, The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 152.%,%John E. Haynes and David Wigdor, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/016/0001t%,%mm+89078637%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/g/gobitas.txt%,%mcc/016%,%A43 (color slide; page 1); A44 (color slide; page 2); LC-MSS-78637-1 (B&W negative; pages 1-2)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Black, Hugo LaFayette (1886-1971)/Children/Douglas, William O. (William Orville) (1898-1980)/Flags/Frankfurter, Felix (1882-1965)/Freedom of speech/Gobitas, Lillian/Gobitas, William (1925-1989)/Law/Pennsylvania/Religion/Schools/United States Supreme Court%
%U%,%Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses S. Grant Papers)%,%Ulysses S. Grant's commission as lieutenant general signed by Abraham Lincoln, 10 March 1864.%,%10 March 1864%,%Army officer and United States president Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) was at his best in war. Although he was a professional soldier, the United States Army probably was not the career he would have chosen had the decision been his alone. He was temperamentally unsuited to army life in peacetime, which for most soldiers in the 1840s meant long years of duty at a remote outpost on the western frontier. But Grant was also intelligent, single-minded, and almost fearless, attributes that served him well in battle. He entered the Mexican War as a first lieutenant and emerged from that one-sided contest as a captain with two citations for gallantry and one for meritorious conduct.
Grant's achievements during the Civil War were nothing less than spectacular. Having resigned his commission in 1854, partly to avoid court-martial, Grant reentered the army in 1861 as a colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Largely through successive victories by the troops under his command, he rose steadily in rank until he commanded all Union land forces. Shown here is Grant's commission as lieutenant general, which was presented to him by President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) on 10 March 1864, shortly after Congress had revived the rank at Lincoln's request. Only two men, George Washington (1732-1799) and Winfield Scott (1786-1866) had held the rank before Grant, and Scott's commission was by brevet. With this appointment, Grant essentially replaced his former nemesis, Gen. Henry W. Halleck (1815-1872), as "General in Chief of the Army" and was subject only to the Lincoln as commander in chief. Halleck was relegated to chief of staff.%,%John R. Sellers, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/017/0001t%,%mm+78023333%,,%mcc/017%,%A38 (color slide)%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Army officers/Civil War, 1861-1865/Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) (1822-1885)/Halleck, H. W. (Henry Wager) (1815-1872)/Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865)/Military commissions/Presidential appointments/Presidents/Scott, Winfield (1786-1866)/United States Army/Washington, George (1732-1799)%
%U%,%Guiteau, Charles (Charles Guiteau Collection)%,%New Year's greeting from presidential assassin Charles Julius Guiteau to his jailer, 31 December 1881.%,%31 December 1881%,%Presidential assassinations maintain a strong hold on the American imagination. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) continues to resonate with Americans, and Abraham Lincoln's murder holds a central place in the nation's memory. Many Americans have at least some awareness of the murder of William McKinley (1843-1901), which elevated Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) to the presidency. Far less known, however, is the assassination of the nation's twentieth president, James A. Garfield (1831-1881). Garfield died on 19 September 1881, seventy-nine days after being shot in the back at a Washington, D.C., railroad station. Garfield's assassination is poorly remembered today, largely due to the short span of time he served in office, only four months, and the little that was achieved during his presidency. Yet at the time, Garfield's death was deeply mourned, and his life's achievements would be impressive in any era. The son of poor Ohio farmers, Garfield acquired a Williams College education and later became a teacher and college president. He served as a Union major general early in the Civil War and in 1863 was elected to the United States House of Representatives. A compromise candidate for a divided Republican Party, Garfield defeated Democratic nominee Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock (1824-1886) by a slim margin in the 1880 presidential election.
Garfield's assassin was Charles Julius Guiteau (1841-1882), an Illinois native with a checkered career and erratic personal life. A failure at academic and journalistic pursuits, Guiteau turned to law, embarking on a marginal career tainted by dishonest practices. He also styled himself a preacher and student of religion, and as a young man spent several years at John Humphrey Noyes's utopian community in Oneida, New York. But Guiteau's lectures and writings on Christianity drew only meager audiences. Despite his dim career prospects, Guiteau lived well beyond his means, staying in fashionable hotels and purchasing expensive clothing without paying the bills. He was also known to be abusive, mistreating his wife (who divorced him in 1874 for his dalliances with prostitutes) and at one point threatening his sister with an axe.
By 1880 Guiteau had developed an interest in national politics. He was a hanger-on at Republican headquarters in New York City during the presidential campaign, and published a speech in support of Garfield's candidacy. After Garfield's election, Guiteau repeatedly pestered the president and members of his cabinet for appointments to diplomatic posts. Disappointed by their rebuffs, in spring 1881 Guiteau had what he described as a divine inspiration to take the president's life. Doing so, he believed, would heal the factionalism in the Republican Party and thereby save the nation. After stalking Garfield for several weeks, Guiteau shot the president in a Washington, D.C., railroad terminal on 2 July 1881.
Garfield survived until September, and Guiteau, captured at the scene of the assassination, stood trial for murder in November 1881. The trial was a national sensation and an important legal case as well, as Guiteau's attorney argued that his client was insane at the time of the shooting, an early use of such a defense. The trial became a forum on the issue of legal insanity, as thirty-six doctors testified as expert witnesses. Guiteau's conduct at trial also was notable. He constantly interrupted and berated the prosecuting attorneys, witnesses, judge, and even his own counsel, and he relished his celebrity status. Dozens of people wrote to him, seeking his autograph. Shown here is one such autograph, given to his jailer on the occasion of New Year's Eve 1881. Guiteau viewed the public's interest as an indication of support and a sign that he would be acquitted. But the jury rendered a guilty verdict on 26 January, and on 30 June 1882, Guiteau was executed by hangman's noose.%,%Stephen H. Urgola, Junior Fellow, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/076/0001t%,%mm+79001595%,,%mcc/076%,%A45 (color slide)%,%The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Arrest/Assassinations/Garfield, James A. (James Abram) (1831-1881)/Guiteau, Charles Julius (1841-1882)/Imprisonment/Insanity/Law/Presidents/Trials%
%U%,%Hamilton, Alexander (Alexander Hamilton Papers)%,%Alexander Hamilton's notes for a speech proposing a plan of government at the Federal Convention, [18 June 1787].%,%18 June 1787%,%Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), lawyer, Revolutionary patriot, and delegate to the Continental Congress, made these notes in preparation for a major speech delivered on 18 June 1787 at the Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An early and vocal critic of the Articles of Confederation, Hamilton was firmly aligned with the nationalist faction at the convention. Some historians believe that Hamilton's 18 June speech was his most important public document because it outlined his philosophy of government. Hamilton favored a centralized national government which placed strict limitations on the powers of states and individuals. He later addressed many of these same concerns in The Federalist Papers, the much-cited collection of essays he wrote with James Madison (1751-1836) and John Jay (1745-1829) to explain and encourage ratification of the Constitution, and in the public reports of the first federal administration, during which Hamilton served as secretary of the treasury.%,%Gerard W. Gawalt, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/018/0001t%,%mm+81024612%,,%mcc/018%,%A46 (color slide; first scanned image; no page number); LC-MSS-24612-14 (B&W negative; pages [95] and [98]) and LC-MSS-24612-15 (B&W negative; page [71])%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Articles of Confederation/Constitutional Convention/The Federalist Papers/Hamilton, Alexander (1757-1804)/Philadelphia (Pa.)/Speeches%
%U%,%Harriman, W. Averell (W. Averell Harriman Papers)%,%Memorandum in Russian from Joseph Stalin about opening a second front in Europe during World War II, with English translation of same, 13 August 1942.%,%13 August 1942%,%In 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) appointed financier and businessman W. Averell Harriman (1891-1986) as his "special representative" to Great Britain to manage the massive Lend-Lease program of American military aid to that country. Two years later, the president named Harriman ambassador to the Soviet Union (USSR), a position he held until 1946. Relations between the United States and the USSR had been distant during the Nazi-Soviet Pact (August 1939-June 1941). Although the United States was officially neutral, Roosevelt had thrown American diplomatic and economic weight behind those countries fighting Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), principally Great Britain. The USSR was also officially neutral, but under the Nazi-Soviet Pact it annexed Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia as well as parts of Poland and Romania and became one of the chief suppliers of fuel, food, and raw material to the Nazi war machine. All of this ended with the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. Beleaguered Britain immediately welcomed the Soviet Union as a powerful military ally against Hitler. The United States quickly extended to the USSR the Lend-Lease aid it was supplying to Britain, and after the United States entered the war in December 1941, the three nations became formal military allies.
In August 1942 Roosevelt appointed Harriman to represent the United States at a conference with British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (1879-1953). The Moscow Conference sought a common understanding of Soviet and Anglo-American military plans and was the highest level meeting to that time of the three allies. At the conference Churchill delivered some unwelcome news. He told Stalin that Western military planners had concluded that an Anglo-American invasion of Europe that year was military folly. The Soviets, however, desperately wanted a "second-front" to relieve Nazi pressure. (German forces occupied much of the western Soviet Union, held Leningrad under siege, and threatened Moscow.)
In response to Churchill's announcement, Stalin gave Harriman this memorandum, deploring the prime minister's decision and arguing that British and American forces were capable of invading Europe in 1942. In an attempt to break the joint British-American stance, Stalin also worded the memorandum to imply that the decision was a British one. (Churchill, however, spoke for the United States as well as his own country in this decision.)
This memorandum, one of the few documents with Stalin's handwritten signature extant in the West, illustrates the sometimes difficult nature of the American-Soviet alliance during World War II. Harriman's position as head of Lend-Lease in London and ambassador to Moscow placed him at the center of this demanding alliance. The copious memoranda, letters, cables, and personal notes in Harriman's papers make them an indispensable source of historical documentation of that relationship.%,%John E. Haynes, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/077/0001t%,%mm+85061911%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/h/harriman.txt%,%mcc/077%,%A47 (color slide; pages 1 and 2)%,%Diplomacy and Foreign Policy/Diplomacy and Foreign Policy Items List/Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Churchill, Winston, Sir (1874-1965)/Diplomacy/Diplomats/Great Britain/Harriman, W. Averell (1891-1986)/Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)/Lend-lease operations, 1941-1945/Moscow Conference (1942)/Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939)/Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano) (1882-1945)/Soviet Union/Stalin, Joseph (1879-1953)/World War, 1939-1945%
%U%,%Herndon, William Henry (Herndon-Weik Collection of Lincolniana)%,%Page of Abraham Lincoln's student sum book, ca. 1824-26.%,%ca. 1824-26%,%In his autobiography, President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) claimed that the aggregate of all his formal schooling did not amount to one year. His teachers in the pioneer schools of Indiana probably did not have access to an arithmetic textbook, using instead the mathematical problems found in handbooks such as Thomas Dilworth's Schoolmaster's Assistant. Paper was also scarce, and students often did their calculations (or ciphers) on boards, which they could shave clean and reuse. Lincoln, however, apparently managed to acquire a few sheets of paper that he sewed together to form a small mathematical notebook.
The self-made notebook was given to Lincoln's law partner and biographer William H. Herndon (1818-1891) by the president's stepmother Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln (1788-1869). The sheets were subsequently dispersed, and the whereabouts of some pages are unknown. The Library of Congress acquired the two pages (one leaf) exhibited here as part of its Herndon-Weik Collection of Lincolniana. They are considered the earliest extant Lincoln manuscripts and are especially noteworthy because of the signature contained in the verse in the lower left-hand corner:
Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen
he will be good but
[god] knows When
%,%Janice E. Ruth and John R. Sellers, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/022/0001t%,%mm+74025791%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/h/herndon.txt%,%mcc/022%,%A48 (color slide; front); A49 (color slide; verso); LC-MSS-25791-2 (B&W negatives; front and verso)%,%The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Education/Herndon, William Henry (1818-1891)/Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865)/Lincoln, Sarah Bush Johnston (1788-1869)/Mathematics/Presidents/Weik, Jesse William (1857-1930)%
%U%,%Hollerith, Herman (Herman Hollerith Papers)%,%Plate, punch card, and instructions for Herman Hollerith's Electric Sorting and Tabulating Machine, ca. 1895.%,%ca. 1895%,%Modern data processing began with the inventions of American engineer Herman Hollerith (1860-1929), who sought to develop a mechanized method for counting the nation's census data. Tabulating the 1880 census had taken the United States Census Bureau eight years to complete, and federal officials feared that the 1890 census would take even longer. In 1881 Hollerith began designing a machine to compile census data more efficiently than traditional hand methods, and by the late 1880s, he had built a punched card tabulating machine that could be read by electrical sensing. His system made it possible for one Census Bureau employee to compute each day the data on thousands of people, keypunching information that had been captured by tens of thousands of census takers.
The template shown here was part of a Pantograph Punch which sped the transfer of data from the census taker's sheet to a punched card. When a stylus was inserted into a hole on the template, a corresponding hole was punched in the card at the other end. Each card represented one person and each hole a different statistic, such as age or marital status. The cards were sorted and later read electronically by a press containing pins that penetrated the card only at its holes. Each pin that passed through a hole made electrical contact with a small cup of mercury, closing a circuit and advancing a dial counter by one. Hollerith's machines completed the 1890 census in one year, garnering considerable publicity and leading to the establishment of his own company, the Tabulating Machine Company, which later became International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). For decades, Hollerith's punched card system was used in a variety of industries, most notably by IBM to program its early computers.%,%Leonard C. Bruno, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/023/0001t%,%mm+73049510%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/h/hollerit.txt%,%mcc/023%,%A55 (color slide; pages 4 and 5 of instructions); A56 (color slide; plate and punch card)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Census/Data processing/Hollerith, Herman (1860-1929)/International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)/Inventions/Inventors/Punched cards/Tabulating machines/United States Census Bureau%
%U%,%Hughes, Langston (Langston Hughes Collection)%,%Drafts of Langston Hughes's poem "Ballad of Booker T.," 30 May-1 June 1941.%,%30-31 May 1941 (first and second drafts); 1 June 1941 (third, fourth, and fifth drafts)%,%Langston Hughes (1902-1967), known for his lyric poetry, often wrote insightful commentaries about African-American culture and race relations in the United States. In this 1941 poem he makes a case for the vindication of educator Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), the former slave and founder of Tuskegee Institute (1881) and the National Negro Business League (1900) who was harshly criticized by many people for emphasizing vocational education as the prerequisite for the political empowerment of black people. In his poem, Hughes stresses the fact that Washington wanted to train the head, the heart, and the hand. He focuses on Washington's practicality and explains the educator's strategy with the statement,
"Sometimes he had
compromise in his talk--
for a man must crawl
before he can walk
and in Alabama in '85
a joker was lucky
to be alive.
Because the Library holds several dated drafts of the "Ballad of Booker T.," as well as the signed, finished version, researchers can learn how Hughes crafted his words so that the rhythm and the rhyme were syncopated, smooth, and flowing.%,%Debra Newman Ham, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/024/0001t%,%mm+81001233%,,%mcc/024%,%A57 (color slide; first and second drafts); A58 (color slide; final draft)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%African Americans/Alabama/Education/Hughes, Langston (1902-1967)/Literature/Poems/Poets/Tuskegee Institute/Washington, Booker T. (1856-1915)%
%U%,%Jefferson, Thomas (Thomas Jefferson Papers)%,%Thomas Jefferson's drawing of a macaroni machine and instructions for making pasta, ca. 1787.%,%ca. 1787%,%Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States, acquired a taste for continental cooking while serving as American minister to France in the 1780s. When he returned to the United States in 1790 he brought with him a French cook and many recipes for French, Italian, and other au courant cookery. Jefferson not only served his guests the best European wines, but he liked to dazzle them with delights such as ice cream, peach flambe, macaroni, and macaroons. This drawing of a macaroni machine, with the sectional view showing holes from which dough could be extruded, reflects Jefferson's curious mind and his interest and aptitude in mechanical matters.%,%Gerard W. Gawalt, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/027/0001t%,%mm+76027748%,,%mcc/027%,%A30 (color slide); LC-MSS-27748-180 (B&W negative)%,%The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Cookery/Food/France/Inventions/Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)/Pasta/Presidents/Recipes%
%U%,%Jefferson, Thomas (Thomas Jefferson Papers)%,%Thomas Jefferson's design for a plow, ca. 1794.%,%ca. 1794%,%President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), one of Virginia's largest planters, considered agriculture to be "a science of the very first order," and he studied it with great zeal and commitment. Jefferson introduced numerous plants to the United States, and he frequently exchanged farming advice and seeds with like-minded correspondents. Of particular interest to the innovative Jefferson was farm machinery, especially the development of a plow which would delve deeper than the two to three inches achieved by a standard wooden plow. Jefferson needed a plow and method of cultivation that would help prevent the soil erosion that plagued Virginia's Piedmont farms. To this end, he and his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph (1768-1828), who managed much of Jefferson's land, worked together to develop iron and mould board plows, like the one shown here, that were specifically designed for hillside plowing, in that they turned the furrow to the downhill side. As the calculations on the sketch show, Jefferson's plows were often based on mathematical formulas, which helped facilitate their duplication and improvement.%,%Gerard W. Gawalt and Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/026/0001t%,%mm+76027748%,,%mcc/026%,%A50 (color slide); LC-MSS-27748-64 (B&W negative)%,%The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Agriculture/Inventions/Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)/Plows/Presidents/Randolph, Thomas M. (Thomas Mann) (1768-1828)/Virginia%
%U%,%Jefferson, Thomas (Thomas Jefferson Papers)%,%Letter, John Adams to Thomas Jefferson describing the cordial greeting he received from King George III as the first American minister to Great Britain, 3 June 1785.%,%3 June 1785%,%In this 3 June 1785 letter, written in his secretary's hand, John Adams (1735-1826), Revolutionary patriot and later president of the United States, described to Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), then American minister to France, his presentation to King George III (1738-1820) as the first United States minister to Great Britain. Adams had been nervous about the historic meeting between the representative of the victorious rebels and their former "oppressor." He had purchased a new coat for the occasion and had labored on the speech he was expected to deliver, anxious to set a tone of reconciliation between the two nations. With great relief and satisfaction, he reported to Jefferson that he had been received with kindness and respect beyond what he had anticipated.%,%Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/025/0001t%,%mm+76027748%,,%mcc/025%,%A51 (color slide; page 1); A52 (color slide; page 2)%,%Diplomacy and Foreign Policy/Diplomacy and Foreign Policy Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Adams, John (1735-1826)/Diplomacy/Diplomats/George III, King of Great Britain (1738-1820)/Great Britain/Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)/Presidents%
%U%,%Jefferson, Thomas (Thomas Jefferson Papers)%,%Letter, Thomas Jefferson to William Plumer regarding the Dartmouth College case, 21 July 1816.%,%21 July 1816%,%Shortly after being elected governor of New Hampshire in 1816, William Plumer (1759-1850), a former United States senator, sought to transform the administration of the state's Dartmouth College by wresting control from a self-perpetuating board of Federalist trustees and replacing them with elected officials. To accomplish their goal, the governor and his Republican allies in the state legislature enacted statues revising the college's royal charter, which had been granted in 1769. The college trustees contested the state's action by bringing suit and carrying the case forward to the United States Supreme Court. Daniel Webster (1782-1852) argued the college's case and during his climactic concluding remarks uttered his famous plea for the school, stating, "It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!"
In his landmark Dartmouth College v. Woodward decision (1819), Chief Justice John Marshall (1755-1835) supported the inviolability of the charter as a contract and ruled that the college, under the charter, was a private and not a public entity. As such, the school was protected from the state's regulatory power through the contract clause of United States Constitution. By interpreting the contract clause as a way of protecting corporate charters from state intervention, Marshall established the Constitution as a powerful tool for safeguarding property rights and limiting state authority.
As indicated in this 21 July 1816 letter to Plumer, former president of the United States Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was sympathetic to the governor's efforts to seize control of the college from their Federalist adversaries. This letter is often cited to argue that Jefferson was not a strict constructionist in interpreting the Constitution and that he favored regular if not routine amendments and revisions to both the federal and state constitutions. The letter also contains a strong denunciation of federal indebtedness and taxation. In classic Jeffersonian form, the Virginian appears as both a conservative and a radical in the same letter.%,%Gerard W. Gawalt and Marvin W. Kranz, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/078/0001t%,%mm+76027748%,,%mcc/078%,%A53 (color slide)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Constitution/Contracts/Dartmouth College v. Woodward/Governors/Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)/Law/Marshall, John (1755-1835)/Plumer, William (1759-1850)/Presidents/Right of property/Taxation/United States Constitution/United States Supreme Court/Webster, Daniel (1782-1852)%
%U%,%Jefferson, Thomas (Thomas Jefferson Papers)%,%Letter, Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Banneker expressing his belief that blacks possess talents equal to those of "other colours of men," 30 August 1791.%,%30 August 1791%,%While serving as secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), one of Virginia's largest planters and slaveholders, wrote this 30 August 1791 response to Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806), an African-American mathematician and surveyor living in Maryland, who had written a forceful letter to Jefferson the day before, chastising him for holding slaves and questioning his sincerity as a "friend of liberty." (Banneker's 19 August 1791 letter to Jefferson is held by the Massachusetts Historical Society). Jefferson and Banneker had been in contact previously, and the future president had been so impressed by Banneker's skills that he had recommended him for employment as an assistant surveyor of the new federal district. In a polite response to Banneker's August 1791 letter, Jefferson expressed his ambivalent feelings about slavery and assured the surveyor that "no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition" of blacks "to what it ought to be." Jefferson also indicated that he had sent an example of Banneker's work to the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794), secretary of the Royal Academy of Science and a strong advocate of racial equality, for the marquis's use in disposing of other people's doubts about black inferiority. Years later, however, Jefferson reneged on his favorable comments to Banneker about blacks in letters to Henri Gregoire (1750-1831) and Joel Barlow (1754-1812) in 1809.%,%Gerard W. Gawalt and Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/028/0001t%,%mm+76027748%,,%mcc/028%,%A54 (color slide); LC-MSS-27748-21 (B&W negative)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%African Americans/Banneker, Benjamin (1731-1806)/Condorcet, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de (1743-1794)/Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)/Mathematicians/Presidents/Slavery/Surveyors%
%U%,%Jefferson, Thomas (Thomas Jefferson Papers)%,%Letter, James Monroe to Thomas Jefferson seeking foreign policy advice, 17 October 1823.%,%17 October 1823%,%Responding to a series of proposals from British Foreign Minister George Canning (1770-1827) for a joint Anglo-American condemnation of Spanish efforts to regain sovereignty in South America, President James Monroe (1758-1831) conferred with former presidents Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and James Madison (1751-1836). Both men urged President Monroe to cooperate with Great Britain, but Jefferson also reminded him that the two cornerstones of American foreign policy had been the country's non-involvement in European affairs and intolerance of European meddling in America. Monroe, however, was also concerned with Russian encroachments on the west coast of North America, and his secretary of state John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), suspicious of Canning, suggested that Russia was more dangerous than Spain, since the latter would be intimidated by the British fleet which controlled the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, Adams cautioned against an alliance with Britain, arguing instead for an independent denunciation of any further European colonization of America. Monroe chose to take no action on the Canning proposal and instead laid down the principle that European countries could establish no new colonies in the New World and their interference would not be tolerated in the affairs of nations in either North or South America. As stated in the president's annual message to Congress on 2 December 1823, the "Monroe Doctrine" became and still remains one of the foundations of American foreign policy.%,%Gerard W. Gawalt and Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/082/0001t%,%mm+76027748%,,%mcc/082%,%A117 (color slide; page 1); A118 (color slide; page 2)%,%Diplomacy and Foreign Policy/Diplomacy and Foreign Policy Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848)/Canning, George (1770-1827)/Diplomacy/Great Britain/Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)/Madison, James (1751-1836)/Monroe, James (1758-1831)/Monroe doctrine (1823)/Presidents/Russia/Spain%
%U%,%King, Martin Luther, Jr. (Martin Luther King, Jr., Collection)%,%Copy of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech submitted for copyright registration, 28 August 1963. Selected pages. Reproduced subject to LICENSE GRANTED BY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES MANAGEMENT, ATLANTA, GEORGIA, AS MANAGER OF THE KING ESTATE.%,%28 August 1963%,%A skilled and charismatic orator who delivered many speeches in support of African-American civil rights, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) is perhaps best known for his remarks on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the 28 August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. After reading the first part of his speech, the eloquent leader began to extemporize with the words "I have a dream today . . . ," talking of a time when blacks and whites could work, play, and pray together, a time when character rather than color would matter most. Quoting a line from "My Country Tis of Thee," he called on the nation to "let freedom ring." King's oratory electrified the estimated 250,000 black and white marchers and captivated a vast television audience. More attention was given to King's remarks than to those of any other speaker, and to this day, his stirring speech is synonymous in many minds with the 1963 march.
The Library of Congress Copyright Office received this copy of King's speech on 2 October 1963. It was transferred to the Manuscript Division in 1984.%,%Debra Newman Ham, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/029/0001t%,%mm+84006160%,,%mcc/029%,%A101 (color slide; page 1); A102 (color slide; page 6)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%African Americans/Civil rights movement/King, Martin Luther (1929-1968)/March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963)/Speeches%
%U%,%Lincoln, Abraham (Abraham Lincoln Papers)%,%Letter, Abraham Lincoln to Charles Sumner outlining the president's belief that the dependents of black and white soldiers should be treated equally, 19 May 1864.%,%19 May 1864%,%To anyone familiar with the life and career of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), it should come as no surprise that the widow of Maj. Lionel F. Booth, an African-American soldier, would be admitted to the White House and given a personal audience with the president. However, not only did Lincoln speak privately with Mary Elizabeth Wayt Booth, he penned this letter to Charles Sumner (1811-1874), who was both friend and critic, knowing that the senator from Massachusetts would pursue the issue of equal compensation for the wives and children of black soldiers who had given their lives in the cause of freedom. Major Booth had been the commanding officer at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and was killed by a sniper's bullet just hours before the fort fell and the victorious Confederates engaged in one of the most brutal massacres of the Civil War. The president's letter to Sumner appears to have initiated the legislative action that resulted in H.R. 406, Section 13, which provided equal treatment for the widows and orphans of black soldiers. Interestingly, whatever her efforts in behalf of widows and orphans, there is no evidence that Mrs. Booth ever applied for or received a government pension.%,%John R. Sellers, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/079/0001t%,%mm+78030189%,,%mcc/079%,%A59 (color slide)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%African Americans/Army officers/Booth, Lionel F./Booth, Mary Elizabeth Wayt/Civil War, 1861-1865/Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865)/Fort Pillow (Tenn.)/Pensions/Presidents/Sumner, Charles (1811-1874)/Tennessee%
%U%,%Lincoln, Abraham (Abraham Lincoln Papers)%,%Letter, Abraham Lincoln to Mary S. Owens reflecting the frustration of courtship, 16 August 1837.%,%16 August 1837%,%In autumn 1836, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), then a twenty-seven-year-old Illinois representative studying law, agreed rather enthusiastically to marry Mary S. Owens (1808-1877), whom he had met three years earlier when she was visiting her sister in New Salem, Illinois. Essentially, Lincoln entered into a scheme with Mary's sister to entice Mary from her home in Kentucky to Illinois, never doubting that she would be willing to accept him for a husband. But Lincoln had not seen Mary since her previous visit, and upon her arrival, found himself in a predicament. Mary was not nearly as beautiful as he remembered. In fact, as he explained to another friend: "I knew she was over-size, but she now appeared a fair match for Falstaff; I knew she was called an 'old maid,' and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the appelation [sic]; but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered features, for her skin was too full of fat to permit its contracting in to wrinkles; but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head, that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy, and reached her present bulk in less than thirtyfive or forty years; and, in short, I was not all pleased with her."(1)
Shortly after Mary arrived in New Salem, Lincoln left to attend the legislature and then moved to Springfield, Illinois, in April 1837 to practice law with John Todd Stuart (1807-1885). He and Mary spent little time together, and their correspondence reflects their shaky relationship. In the letter exhibited here, Lincoln wrote to Mary seemingly to assure her of his determination to go through with the marriage, but in reality to give her an opportunity to break their "engagement." Mary apparently detected his true feelings and rejected his dutifully repeated proposal of marriage. This in turn left Lincoln somewhat mortified. He now had been rejected by someone he had assumed no one else would want to marry. As he put it: "Others have been made fools of by the girls; but this can never be with truth said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself."(2)
(1) Abraham Lincoln to Eliza Caldwell (Mrs. Orville H.) Browning, 1 April 1838, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 1, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press), 118.
(2) Ibid., 119.%,%John R. Sellers, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/030/0001t%,%mm+78030189%,,%mcc/030%,%A103 (color slide; page 1); A104 (color slide; page 2); LC-MSS-03189-78 (B&W negative; pages 1 and 2)%,%The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Browning, Eliza Caldwell/Courtship/Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865)/Marriage/Owens, Mary S. (1808-1877)/Presidents/Stuart, John Todd (1807-1885)/Women%
%U%,%Lincoln, Abraham (Abraham Lincoln Papers)%,%Draft of Abraham Lincoln's instructions to Maj. Robert Anderson in command at Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina, 4 April 1861.%,%4 April 1861%,%On 4 March 1861, shortly after delivering his first inaugural address, President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) received word that Fort Sumter, located in Charleston harbor, South Carolina, would have to be resupplied sometime in the next six weeks. The alternatives were surrender or evacuation. The situation placed Lincoln in a quandary. In his recent address, the president had vowed to retain all federal property, avoiding bloodshed if possible; however, he was being overwhelmed by the pace of events. He had only a vague idea of how the central government worked, and not one member of his cabinet had been confirmed by the Senate. It was a confusing state of affairs, and nearly four weeks passed before he sent to Maj. Robert Anderson (1805-1871), commander of the Fort Sumter garrison, the meager assurance of support shown here in this 4 April 1861 document, which went out under the aegis of Secretary of War Simon Cameron (1799-1889).
Even then, several of Lincoln's closest advisors favored inaction. Complicating matters was Lincoln's decision to notify South Carolina governor Francis W. Pickens (1805-1869) of an impending expedition to provision the fort, an action that Lincoln said would not involve bringing any additional men or arms into the garrison. The state's secession government feared a ruse, and Lincoln's message to Pickens undermined any advantage of surprise the federal forces may have had. On 11 April, South Carolina requested Maj. Anderson's surrender, which he refused to do, and on 12 April, as the relief fleet neared, Confederate general G. T. Beauregard (1818-1893) opened fire on the fort. The next day, the fort surrendered and the nation was at war. Lincoln later took the position that he had maneuvered the Confederates into attacking Sumter, which allowed him to label them as traitors and aggressors. As he explained to Orville Hickman Browning (1806-1881), a longtime friend and political advisor: "They attacked Sumter--it fell, and thus, did more service than it otherwise could."(1) But Lincoln spoke defensively and from hindsight.
(1) Abraham Lincoln as quoted by Orville Hickman Browning in The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, ed. Theodore Calvin Pease and James G. Randall (Springfield, Illinois: Illinois Historical Society), 1:477.%,%John R. Sellers, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/031/0001t%,%mm+78030189%,,%mcc/031%,%A105 (color slide; page 1); A106 (color slide; page 2)%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Anderson, Robert (1805-1871)/Army officers/Beauregard, G. T. (Gustave Toutant) (1818-1893)/Browning, Orville Hickman (1806-1881)/Cameron, Simon (1799-1889)/Charleston (S.C.)/Civil War, 1861-1865/Fort Sumter (Charleston, S.C.)/Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865)/Pickens, F. W. (Francis Wilkinson) (1805-1869)/Presidents/South Carolina%
%U%,%Lincoln, Abraham (Abraham Lincoln Papers)%,%Letter, Mary Todd Lincoln to Abraham Lincoln advising her husband to remove the hesitant Gen. George B. McClellan from command, 2 November [1862].%,%2 November [1862]%,%It is difficult to determine exactly when First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882) lost confidence in George Brinton McClellan (1826-1885). The Union general's reluctance to capitalize on the advantage he had gained over Confederate forces in the Battle of Antietam just two months earlier had guaranteed his removal as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Exercising his usual caution, President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was only awaiting the results of the upcoming congressional elections before sending the general into virtual exile. His wife's letter of 2 November 1862 suggesting that McClellan be removed from command merely reflected popular sentiment in New York, a key state in the elections. For several months after McClellan's meteoric rise to power, the First Lady had showered the "Young Napoleon" with social invitations and with flowers from the White House conservatory. Her influence with the general is perhaps best illustrated by her successful intervention in the scheduled execution of a soldier found sleeping while on picket duty. In a letter to his wife, McClellan stated that he was more than pleased to grant a request of the "Lady President." It is also worth noting that if Mary Todd Lincoln disliked McClellan for his lack of aggression, she despised Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) for exactly the opposite reason. Thus her apparent change of heart toward McClellan may have been as much political as military wisdom. Both men had such a large following, McClellan with Peace Democrats and Grant with Republicans of every stripe, that they threatened her husband's grip on the presidency.%,%John R. Sellers, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/032/0001t%,%mm+78030189%,,%mcc/032%,%A107 (color slide; pages 1 and 2); A108 (color slide; page 3)%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Army officers/Civil War, 1861-1865/First ladies/Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) (1822-1885)/Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865)/Lincoln, Mary Todd (1818-1882)/McClellan, George Brinton (1826-1885)/Presidents/Women%
%U%,%Logan, Joshua (Joshua Logan Papers)%,%Seating chart for the opening night performance of Middle of the Night, 1956.%,%1956%,%Producer, author, and theater and film director Joshua Logan (1908-1988) was at the height of his theatrical career in 1956 when his production Middle of the Night, starring Edward G. Robinson (1893-1973), opened at the ANTA Theatre. He already had directed the Broadway hits Charley's Aunt, Annie Get Your Gun, Picnic, Mr. Roberts, South Pacific, and Fanny, the latter three of which he also coauthored. This 8 February 1956 reserved seating chart for Middle of the Night suggests that the opening night performance was a major theatrical and social event of the year. The house was peppered with seats for friends of Logan and the play's dramatist, Paddy Chayefsky (1923-1981). Actress Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) reserved three seats in center row B between composer Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein (1895-1960). Writer Truman Capote (1924-1984) sat alone in E21. Although Random House subsequently published Chayefsky's play in 1957, the Broadway production of Middle of the Night did not enjoy the popularity of Logan's earlier hits.
Throughout his long and productive career, the energetic Logan worked with most of the great performing artists of his time, including stage and screen stars Ethel Merman, Jimmy Durante, Jerome Robbins, Jose Ferrer, Irving Berlin, Burl Ives, Helen Hayes, Henry and Jane Fonda, Marilyn Monroe, Ezio Pinza, Ossie Davis, William Inge, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Charles Boyer, Marlon Brando, Anthony Perkins, Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Alvin Ailey, Cecily Tyson, Jack Nicholson, Vanessa Redgrave, Clint Eastwood, Betty Davis, and Nell Carter. Building on his Broadway success, Logan developed into one of the major motion picture makers of his generation, directing or producing such box-office film hits as Picnic, Bus Stop, South Pacific, Fanny, Camelot and Paint Your Wagon. Shortly after his death in 1988, Logan's personal and professional papers were donated to the Library of Congress as a bequest.%,%Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/092/0001t%,%mm+89080138%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/l/logan.txt%,%mcc/092%,%Not available%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%ANTA Theatre (New York, N.Y.)/Broadway (New York, N.Y.)/Capote, Truman (1924-1984)/Chayefsky, Paddy (1923-1981)/Directors/Hammerstein, Oscar (1895-1960)/Logan, Joshua (1908-1988)/Middle of the Night (Play)/Monroe, Marilyn (1926-1962)/Motion pictures/Plays/Robinson, Edward G. (1893-1973)/Rodgers, Richard (1902-1979)/Seating charts/Theater%
%U%,%Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Collection)%,%"The Village Blacksmith," poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ca. 1840, published 1841 in Ballads and Other Poems.%,%ca. 1840%,%Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), college professor and one of America's most famous poets, enjoyed wide acceptance of his writings during his lifetime. He taught first at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, where he had been a classmate of novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), and later at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both institutions now hold major Longfellow collections. He publicized his interest in abolitionist ideas in his Poems on Slavery (1842) and penned such grammar school favorites as "Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie" (1847) and "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855).
His poem "The Village Blacksmith," with the famous opening lines, "Under a spreading chestnut tree, The village smithy stands" was also required reading for several generations of American school children. Shown here is Longfellow's original draft of that poem, for which he reportedly was paid fifteen dollars when he submitted it to Knickerbocker magazine in November 1840. Although he enjoyed immediate popularity, Longfellow later commanded several thousand dollars for his poems once he had established more of a name for himself.
This manuscript was donated to the Library of Congress in 1942 by collector Francis Joseph Hogan (1877-1944), a Washington, D.C., attorney. It is written in ink on two sides of one sheet, with the last stanza appearing on a segment of an additional sheet which had been lengthened to match the first, probably before donation. A Library of Congress conservator has identified the paper as wove cotton or linen, machine-made, by Ames Paper Company, Springfield, Massachusetts, whose embossing appears in the upper-left corner of both sheets.%,%Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/033/0001t%,%mm+79001062%,,%mcc/033%,%A109 (color slide; page 1); LC-MSS-92775-1 (B&W negative; page 1)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Abolitionists/Blacksmiths/Educators/Hogan, Francis Joseph (1877-1944)/Literature/Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882)/Poems/Poets/"The Village Blacksmith" (Poem)%
%U%,%Luce, Clare Boothe (Clare Boothe Luce Papers)%,%Letter, John F. Kennedy to Clare Boothe Luce thanking the congresswoman for a good luck coin, 29 September [1942].%,%1942%,%In 1942 a young John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) entered the United States Navy eager to see action in World War II. Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987), playwright, diplomat, wife of Time-Life, Inc., publisher Henry Robinson Luce (1898-1967), and a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Connecticut, knew the Kennedy family well. She sent the young naval officer a good luck coin that had originally belonged to her mother. In this note Kennedy thanked Luce for her thoughtfulness and promised to clip the coin to his military identification tags.
In summer 1943 Lieutenant Kennedy commanded a PT boat operating against the Japanese near the island of New Georgia in the Pacific. One night Kennedy's PT boat was rammed and cut in two by a Japanese destroyer, but the injured Kennedy and most of his crew survived. A few months later, Kennedy wrote again to Luce, enclosing a gadget, originally intended to be a letter opener, which he had made for her "from a Jap 51 cal. bullet and the steel from a fitting on my boat, part of which drifted onto an island." He told her, "With it goes my sincere thanks for your good-luck piece, which did service above and beyond its routine duties during a rather busy period."(1)
(1) John F. Kennedy to Clare Boothe Luce, [20 October 1943], Container 116, Clare Boothe Luce Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.%,%John E. Haynes and Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/080/0001t%,%mm+82030759%,,%mcc/080%,%A60 (color slide; pages 1-4)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Congress/Diplomats/Dramatists/Japan/Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald) (1917-1963)/Legislators/Luce, Clare Boothe (1903-1987)/Luce, Henry Robinson (1898-1967)/Naval officers/Presidents/United States Navy/Women/World War, 1939-1945%
%U%,%Luce, Clare Boothe (Clare Boothe Luce Papers)%,%Clare Boothe Luce's scene description of her play The Women, ca. 1936.%,%ca. 1936%,%Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987), who had successful careers as author, editor, playwright, journalist, congresswoman, and diplomat, married Henry Robinson Luce (1898-1967), publisher of Time and Fortune magazines, in 1935. The next year began a two-year run (657 performances) of her play, The Women, at the Ethyl Barrymore Theater in New York City. In 1937 Random House published The Women; the following year, the first of numerous international productions was produced; and in 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) released a film version starring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine, and others. An example of Luce's social criticism, the play satirized upper-class New York women and launched its author as a speaker on women's roles in the public sphere. This scene description, selected from the extensive production records for the play located in the Manuscript Division's Luce Papers, shows the dramatist's careful revisions. Here she sets up the first scene with a clear sense of characterization for a social range of women from Saks shop girl to countess.
Luce wrote the entire first draft of her daring forty-character play during a three-day stay at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. She had travelled there to resume playwriting after it became clear that her husband would not create a position for her on the staff of his new Life magazine. Her only other staged play, Abide With Me, had opened two days before her marriage to Luce and failed after thirty-six performances. The Women, on the other hand, was playing to capacity audiences a month after its opening, and within four months, it broke all sales records for a nonmusical Broadway production.
After the success of The Women, Luce became a public champion of American democracy, a major Republican Party activist and speaker, and ambassador to Italy. She went on to write two more Broadway hits, which were also made into motion pictures. She also published a respected book on the fall of France and was a war correspondent for Life. Luce died in October of 1987 and is remembered as a beautiful, brilliant, daring, and outspoken personality in high society as well as international relations.%,%Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/081/0001t%,%mm+82030759%,,%mcc/081%,%A61 (color slide; page 1); LC-MSS-30759-1 (B&W negative; pages 1-3)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Broadway (New York, N.Y.)/Diplomats/Dramatists/Legislators/Life (Magazine)/Luce, Clare Boothe (1903-1987)/Motion pictures/Theater/Women/The Women (Play)%
%U%,%MacArthur, Douglas (Douglas MacArthur Collection)%,%Gen. Douglas MacArthur's "Old Soldiers Never Die" address to Congress, 19 April 1951.%,%19 April 1951%,%Gen. Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) was one of most prominent United States military figures of the first half of the twentieth century. In World War I he served as chief of staff of the Forty-second Infantry (Rainbow) Division and later commanded one of its brigades. He was twice wounded and received many decorations for bravery. After the war as superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, he substantially reformed the academy's program and shaped the training received by a generation of the nation's military officers. In 1932 he became chief of staff of the army at age fifty, the youngest man to have been appointed to this post. He officially retired from the army in 1937 to become military adviser to the Philippines Commonwealth, then an American dependency. In July 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) recalled him to active service and placed him in command of United States forces in the Philippines after the Japanese attack in December 1941. In March 1942, on President Roosevelt's orders, he withdrew to Australia shortly before the Japanese completed their conquest of the islands. As Supreme Commander Southwest Pacific Area, MacArthur organized the defense of Australia, stopped the Japanese offensive in New Guinea, and began an island-hopping campaign that by 1945 liberated all that had been lost to the Japanese. MacArthur was promoted to general of the army, the highest rank in the United States military. After Japan surrendered, MacArthur was made Supreme Allied Commander and presided over the American occupation of the country and its transition to democratic self-rule.
When Communist North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) committed American forces to a United Nations-sanctioned intervention and placed MacArthur in command. North Korean forces overran most of South Korea, and American forces, initially unprepared, were pushed into a small pocket around Pusan at the southern end of the Korean Peninsula. MacArthur, in a bold move in September 1950, launched an amphibious assault at Inchon, a port 110 miles behind enemy lines. American units knifing in from Inchon recaptured the South Korean capital of Seoul while American and South Korean forces broke out of the Pusan pocket and raced northward destroying or capturing Communist forces thrown into disarray by the attack on their rear.
By the end of 1950 not only had all of South Korea been freed, but American and United Nations forces had captured the North Korean capital and, moving north, were approaching the Chinese border. Unexpectedly, Chinese Communist forces crossed the border in massive formations and the American-led advance became a retreat. MacArthur was able to stop the retreat along the thirty-eighth parallel, the preinvasion dividing line between North and South Korea, but there a stalemate ensued. At that point, President Truman and MacArthur fell into public disagreement about the future course of the war, and the president removed MacArthur from his command. MacArthur then retired.
In recognition of his status as one of the nation's greatest living military leaders, Congress asked MacArthur to address a joint session on 19 April 1951. His speech, reproduced here, is best known for its final lines in which he quoted an old army ballad: "'Old soldiers never die--they just fade away.' And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away--an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good-bye."%,%John E. Haynes, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/034/0001t%,%mm+79000686%,,%mcc/034%,%A63 (color slide; first and last pages)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Army officers/Australia/China/Communism/Congress/Korean War, 1950-1953/Japan/MacArthur, Douglas (1880-1964)/Philippines/Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano) (1882-1945)/Speeches/Truman, Harry S. (1884-1972)/United States Army/World War, 1914-1918/World War, 1939-1945%
%U%,%MacLeish, Archibald (Archibald MacLeish Papers)%,%Letter, Ernest Hemingway to Archibald MacLeish discussing Ezra Pound's mental health and other literary matters, 10 August [1943].%,%10 August 1943%,%Novelist Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) wrote this 10 August [1943] reply to his friend Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982), the distinguished poet and dramatist who served as Librarian of Congress from 1939 to 1944. Two weeks earlier, on 27 July, MacLeish had sent "Pappy" Hemingway negative photostatic transcriptions of recent inflammatory broadcasts made in Italy by their fellow American author Ezra Pound (1885-1972). The most influential poet and critic of his era, Pound had helped T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) create the landmark poem of the twentieth century, The Wasteland, founded the Imagist school of poetry, and befriended leading American and European writers. When he met Fascist leader Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) in 1933, however, Pound was so impressed with the Italian dictator's ideas that he later made radio broadcasts for the Axis powers which included strong anti-Semitic remarks.
As a result of his wartime broadcasts, Pound was indicted on 26 July 1943 in a United States District Court for treason, though MacLeish had suggested to Hemingway that "drivel" was a better term than "treason," which was "too serious a crime and too dignified for a man who has made such an incredible ass of himself."(1) Hemingway here agrees that Pound was "crazy," and indeed after Pound's arrest and return to the United States in November 1945, he was declared mentally unfit to stand trial. The insanity ruling was largely due to the intervention and support of literary colleagues, who respected Pound in spite of his unacceptable politics. Pound was incarcerated in St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., until 1958, when he returned to Italy. During his thirteen years of confinement, he published more of his epic lifework, Cantos, which he had begun in 1924. In 1948 the Library of Congress awarded Pound the Bollingen Prize for poetry, a controversial choice which led the government to forbid the Library from henceforth administering the prestigious prize.
In this letter from MacLeish's papers in the Library of Congress, Hemingway also refers to Irish novelist James Joyce (1882-1941), who had met Pound in London literary circles earlier in the century. The final paragraph includes an appeal to MacLeish--then also assistant director of war information--to consider Hemingway for a position as a writer or correspondent covering the war for the Library. The novelist had been a volunteer ambulance driver in the First World War and subsequently published A Farewell To Arms based on those experiences. His 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls had established him as a champion of freedom. Although MacLeish was unable to grant him accreditation, Hemingway did become a foreign correspondent during World War II. The Hemingway Papers, housed in the John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts, include MacLeish's side of this interesting literary correspondence.
(1) Archibald MacLeish to Ernest Hemingway, 27 July 1943, in Letters of Archibald MacLeish, 1907 to 1982, ed. R. H. Winnick (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983), 316.%,%Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/035/0001t%,%mm+82030932%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/m/macleish.txt%,%mcc/035%,%A62 (color slide)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Antisemitism/Bollingen Prize/Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns) (1888-1972)/Hemingway, Ernest (1899-1961)/Insanity/Joyce, James (1882-1941)/MacLeish, Archibald (1892-1982)/Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945)/Pound, Ezra (1885-1972)/St. Elizabeth's Hospital (Washington, D.C.)/Treason/World War, 1939-1945%
%U%,%Madison, James (James Madison Papers)%,%Letter, James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, partially written in cipher with translation by Jefferson, 23 May 1789.%,%23 May 1789%,%This letter of 23 May 1789 was written by James Madison (1751-1836), a member of the first Congress and later the fourth president of the United States, to Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), also a future president who was then minister to France. Partially written in a code or cipher, which Jefferson had sent Madison on 11 May 1785, the decoded translation was interlined by Jefferson. In his letter, Madison reported on the opening of the new federal government and was particularly critical of efforts in the Senate to set an aristocratic tone in the legislature. Madison feared that such an approach would damage the new republican government. The Congress quickly moved on to more substantive issues, such as establishing the administrative departments and the judiciary.%,%Gerard W. Gawalt, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/036/0001t%,%mm+81031021%,,%mcc/036%,%A64 (color slide; page 1)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Ciphers/Congress/Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)/Legislators/Madison, James (1751-1836)/Presidents/United States Senate%
%U%,%Mead, Margaret (Margaret Mead Papers)%,%Letter, Margaret Mead to her grandmother Martha Ramsay Mead discussing her decision to retain her maiden name, 7 December 1923.%,%7 December 1923%,%Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was a prominent twentieth-century educator, writer, and lecturer. An anthropologist by occupation, she studied the lives of natives of Samoa, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Her first book, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization (New York: Morrow, 1928), which compared the seemingly care-free adolescent years in Samoan culture to this stressful period of development for American teenagers, catapulted her to instant fame. As she went on to research and write about other cultures, she used her anthropological studies as a framework to discuss and analyze American society.
Mead was greatly influenced by the highly educated women in her family, especially her grandmother and mother. In this letter to her grandmother, Martha Ramsay Mead, written shortly after Mead's marriage to her first husband Luther Sheeleigh Cressman (1897-1994) in 1923, Mead mentions her decision to keep her maiden name, a practice she followed through three marriages. In her autobiography, Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years, Mead wrote that she made the decision to retain her name based on her "mother's belief that women should keep their own identity and not be submerged, a belief that had made her give her daughters only one given name, so that they would keep their surnames after marriage."(1)
The papers of Margaret Mead were bequeathed to the Library of Congress upon her death in 1978. The entire collection comprises approximately five hundred thousand items and includes thousands of photographs, more than a thousand pieces of recorded sound tapes and cassettes, and over five hundred reels of motion picture film. The Library of Congress is presently working on a project to digitize and make available over the Internet approximately thirty-two thousand photographs and twenty thousand pages of selected field notes that document her field expedition to study the Balinese in Indonesia and the Iatmul people of Papua New Guinea from 1936 to 1939.
(1) Margaret Mead, Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years (New York: Morrow, 1972), 117.%,%Mary M. Wolfskill, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/037/0001t%,%mm+81032441%,,%mcc/037%,%A66 (color slide; page 1)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Anthropologists/Cressman, Luther Sheeleigh (1897-1994)/Marriage/Mead, Margaret (1901-1978)/Women%
%U%,%Meier, Nellie Simmons (Nellie Simmons Meier Collection)%,%Amelia Earhart's palm print and analysis of her character prepared by Nellie Simmons Meier, 28 June 1933.%,%28 June 1933%,%On 2 July 1937 during her famed journey across the Pacific Ocean to complete her goal of flying around the world, noted aviator Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) disappeared without a trace. Speculation still exists as to the cause and validity of her elusive disappearance, and Earhart's whereabouts remain a compelling mystery. As one of the first female aviators to attempt an around-the-world flight, Earhart solidified her reputation as one of the most renowned, outspoken, and daring women of her day. Having achieved a series of record-breaking flights--such as surpassing the women's altitude record of 14,000 feet in 1922 and venturing solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932--this trailblazer not only paved the way for women aviators but advocated independence, self-reliance, and equal rights for all women.
Billed as the "First Lady of the Air" or "Lady Lindy" (Charles A. Lindbergh's female counterpart), Earhart challenged gender barriers and influenced women's position in the nascent aviation industry. She was a founding member and president of the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots, and she received innumerable awards for her accomplishments. In 1932 after completing her solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) presented Earhart with the National Geographic Society's gold medal, an honor never before bestowed to a woman. She was also the first woman to receive the National Aeronautical Association's honorary membership. Continuing to act as a role model for women, Earhart joined Purdue University as a career advisor to women and also began her own charter airline. Her success as an aviator and businesswoman was an inspiration to countless women.
While the mystery surrounding Earhart's disappearance has yet to unfold, one piece of evidence remains to give insight into Earhart's adventurous nature. This 1933 palm print of Earhart taken by palmist Nellie Simmons Meier (d. 1939) demonstrates the aviator's determined demeanor. As a palmist, Meier analyzed her subjects' character by examining the size, shape, and lines of their hands. In 1937 Meier published a collection of notable palm prints in her book Lions' Paws: The Story of Famous Hands. She subsequently donated the original prints and character sketches to the Library of Congress. According to Meier's analysis, Earhart's palm revealed her passion for flying. The length and breadth of her palm indicated a love of physical activity and a strong will. Her long fingers not only showed her conscientious attention to detail and pursuit of perfection, but also revealed Earhart's ambitious yet rational nature. Her palm further reflected the reasoned and logistical manner of someone who considers all possibilities before making a decision. While the search for Earhart continues even today, her memory as an aviation pioneer and feminist role model lives on.%,%Nazera S. Wright, Junior Fellow, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/038/0001t%,%mm+81058693%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/m/meier.txt%,%mcc/038%,%A94 (color slide; palm print and page 1 of analysis)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Aeronautics/Earhart, Amelia (1897-1937)/Meier, Nellie Simmons (d. 1939)/Palmistry/Women%
%U%,%Morse, Samuel Finley Breese (Samuel Finley Breese Morse Papers)%,%Samuel F. B. Morse's colored sketch of railway telegraph, ca. 1838.%,%ca. 1838%,%Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872), perhaps best known as the inventor of the first practical telegraph instrument, began his career as an artist and enjoyed a secure reputation as a portrait painter. By 1837, however, Morse decided to devote all his time to the development of electromagnetic telegraphy. During the course of a visit in 1838-39 to Europe to secure patents, he developed an application of his telegraph for railway signaling that was designed to report automatically the presence of a train anywhere on the railway line. Morse's color drawing of this signal telegraph reflects his talent as both an inventor and artist.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/039/0001t%,%mm+75033670%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/m/morse.txt%,%mcc/039%,%A67 (color slide)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Artists/Communications/Inventions/Inventors/Morse, Samuel Finley Breese (1791-1872)/Painters/Railroads--signals/Telegraph%
%U%,%Morse, Samuel Finley Breese (Samuel Finley Breese Morse Papers)%,%First telegraph message, 24 May 1844.%,%24 May 1844%,%Artist and inventor Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872) is credited with developing the first practical telegraph instrument, an apparatus he formally demonstrated on 24 May 1844. Shown here is the "outgoing" paper tape containing the famed message "What hath God Wrought?," which was sent by Morse on the wire from the Supreme Court chamber in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., to his assistant, Alfred Vail (1807-1859), who was stationed at the Mount Clare railroad depot in Baltimore, Maryland. In this dramatic demonstration, Morse proved the telegraph a success. Four tapes of the message sent that day were produced: this strip of the outgoing message sent from Washington, D.C.; a tape recording the incoming message simultaneously in Baltimore; an outgoing repeat-back tape sent from Baltimore by Vail; and a tape recording the repeat-back message in Washington. The whereabouts of all but one tape, Vail's outgoing strip from Baltimore, are known.
Morse's outgoing message, shown here, was inscribed by him and presented at the time of the demonstration to Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, the young daughter of his friend Henry Leavitt Ellsworth (1791-1858), commissioner of patents. It was Annie who selected the text from the Bible (Numbers XXIII, 23) and who also traced in heavy pen and ink over the pencilled letters Morse had written under each code character. Seventy-eight years later, in 1922, Annie Ellsworth's daughter, Mrs. George Inness, gave the tape to the Library of Congress.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/019/0001t%,%mm+75033670%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/m/morse.txt%,%mcc/019%,%A97 (color slide)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Artists/Communications/Ellsworth, Annie G./Ellsworth, Henry Leavitt (1791-1858)/Inventions/Inventors/Morse, Samuel Finley Breese (1791-1872)/Painters/Telegraph/Vail, Alfred (1807-1859)%
%U%,%National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records)%,%Memorandum, "Saving the Race," Thurgood Marshall to the NAACP legal staff concerning voting rights cases in Texas, 17 November 1941.%,%17 November 1941%,%Before becoming the nation's first African-American Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) served as legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the late 1930s and was executive director and general counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund from 1940 to 1961. A courageous and indefatigable worker, Marshall traveled throughout the South seeking test cases that the NAACP could use to undermine the constitutionality of segregation in the United States. In his 1941 "Saving the Race" memorandum to the NAACP legal staff, Marshall chronicles the inauspicious beginning of a celebrated test case regarding voting rights, Smith v. Allwright, which became known as the Texas primary case. Indicative of many of the NAACP's early records, this memorandum reflects Marshall's gruelling travel and meeting schedule as well as his acute sense of humor, even in the face of dangerous threats from whites and distrust by blacks.%,%Debra Newman Ham, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/040/0001t%,%mm+78034140%,,%mcc/040%,%A68 (color slide; pages 1-2)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%African Americans/Civil rights movement/Judges/Law/Lawyers/Marshall, Thurgood (1908-1993)/NAACP/NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund/National Association for the Advancement of Colored People/Segregation/Smith v. Allwright/Suffrage/Texas primary case/United States Supreme Court%
%U%,%National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records)%,%Letter, Eleanor Roosevelt to Walter White detailing the First Lady's lobbying efforts for federal action against lynchings, 19 March 1936.%,%19 March 1936%,%Lynching was undoubtedly the most terrible crime perpetrated by white supremacists against African Americans. From the late nineteenth century through the World War I years, hundreds of blacks were lynched in the South for a variety of alleged crimes, the most heinous of which was the rape of white women. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other civil rights organizations tried unsuccessfully for many years to get a federal antilynching law passed. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) and Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes (1874-1952), a one-time president of the NAACP's Chicago chapter, were supportive of the organization's efforts, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) did not share their enthusiasm and believed that pressing for the NAACP's demands would endanger congressional support for his New Deal programs. In her March 1936 letter to Walter Francis White (1893-1955), who served as NAACP executive secretary (later director) from 1931 to 1955, Mrs. Roosevelt stated some of the arguments that were used by the president and others against passage of an antilynching bill. It is clear from this "personal and confidential" letter that Mrs. Roosevelt was searching for a tactful means for aiding the anti-lynching cause herself, and she suggested to White various methods for winning the goodwill of members of Congress.%,%Debra Newman Ham, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/015/0001t%,%mm+78034140%,,%mcc/015%,%A69 (color slide); LC-MSS-34140-41 (B&W negative)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%African Americans/Civil rights movement/Congress/First ladies/Ickes, Harold L. (Harold LeClaire) (1874-1952)/Legislation/Lobbying/Lynching/NAACP/National Association for the Advancement of Colored People/Presidents/Roosevelt, Eleanor (1884-1962)/Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano) (1882-1945)/White, Walter Francis (1893-1955)/Women%
%U%,%Oppenheimer, J. Robert (J. Robert Oppenheimer Papers)%,%Letter, Franklin D. Roosevelt to J. Robert Oppenheimer thanking the physicist and his colleagues for their ongoing secret atomic research, 29 June 1943.%,%29 June 1943%,%In the midst of World War II when the United States was engaged abroad in a major conflict with Germany and Japan, it was also working furiously at home toward the completion of the Manhattan Project. This huge research and development project was begun in June 1942 to develop a superexplosive weapon based on the nuclear fission process. It was hoped that such a superweapon would end the war. Two years before such an experimental atomic bomb was detonated successfully near Alamogordo, New Mexico, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) wrote to J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), the scientist in charge of its development. In this otherwise oblique note of confidence and appreciation, Roosevelt's understanding of the project's significance is made perfectly clear, and he ends his letter with an upbeat morale- booster, suggesting that American science is up to anything the enemy can offer. His confidence was proven justified, as the United States followed its experimental detonation of 16 July 1945 by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945), resulting shortly thereafter in Japan's surrender.%,%Leonard C. Bruno, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/083/0001t%,%mm+77035188%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/o/oppnheim.txt%,%mcc/083%,%A70 (color slide; pages 1-2)%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Alamogordo (N.M.)/Atomic bomb/Hiroshima-shi (Japan)/Japan/Manhattan Project (U.S.)/Nagasaki-shi (Japan)/Oppenheimer, J. Robert (1904-1967)/Physicists/Presidents/Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano) (1882-1945)/Scientists/World War, 1939-1945%
%U%,%Parker, Amasa J. (Amasa J. Parker Papers)%,%Illustrated letter, Amasa J. Parker to Harriet Parker describing the boardinghouse where he and two future presidents resided, 31 December 1837.%,%31 December 1837%,%In the earlier years of the republic, wives and families of members of Congress often did not accompany their husbands and fathers to Washington. Demands at home were pressing, distances were great, and travel slow and hazardous. Moreover, Washington's climate could be unpleasant and unhealthy, and living quarters were expensive and in short supply. Many of the members, therefore, congregated in boardinghouses located near the United States Capitol. During these periods of enforced separation and loneliness, distance was frequently bridged by the writing of letters.
Amasa Junius Parker (1807-1890), a Democratic representative from Delhi, a town in New York's Catskills, wrote more than sixty letters to his wife Harriet during the course of his single term in Congress (1837-39). She was Harriet Langdon Roberts (1814-1899), born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the daughter of Edmund Roberts (1784-1836), a diplomatic emissary to Siam and Muscat under President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845). Parker's letters to her provide fascinating insights into both his character and the nation's capital during the early presidency of Martin Van Buren (1782-1862). In this letter of 31 December 1837, Parker drew the plan of the first floor of Mrs. Pittman's boardinghouse and sketched the table and seating arrangement of his messmates. Two future presidents, Millard Fillmore (1800-1874) of New York and James Buchanan (1791-1868) of Pennsylvania, shared the table with Parker. The table was so long that it extended beyond the dining room past folding doors into the parlor.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/084/0001t%,%mm+82035477%,,%mcc/084%,%A119 (color slide; pages 2-3); LC-MSS-35477-1 (B&W negative; page 2)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Boardinghouses/Buchanan, James (1791-1868)/Congress/Drawings/Fillmore, Millard (1800-1874)/Jackson, Andrew (1767-1845)/Legislators/Parker, Amasa J. (Amasa Junius) (1807-1890)/Parker, Harriet Langdon Roberts (1814-1899)/Presidents/Roberts, Edmund (1784-1836)/Van Buren, Martin (1782-1862)/Washington (D.C.)%
%U%,%Patton, George S. (George S. Patton Papers)%,%Gen. George S. Patton's diary entries for March 1943.%,%March 1943%,%One of the military innovations of World War I was the emergence of the armored tank. George S. Patton, Jr. (1885-1945), was the first American officer assigned to the fledgling United States Tank Corps in 1917. He continued to champion the tank in the interwar years when the money-short army largely neglected the corps. In World War II in Europe and North Africa, however, the tank and armored warfare quickly emerged as the most decisive means of land warfare. With this development, Patton moved into the spotlight and soon distinguished himself as America's most successful combat commander of armored troops.
During the war, Patton kept a diary in which he noted nearly every day his activities and observations. It is a remarkably candid work and an indispensable source of information not only on Patton himself but on American ground combat operations in North Africa and Europe from 1942 to 1945. Patton commanded major combat units in the North African campaign, the invasion of Sicily, the liberation of France, and the final assault on Germany. In March 1943 he was in charge of the United States II Corps, part of the American force fighting eastward across North Africa toward Tunisia. Coming westward out of Egypt was the British Eighth Army, and in between was the formidable German Africa Corps and their Italian allies under one of Germany's leading armored warfare commanders, Gen. Erwin Rommel (1891-1944). In his handwritten diary entries for March 1943, Patton recorded his observations on several of his subordinate units and commanders and gave his thoughts on a future operation against Rommel. On 12 March, he noted his satisfaction on being told that he had been promoted from major general (two stars) to lieutenant general (three stars). He remembered that "when I was a little boy at home, I used to wear a wooden sword and say to myself, 'George S. Patton, Jr., Lieut. Gen.' At that time I did not know there were full generals. Now I want, and will get, four stars." Patton was right. In April 1945 he was promoted to four-star general in command of the Third United States Army, which had raced across southern Germany, Austria, and into Czechoslovakia.%,%John E. Haynes, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/085/0001t%,%mm+83035634%,,%mcc/085%,%A71 (color slide; 11-12 March 1943)%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Africa/Army officers/Diaries/Patton, George S. (George Smith) (1885-1945)/Rommel, Erwin (1891-1944)/Tanks/United States Army/World War, 1939-1945%
%U%,%Pennell, Joseph (Pennell-Whistler Collection of the Papers of Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell and James A. McNeill Whistler)%,%Letter, James McNeill Whistler to David Croal Thomson containing the artist's famed butterfly signature and discussing his hope that no painting of his remain in England, [July 1895].%,%July 1895?%,%This letter from one of the nineteenth century's most important painters to the man who functioned almost as a personal agent reveals the artist's personality and illuminates contemporary exhibition practices and marketing strategies. When expatriate American painter James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) wrote this letter, he was at the height of his fame. He could well afford to display his egotism and set conditions for the sale of his works. Whistler, who had left the United States at the age of twenty-one and never returned, was one of the most flamboyant personalities of mid-century Bohemian Paris. He learned from the old masters displayed there as well as from the avant-garde painters of the day. Although he established a permanent home in London in 1859, he frequently returned to France for extended visits, and he was in Paris at the time he wrote this July 1895 letter to David Croal Thomson (1855-1930), manager of the Goupil Gallery, the London branch of a French firm.
Thomson had played an important role in establishing Whistler's reputation in Britain by staging a retrospective exhibition in 1892 and by marketing Whistler's prints at Goupil's and publishing two lithographs in the influential Art Journal, which he edited. Whistler signed his letter to Thomson with his characteristic "Butterfly" design and defended that manner of signature on his paintings by refusing the request to print his name on the "bottom right hand corner" of a painting and telling Croal to inform the buyer that his picture "is signed--as completely as one of his own cheques is signed." He also instructed Croal on marketing his works and expressed indignation that a resale of his painting should net the original buyer a profit of 650 pounds, declaring that none of them had a right to "make one penny" from his talent. He proceeded to demand that no canvas of his should remain in England. Perhaps this animosity was left from the shocked reception the country gave to his 1874 one-man exhibition, followed three years later by influential critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) denouncing Whistler's "cockney impudence" in a notice about the painting, The Falling Rocket, in which Ruskin likened the artist's work to "throwing a pot of paint in the public's face."(1) Whistler won the ensuing libel suit, but he was paid nothing and became impoverished by the litigation. England made amends by honoring Whistler in the mid-1880s with the title of president of the venerable Society of British Artists, but today the great collections of Whistler materials are in Glasgow, Scotland, and Washington, D.C.
(1) Fors Clavigera, 2 July 1877, cited in Elizabeth R. and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1911), 154.%,%Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/086/0001t%,%mm+79035857%,,%mcc/086%,%A92 (color slide; page 1 and envelope); A93 (color slide; page 2)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Art critics/Artists/Goupil Gallery/Great Britain/Painters/Ruskin, John (1819-1900)/Thompson, David Croal (1855-1930)/Whistler, James McNeill (1834-1903)%
%U%,%Pennell, Joseph (Pennell-Whistler Collection of the Papers of Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell and James A. McNeill Whistler)%,%Letter, Elizabeth Pennell to Mr. Kennerley concerning Aubrey Beardsley's 1891 illustrated letter about James McNeill Whistler's Peacock Room, 3 April 1929.%,%3 April 1929%,%In this 1929 letter, art historian and collector Elizabeth Robins Pennell (1855-1936) expresses great interest in and appreciation for what she considers the "most interesting and enlightening" of letters written by the young painter and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898). The item to which Pennell refers, of course, is the richly illustrated letter, available elsewhere on this site, written by Beardsley to his friend G. F. Scotson-Clark (1872-1927) concerning the art collection of Frederick Richard Leyland (1831-1892) and the famous peacock-motif dining room created by expatriate American painter James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903).
Widow of illustrator Joseph Pennell (1855-1936), Elizabeth Pennell had coauthored with her husband a 1908 biography of their friend Whistler, whom they had met in London in 1884 along with other luminaries in arts and letters. In this 3 April 1929 letter to Mr. Kennerley, the owner of Anderson Galleries who had possession of the Beardsley letter, Mrs. Pennell writes that her husband had always wondered how Beardsley came under the influence of Whistler's Japanese and Peacock Period, because Whistler created his famous Peacock Room in 1876-77, and by the beginning of the nineties when Beardsley's career took off, that stage of Whistler's work was all but forgotten. She now understands that Beardsley's 1891 visit to Leyland's Peacock Room was the seminal event in Whistler's influence on the younger artist: "All Beardsley's youthful and inspiring enthusiasm is in the letter and the sketch." The "Beardsley incarnation" of Whistler's "Princesse" in the watercolor sketch "would surely have amused Whistler and been accepted by him as a tribute." From the Beardsley letter, Mrs. Pennell, like other art historians and collectors, could now better understand the transference of artistic influences. She mentions that a few years after Whistler's famous Goupil Gallery exhibit in London in 1892, some Bond Street Gallery critics even wondered how Whistler could condescend to imitate Beardsley. Beardsley's letter to Scotson-Clark, however, makes it clear how very much Beardsley, who died young in 1898, derived from the established artist Whistler, who lived until 1903. This "so valuable a document" apparently was acquired by Mrs. Pennell from Kennerly shortly after this exchange and was added to the Library of Congress Pennell-Whistler Collection.%,%Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/020/0001t%,%mm+79035857%,,%mcc/020%,%A98 (color slide)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Artists/Drawings/Goupil Gallery/Illustrators/Painters/Pennell, Elizabeth Robins (1855-1936)/Pennell, Joseph (1857-1926)/Watercolor painting/Whistler, James McNeill (1834-1903)/Women%
%U%,%Pennell, Joseph (Pennell-Whistler Collection of the Papers of Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell and James A. McNeill Whistler)%,%Illustrated letter, Aubrey Beardsley to G. F. Scotson-Clark concerning James McNeill Whistler's Peacock Room, [1891].%,%1891?%,%In July 1891 a consumptive nineteen-year-old London clerk, Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), toured a mansion full of old master paintings, and his life was changed forever. Previously he had casually bartered his own drawings for books, but shortly after the house tour he became a career artist. When Beardsley, full of energy again after a bout of illness, visited the house of Frederick Richard Leyland (1831-1892), he was hungry to experience the masters and had reported to his Brighton grammar school friend George Frederick Scotson-Clark (1872-1927), who would later become an art critic, "His collection is GLORIOUS." Beardsley was only a year away from a meteoric artistic fame that was to last far beyond his short life. His first letter to Scotson-Clark had listed all of the paintings he saw in Leyland's collection--both old masters, such as Sandro Botticelli (1444?-1510) and Filippo Lippi (1406-1469) and Pre-Raphaelites, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-1898) and John Everett Millais (1829-1896)--and luckily felt compelled to write (and draw) again to describe the effect on him of the flamboyant work by expatriate American painter James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), whose work was featured in Leyland's dining room.
Although some of the text of this richly illustrated informal letter has been published, the location and significance of the sumptuously illustrated original is not widely known. Beardsley tells his friend he still has "not got over the Leyland collection." His drawing at the top right depicts himself and his sister Mabel "Going thro' the rooms" of the mansion under the guard of one of Leyland's formidable footmen. Leyland was a Liverpool shipowner who had become the patron of the Pre-Raphaelites and a great art collector. He wanted the painting "La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine," by his friend Whistler to be the centerpiece of his mansion's dining-room, which also featured the Leylands' collection of blue and white porcelain. In 1876-77 Whistler involved himself in harmonizing the rest of the room's striking decoration, but he got carried away and executed a Peacock motif without Leyland's authorization. This caused a rift in the friendship, financial litigation, and claims of hardship for both, but in the process, also it influenced art movements for decades to follow. The dining room, subsequently known as the Peacock Room, with its magnificent panels of blue and gold elongated tail plumes in graceful curves, became a centerpiece in the British Aesthetic Movement and a precursor of the international turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau movement. Whistler, of course, rejected that term, declaring there can be no "New Art," only art.
At the top of his letter to Scotson-Clark, Beardsley whimsically pays tribute to Whistler's "Princesse" by including his watercolor drawing of "Jap Girl painting a vase." He adds some other "Jap sketches"--an offhand reference to the Japonaise influence which Beardsley took from Whistler. Most amusing is Beardsley's rendition of Whistler's famous elegant little butterfly signature: a large Art Nouveau buzzard holding Beardsley's name. Sometimes called the last Pre-Raphaelite, Beardsley carried the bright torch of the Whistler and Burne-Jones influences for six years. Shortly after the tour of the Leyland mansion, Beardsley visited Burne-Jones who encouraged him to take evening classes at the Westminster School of Art that year--which was the only formal training in art he ever received. In 1894 he again showed his great admiration for Whistler in the illustration "Peacock Skirt" which he created for Oscar Wilde's book Salome. Beardsley supported himself as an artist and illustrator from 1892 until his death from tuberculosis in 1898 at the age of twenty-five.
Whistler's Peacock Room--or Harmony in Blue and Gold, was sold at auction when Leyland died in 1892 and his great collection was dismantled. However, visitors to Washington, D.C., can view the entire room which has been reassembled and restored at the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.%,%Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/021/0001t%,%mm+79035857%,,%mcc/021%,%A99 (color slide; pages 1 and 4); A100 (color slide; pages 2 and 3); LC-MSS-35857-2 (B&W negative; sketch)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Artists/Beardsley, Aubrey (1872-1898)/Botticelli, Sandro (1444?-1510)/Burne-Jones, Edward Coley Sir (1833-1898)/Drawings/Leyland, Frederick Richard (1831-1892)/Lippi, Filippo (1406-1469)/Millais, John Everett Millais (1829-1896)/Painters/Peacock Room/Pre-Raphaelites/Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882)/Scotson-Clark, G. F. (George Frederick) (1872-1927)/Watercolor painting/Whistler, James McNeill (1834-1903)%
%U%,%Polk, James K. (James K. Polk Papers)%,%Retained copy of letter, James K. Polk to the Committee of the Democratic National Convention accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, [12 June 1844].%,%12 June 1844%,%James K. Polk (1795-1849), the first "dark horse" candidate for the presidency, became the nominee of the Democratic Party at its national convention in Baltimore, Maryland, on 29 May 1844. It had been anticipated that former president Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) would be selected, but his opposition to the annexation of Texas made him unacceptable to the South and to former president Andrew Jackson (1767-1845). Polk was not widely known throughout the country, even though he had served in the House of Representatives for fourteen years and as speaker during his last two terms. As recently as 1843, he had been defeated in a canvass for the governorship of Tennessee. His nomination in Baltimore came on the ninth ballot after his name was brought forward on the eighth.
A committee appointed by the convention wrote to Polk on 29 May 1844, requesting his acceptance of the nomination that had been unanimously tendered to him. In its letter, the committee announced that it confidently entertained the hope that Polk would not "turn a deaf ear" to the call of his country. Polk's response of 12 June 1844, written from his home in Columbia, Tennessee, noted that "the office of President of the United States should neither be sought nor declined," and never having sought it, he did not "feel at liberty to decline it" if conferred upon him. He did, however, use the occasion to declare that, if elected, he would not seek reelection. During the campaign that followed, the Whigs who had the famous Henry Clay (1777-1852) as their candidate, asked derisively, "Who is James K. Polk?" Elected on 5 November 1844, Polk in four years oversaw the admittance of Texas as a state, the declaration of war against Mexico, the settlement by treaty with Great Britain of the Oregon boundary dispute, and the acquisition by treaty with Mexico of territory that eventually became California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. After completing his single term, which was one of the most productive presidencies in American history, Polk returned to Tennessee where he died less than four months later.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/041/0001t%,%mm+73036509%,,%mcc/041%,%A72 (color slide; page 1); A73 (color slide; page 2)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Baltimore (Md.)/Clay, Henry (1777-1852)/Democratic Party (U.S.)/Elections/Jackson, Andrew (1767-1845)/Mexico/Oregon/Political conventions/Polk, James K. (James Knox) (1795-1849)/Presidential nominations/Presidents/Tennessee/Texas/Van Buren, Martin (1782-1862)/Whig Party (U.S.)%
%U%,%Porter, David Dixon (David Dixon Porter Papers)%,%Watercolors of Civil War ironclads by Ens. D. M. N. Stouffer, ca. 1864-65.%,%ca. 1864-65%,%The vessels shown here were all part of the Mississippi Squadron under the command of Adm. David Dixon Porter (1813-1891). The squadron was created on 1 October 1862, by the transfer of command of the Western Flotilla from the army to the navy. Its purpose was to cooperate with Union land forces in combating guerrillas operating along the western rivers, to punish Confederate sympathizers, to protect transport and supply ships, and to prevent the movement of Confederate troops and supplies.
The Essex was an ironclad gunboat built in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1856. Originally commissioned the New Era, she served as a ferry until 1861, when she was purchased by the War Department and renamed. The Essex played an important part in the Vicksburg and Port Hutson campaigns.
The Choctaw, a side-wheel steamer built in 1853, was purchased by the government in 1862 and converted to an ironclad ram. The vessel spent the entire war patrolling the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
The Alexandria, originally the Confederate side-wheel steamer St. Mary, was built in Louisiana in 1862. The vessel was captured at Yazoo City, Mississippi, in July 1863, and placed in federal service, initially as the Yazoo, and later as the Alexandria. She operated largely on the Mississippi River between Donaldsonville, Louisiana, and Cairo, Illinois.
The General Sterling Price, originally the Laurent Millaudon, was a wooden steamer built at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1856. The vessel first served as a Confederate ram, participating in the defense of Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and in the Battle of Memphis. She was sunk in the latter engagement, raised by the Union army, and assigned to the Mississippi Squadron with her name shortened to the General Price. She later ran the batteries at Vicksburg lashed to the Lafayette and served briefly as Admiral Porter's flagship during the Red River Campaign of 1864.
The St. Clair was a wooden, stern-wheel river steamer built at Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania, in 1862. She was purchased by the War Department for the Western Flotilla but was transferred to the newly created Mississippi Squadron. She was used to patrol the Mississippi, Cumberland, and Tennessee rivers, and she served in the Red River Campaign of 1864.
The Argosy was a stern-wheel river steamer built at Monongahela, Pennsylvania, in 1863. She was purchased by the federal government at Cairo, Illinois, in March 1863 and used by Admiral Porter to patrol the Mississippi, Cumberland, Tennessee, and Red rivers.
The Oneota, a harbor and river monitor, was launched at Cincinnati, Ohio, in May 1864. She was still being outfitted when the war ended.
The Osage, a single-turreted river monitor, was launched in January 1863 at Carondelet, Missouri. She participated in the Red River Campaign of 1864 before being transferred to the West Coast Blockading Squadron, where she was involved in the 28 March 1865, attack on Spanish Fort near Mobile, Alabama. The following day the Osage was sunk by a torpedo in the Blakely River.
The Eastport was under construction as a Confederate ironclad when she was captured by Union forces at Cerro Gordo, Tennessee, on the Tennessee River. The War Department completed the vessel but converted her to a ram. She was severely damaged by a torpedo during the Red River Campaign of 1864 and had to be destroyed.
The Lafayette, originally the Aleck Scott, was a side-wheel steamer built at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1848. She was purchased by the War Department in May 1862 and converted to an ironclad ram. The vessel ran the Confederate batteries at Vicksburg with the wooden gunboat General Price and a coal barge lashed to her starboard side.
The War Department purchased the Vindicator at New Albany, Indiana, in 1863. She was intended for use as an army transport but was converted to ram and assigned to the Mississippi Squadron, where she performed reconnaissance and escort duty, chiefly on the Mississippi River.
The side-wheel river steamer A. O. Tyler was built at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1857. The War Department purchased the vessel in 1861, converted her to a gunboat, and renamed her the Tyler. She first served in the Western Flotilla, supporting Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) at Belmont, Missouri, before being assigned to Admiral Porter's Mississippi Squadron.%,%John R. Sellers, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/042/0001t%,%mm+79036574%,,%mcc/042%,%A74 (color slide; Essex and Choctaw on one slide)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%A. O. Tyler (Ship)/Aleck Scott (Ship)/Alexandria (Ship)/Argosy (Ship)/Artists/Boats and boating/Choctaw (Ship)/Civil War, 1861-1865/Eastport (Ship)/Essex (Ship)/General Price (Ship)/General Sterling Price (Ship)/Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) (1822-1885)/Lafayette (Ship)/Laurent Millaudon (Ship)/Mississippi Squadron/Naval officers/Naval warfare/New Era (Ship)/Oneota (Ship)/Osage (Ship)/Painters/Porter, David D. (David Dixon) (1813-1891)/Ships/St. Clair (Ship)/St. Mary (Ship)/Tyler (Ship)/Vindicator (Ship)/Watercolor painting/West Coast Blockading Squadron/Western Flotilla/Yazoo (Ship)%
%U%,%Reed, Charles Wellington (Charles Wellington Reed Papers)%,%Charles Wellington Reed's pencil sketch of Abraham Lincoln at City Point, Virginia, 1865.%,%1865%,%Civil War soldier and artist Charles Wellington Reed (1841-1926) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 1 April 1841. He enlisted in the Ninth Massachusetts Light Artillery on 2 August 1862 and served until the end of the war, but on detached service as an assistant topographical engineer on the staff of Gen. Gouverneur Kemble Warren (1830-1882), Fifth Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, after 19 November 1864. Lt. Reed participated in the battles of Gettysburg (for which he received the Congressional Medal of Honor), the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Petersburg, Hatcher's Run, and Five Forks, and he was present when Gen. Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865. Fortunately, Reed was left-handed, for he received a bad sabre cut on his right hand in 1864 during the raid on the Weldon Railroad south of Petersburg, Virginia. He was also wounded by shrapnel in the knee and chest.
Lt. Reed described his war experiences in numerous letters to his family. However, his words did not reveal nearly as much about the average soldier's everyday life as did his drawings, which appeared both in letters and in two large sketch books. What Reed could not say, he drew, and obviously, the drawings speak volumes. His sketch of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) visiting the Army of the Potomac during the Petersburg-Richmond Campaign, for example, captures the president's physical appearance, including his clothing and facial features, his respect for common soldiers, and the effect of his presence on the rank and file.%,%John R. Sellers, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/043/0001t%,%mm+79037457%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/r/reed.txt%,%mcc/043%,%A112 (color slide)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Artists/City Point (Va.)/Civil War, 1861-1865/Lee, Robert E. (Robert Edward) (1807-1870)/Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865)/Presidents/Reed, Charles Wellington (1841-1926)/Soldiers/Virginia/Warren, Gouverneur Kemble (1830-1882)%
%U%,%Rickey, Branch (Branch Rickey Papers)%,%Branch Rickey's scouting report on Don Drysdale, 15 June 1954.%,%15 June 1954%,%Wesley Branch Rickey (1881-1965), major league baseball manager and executive, was associated over a long career with the St. Louis Browns, St. Louis Cardinals, Brooklyn Dodgers, and Pittsburgh Pirates. While with the Dodgers in 1947, as president, general manager, and co-owner, he brought Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) into the major leagues, the first black player to be admitted. For this Branch Rickey was hailed as "baseball's emancipator." Throughout his career he was known for his recognition of baseball talent and its subsequent development, especially through the farm system which he had pioneered. He joined the Pittsburgh organization relatively late in life, but on the evidence of his 1954 scouting report on the eighteen-year- old Don (Donald S.) Drysdale (1936-1993), his baseball instincts were as sharp as ever.
Rickey wrote that Drysdale had "a lot of artistry" and a fastball that was "really good" and "way above average." He deemed the young pitcher "a definite prospect." That Drysdale went on to meet and even exceed Rickey's opinion of him is beyond question. He never played for the Pirates, however. As the handwritten annotation at the bottom of the report indicates, Drysdale signed with the Dodgers, for whom his father was a scout. He then spent his entire major league career of fourteen years with the Dodgers franchise, first in Brooklyn and then in Los Angeles. He led the National League in strikeouts three years and won the Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in baseball in 1962. He was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in 1984. Branch Rickey had preceded him there in 1967.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/044/0001t%,%mm+82037820%,,%mcc/044%,%A75 (color slide)%,%Miscellany/Miscellany Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Baseball/Drysdale, Don (1936-1993)/Rickey, Branch (1881-1965)/Robinson, Jackie (1919-1972)/Scouting reports/Sports%
%U%,%Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr. (Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Papers)%,%Letter with illustrated fable, Theodore Roosevelt to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., 11 July 1890.%,%11 July 1890%,%Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), twenty-sixth president of the United States (1901-09), strived for a life that embodied his ideal of assertive masculinity. At various times, he was an outdoor sportsman, explorer, rancher, and soldier as well as being an aggressive political leader and writer on historical and public affairs. While the American people had ample opportunity to observe Roosevelt's public side, he kept his personal relationships private. The letter exhibited here shows an aspect of Roosevelt's life not often on public display--his role as devoted father to his six children.
In 1889 President Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) appointed Roosevelt to the United States Civil Service Commission. In reaction to the assassination of President James A. Garfield (1831-1881) by a disgruntled job seeker, the commission had been created in 1883 to reduce patronage politics in federal employment. Roosevelt's appointment injected considerable energy and attracted much publicity to the commission's activities. During his six years with the commission, Roosevelt established a residence in the nation's capital, but he and his family also spent time during Washington's sweltering summers at Sagamore Hill, their Oyster Bay, New York, residence. This letter comes from a period when Roosevelt's duties kept him in Washington while his family summered at Sagamore Hill.
From Washington, D.C., Roosevelt sent this letter to be read to his young son, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (1887-1944), who at less than three years of age, could not yet read. In contrast with Roosevelt's tough, determinedly manly public image, in this letter we see the future president as a tender father who addresses his toddler son in childish language and promises to take him to play in the barn and on the beach. He entertains his young son with an illustrated fable about a bear chasing a pony and a cow, which have strayed too far from the barn. The animals race safely home and "make up their minds they will never run away again."
In 1903 a new toy, a soft stuffed bear cub, was introduced on the market and quickly became a favorite of young children. Coincidentally, a cartoon appeared depicting President "Teddy" Roosevelt, known as an enthusiastic game hunter, sparing the life of a cute bear cub. The resemblance of the cartoon cub and the stuffed toy bears provoked many to call the toys "Teddy's bears," which quickly evolved into the term "Teddy bear." This letter shows that perhaps naming these huggable bears after Theodore Roosevelt was, indeed, appropriate.
In addition to President Roosevelt's papers, the Manuscript Division holds the papers of three of his children: Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Kermit Roosevelt, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth.%,%John E. Haynes, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/045/0001t%,%mm+78038281%,,%mcc/045%,%A113 (color slide; pages 1-2)%,%The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Children/Drawings/Garfield, James A. (James Abram) (1831-1881)/Harrison, Benjamin (1833-1901)/Presidents/Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919)/Roosevelt, Theodore (1887-1944)/Teddy bears/United States Civil Service Commission%
%U%,%Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe (Henry Rowe Schoolcraft Papers)%,%Manuscript map, probably made by a French voyageur, of Indian lands of Wisconsin, when part of Michigan Territory, annotated by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, ca. 1831.%,%ca. 1831%,%This map of Wisconsin river valleys, probably made by a French voyageur, was carried by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864), the author, ethnologist, explorer, geologist, Indian agent, and superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan, who annotated it during an expedition he made in the summer of 1831. Schoolcraft was sent by Lewis Cass (1782-1866), governor of Michigan Territory (which then included Wisconsin and part of Minnesota), to take a census of the Chippewa (Ojibwa Indians) and Dakota (Sioux Indians) settlements in the Upper Mississippi River country and try to resolve the hostilities between the two tribes. Schoolcraft added the place names of Indian villages, chiefs' names, and pertinent census figures as well as translations of some French terms and the identification of certain geographical features. The map's reverse orientation, with north at the bottom, may be due to the voyageur's approach into the region from that direction.
Schoolcraft planned further exploration of regions beyond those shown on this map and was especially interested in mapping the sources of the Mississippi River, but he had to abandon this goal because of low water on the upper Mississippi. Exploration was resumed the following year, however, and Schoolcraft succeeded in establishing Itasca Lake as the river's source. He published the results in his Narrative of an Expedition Through the Upper Mississippi to Itasca Lake, The Actual Source of the River; Embracing an Exploratory Trip through the St. Croix and Burntwood (or Broule) Rivers; in 1832 (New York, 1834). An account of the earlier 1831 expedition is included in this volume, and Schoolcraft's original manuscript journal is a part of his papers in the Manuscript Division.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/087/0001t%,%mm+73039115%,,%mcc/087%,%A120 (color slide); LC-MSS-39115-7 (B&W negative)%,%Diplomacy and Foreign Policy/Diplomacy and Foreign Policy Items List/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Cass, Lewis (1782-1866)/Dakota Indians/Diplomacy/Ethnologists/Explorers/France/Indians of North America/Itasca Lake/Maps/Michigan/Mississippi River/Ojibwa Indians/Schoolcraft, Henry R. (Henry Rowe) (1793-1864)/Wisconsin%
%U%,%Sevareid, Eric (Eric Sevareid Papers)%,%Letter, Edward R. Murrow to Eric Sevareid offering Sevareid a job with Columbia Broadcasting System's (CBS) European office on the eve of World War II, 16 August 1939.%,%16 August 1939%,%Over his long career with the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), first in radio and then television, Eric Sevareid (1912-1992) proved himself to be one of the most talented, thoughtful, and respected broadcast journalists of his day, with a career at CBS that stretched from 1939 to 1977. As this letter shows, Sevareid also had superb timing. In 1939 he was a young print reporter working for United Press International's wire service in Paris, France. In August, Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965), head of CBS radio operations in Europe, offered Sevareid a position with the company's Paris office. Sevareid accepted, and less than three weeks later World War II began and Paris became one of the premier locations for reporting the war's early years. Audiences for Sevareid's radio broadcasts ballooned, and the war provided a never-ending supply of newsworthy stories. Luck and good timing may have gotten him the job, but Sevareid's talent took him the rest of the way.%,%John E. Haynes, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/046/0001t%,%mm+78039495%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/s/sevareid.txt%,%mcc/046%,%A76 (color slide)%,%Miscellany/Miscellany Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)/France/Journalists/Murrow, Edward R. (1908-1965)/Paris, France/Radio/Sevareid, Eric (1912-1992)/Television/World War, 1939-1945%
%U%,%Shaker Collection (Shaker Collection)%,%Shaker religious greeting, watercolor, January 1853.%,%January 1853%,%In 1776 Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784) and a small group of religious followers purchased land in Niskeyuna (later Watervliet), New York, and founded the first Shaker community in the United States. Lee had been born in England in 1736 and as a young woman joined a sect there known as the Shaking Quakers or Shakers, so named because of the ritual dancing that characterized their worship. By 1773 Lee was regarded as the group's leader and was imprisoned several times for preaching a new gospel that celebrated God's dual male/female nature, proclaimed that Jesus Christ made his second appearance in the person of Ann Lee, and maintained that salvation lay in forsaking sins of the flesh for the way of the spirit.
Prompted by a vision in 1774, Lee led a small group of followers to America, where they established a community based on the principles of simplicity, economy, charity, and equality. Viewed initially as a separatist religious community and perceived as rebels against established faiths, the Shakers actually followed an orthodox doctrine. They did not adhere to the institution of marriage and remained celibate, a decision Lee felt would relieve women of the pain and danger of childbirth and spare them the grief she had experienced after losing her four children in infancy. Shaker tradition on equal rights also preceded the struggle for women's rights, as Shaker sisters were accorded equal standing with men and held positions of leadership and responsibility. Lee's preachings found a receptive audience, and her followers swelled to several thousand, with women more than twice as likely to join than men. Shakers settled throughout New England and eventually established more than two dozen communities in eleven states.
When Lee died in 1784, Mother Lucy Wright (1760-1821) succeeded her as leader of the female division. Upon Wright's succession, the Shakers began to gain recognized constitutional rights as a religious group, and soon the community created a covenant explaining its faith and religious practice. As public opinion toward the Shakers gradually changed, their reputation as hardworking and skilled individuals became more secure. The Shakers are perhaps best known for their ingenious creativity. The intensive communal life of their settlements and the group's emphasis on simplicity and economy resulted in a distinctive arts and crafts tradition. As carpenters and cabinetmakers, Shakers demonstrated precision and skill, and even today their furniture is viewed as valuable collectors items. The simple forms and exquisite craftsmanship of Shaker designs are thought to reflect the untroubled, wholesome, preindustrial past of early America.
The item exhibited here, drawn in water color and ink, also reflects the talents of the Shaker tradition. It is an example of a spirit or inspirational drawing and is a type of folk art that was shared between Shakers as gifts. Spirit drawings expressed the emotional feelings within the artist and were inspired by symbolic expressions of religious experiences. It is believed that the drawings were created by women for a very limited audience, such as the artist's family or immediate circle. They were not circulated throughout the larger Shaker community, as Shaker rules prohibited hanging the drawings or other decorative items. Drawings ranged from elaborate to simple geometric shapes and often included emblems such as trees, birds, flowers, and moons. As shown in the inscription above this particular drawing, one Shaker sister, Polly Laurance, gave the drawing to another sister with Mother Wright's permission. The intimate inscription demonstrates the close bonds apparent within a community whose purposefulness and productivity remain unparalleled.%,%Nazera S. Wright, Junior Fellow, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/047/0001t%,%mm+76039552%,,%mcc/047%,%A110 (color slide)%,%Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Art/Drawings/Lee, Ann (1736-1784)/Religion/Shakers/Women/Wright, Lucy (1760-1821)%
%U%,%Squier, E. G. (E. G. Squier Papers)%,%"Plan of the Ancient Works at Marietta, Ohio," by Charles Whittlesey, 1837.%,%1837%,%The multitalented Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888) had an unusual and varied career as journalist, diplomat, and archaeologist. Relatively early in life and in collaboration with Edwin Hamilton Davis (1811-1888), he studied the remains of the mid-western mound-builders. His research resulted in the 1847 report Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, the first scientific study published by the Smithsonian Institution. Because most of the mounds have since given way to farms and buildings, Squier's detailed study has enduring value. Concluding that the mounds were of greater antiquity than previously believed and that the mound-builders were indigenous to America, Squier stoked nationalistic feeling and strongly influenced American anthropologists of the so-called "American School." Squier continued his investigations and in 1851 published the Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York. The Dictionary of American Biography concluded that Squier's "two studies were marked by observation and description so accurate and thorough that they became authoritative in their fields." The plan shown here of the ancient works at Marietta, Ohio, was drawn in 1837 by Charles Whittlesey (1808-1886), an Ohio state engineer, who assisted Davis, Squier's collaborator, in surveying Indian mounds and earthworks throughout Ohio. In his preface to Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, Squier noted that he and Davis incorporated many plans, research notes, and observations generously supplied to them by Whittlesey.%,%Marvin W. Kranz, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/048/0001t%,%mm+79041087%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/s/squier.txt%,%mcc/048%,%A111 (color slide)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Archaeology/Davis, E. H. (Edwin Hamilton) (1811-1888)/Indians of North America/Maps/Marietta (Ohio)/Mound-builders/Squier, E. G. (Ephraim George) 1821-1888)/Whittlesey, Charles (1808-1886)%
%U%,%Stanton, Elizabeth Cady (Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers)%,%Draft of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible, ca. 1895.%,%ca. 1895%,%Although most often identified as a suffragist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) participated in a variety of reform initiatives during her lifetime. Setting her sights on women's emancipation and equality in all arenas--political, economic, religious, and social--Stanton viewed suffrage as an important but not paramount goal. Since childhood, Stanton had rebelled against the role assigned to women and chafed at being denied a university education because of her sex. As a young woman, she became involved in the temperance and antislavery movements, through which she met Henry Brewster Stanton (1805-1887), an abolitionist reformer and journalist, whom she married in May 1840. While honeymooning in England, Elizabeth became outraged when she and other women were barred from a major antislavery convention. She discussed her feelings with Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), a Quaker minister from Pennsylvania and one of the American delegates to the meeting, and together they resolved to hold a women's rights convention to discuss women's secondary status when they returned to the United States.
Eight years passed before Mott and Stanton could make good on their promise, but in July 1848, more than three hundred men and women assembled in Seneca Falls, New York, for the first women's rights convention, at which Stanton's famous Declaration of Rights and Sentiments was read and adopted. Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, Stanton's document protested women's inferior legal status and put forward a list of proposals for the moral, economic, and political equality of women. The most radical resolution was the demand for woman suffrage, a goal that would consume the women's movement for more than seventy years. Stanton, in close collaboration with Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), led the suffrage fight, but along the way she actively supported dress reform and women's health issues, greater educational and financial opportunities for women, more liberal divorce laws, and stronger women's property laws. Even more controversial than Stanton's positions on those issues, however, were her views on religion and on the Church's role in limiting women's progress, ideas which culminated in 1895 with the publication of The Woman's Bible, shown here in draft form.
For more than forty years before publication of The Woman's Bible, Stanton had objected to religious teachings on slavery, marriage, divorce, and women's status. Two of the eighteen grievances listed in the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments concerned church affairs and the interpretation of scriptures. Reacting to church opposition to the many causes that she championed, Stanton once wrote, "No reform has ever been started but the Bible, falsely interpreted, has opposed it."(1)
In the late 1880s, Stanton began a thorough study of the Bible and sought to establish a committee of academic and church women to contribute to the project. The names of seven other women appeared as authors in the final published version of The Woman's Bible, Part I, and several more were listed as members of the revising committee. It is believed, however, that much of the work was done by Stanton alone. Stanton concerned herself only with those parts of the Bible that mentioned women or that she believed had erroneously omitted women. The published volume, like the draft manuscript exhibited here, reproduced a section of Biblical text at the top of each page followed by a reinterpretation or commentary written by Stanton or another contributor. The manuscript draft held by the Library contains only Stanton's contributions and consists of passages from the books of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers, published in The Woman's Bible, Part I, and from Matthew, published in The Woman's Bible, Part II.
Although The Woman's Bible was never accepted as a major work of Biblical scholarship, it was a best-seller, much to the horror of many suffragists. In particular, younger members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), of which Stanton had once been president, felt that The Woman's Bible jeopardized the group's ability to gain support for a suffrage amendment, and they formally denounced the publication despite Anthony's pleas not to embarrass Stanton publicly. Controversy over the book threatened to divide the suffrage movement, and although Anthony spoke in Stanton's behalf, the incident damaged their friendship and reflected the widening gap between Anthony's increasingly single-minded pursuit of suffrage and Stanton's interest in a broader agenda. Ignoring NAWSA's objections and concerned about the increased influence of conservative evangelical suffragists, Stanton published the second part of her Bible in 1898. This volume, like the first, was an attempt to promote a radical liberating theology that stressed self-development and challenged the ideological basis for women's subordination. Until her death in 1902, Stanton continued to write on religious themes and to condemn canon law for restricting women's freedom and retarding their progress.
(1) Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mary Ann McClintock, "Letter to the Editor," Semi-Weekly Courier (Seneca Falls, New York), [1848], The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, microfilm edition, reel 6:779-81.%,%Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/049/0001t%,%mm+78041210%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/s/stanton.txt%,%mcc/049%,%A114 (color slide; Chapter II, page 3)%,%Women's History/Women's History Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell) (1820-1906)/Declaration of Rights and Sentiments/Mott, Lucretia (1793-1880)/National American Woman Suffrage Association/Religion/Stanton, Elizabeth Cady (1815-1902)/Stanton, Henry B. (Henry Brewster) (1805-1887)/Suffragists/The Woman's Bible/Women/Women's rights%
%U%,%Udall, Stewart L. (Stewart L. Udall Collection)%,%"Dedication," Robert Frost's presidential inaugural poem, 20 January 1961. Typescript with Frost's holograph script corrections in ink and Stewart Udall's holograph clarifications in pencil on the last page. Permission to reproduce the poem online was granted by the Estate of Robert Frost and Henry Holt and Co., Inc. From The Poetry of Robert Frost edited by Edward Connery Lathem, copyright 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost, copyright 1969 by Henry Holt and Co.%,%20 January 1961%,%This is the reading text of a poem Robert Frost (1874-1963) composed for delivery at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) on 20 January 1961. The poem went undelivered, however, because the sun's glare upon the snow-covered ground blinded Frost from seeing his text. The poet put the manuscript aside and instead recited his poem "The Gift Outright" from memory. "Dedication" appears under the title, "For John Kennedy His Inauguration," in The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem and copyrighted 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
This first version of "Dedication" was donated to the Library of Congress in 1969 by Stewart L. Udall (1920- ), Kennedy's secretary of the interior, after he had been asked about his own papers. Udall explained that no one had expected Frost to write a new poem for the inauguration as "he had steadfastly refused to compose commemorative verses during his entire lifetime." On the morning of the ceremony, Udall heard Frost reading aloud in a closed room. When the poet emerged, he handed Udall the "Dedication" manuscript, and, pleased with this surprise, said, "I've been practicing up!" Udall had a clean typescript prepared, and Frost took both versions to the ceremony. Near the end of the day, Udall asked Frost for the manuscript of the new unread poem. Frost agreed and added the inscription which appears above the title of the typescript: "For Stewart from Robert On the Day, Jan 20 1961."
Frost's association with the Library of Congress commenced well before this inaugural poem arrived. He served as the Library's consultant in poetry from 1958 to 1959, and as honorary consultant in the humanities from 1958 to 1963. The Library mounted an exhibition of Frostiana in 1955-56 and held a press conference for his November 1962 visit. Frost recorded readings of his poetry at the Library in 1948, 1953, and 1959 for the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature.%,%Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/088/0001t%,%mm+81002011%,,%mcc/088%,%A77 (color slide; pages 1-3)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%"Dedication" (Poem)/"For John Kennedy His Inauguration" (Poem)/Frost, Robert (1874-1963)/"The Gift Outright" (Poem)/Inaugurations/Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald) (1917-1963)/Poems/Poets/Presidents/Udall, Stewart L. (1920- )%
%U%,%United States Commissioners of the City of Washington Records (United States Commissioners of the City of Washington Records)%,%Letter, John Adams to federal department heads ordering the relocation of government offices from Philadelphia to the District of Columbia, 15 May 1800.%,%15 May 1800%,%John Adams (1735-1826), second president of the United States, wrote this 15 May 1800 letter to the heads of the various federal departments and agencies on the eve of the federal government's relocation from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to the District of Columbia. As the letter indicates, this final directive gave government officials only thirty days to be relocated and operating in their new, and often unfinished, quarters on the Potomac River. Adams was the first president to occupy the residence that came to be called the White House.%,%Gerard W. Gawalt, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/071/0001t%,%mm+83087668%,,%mcc/071%,%A29 (color slide); LC-MSS-87668-1 (B&W negative)%,%The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Adams, John (1735-1826)/Federal government/Pennsylvania/Philadelphia (Pa.)/Presidents/Washington (D.C.)/White House (Washington, D.C.)%
%U%,%Van Buren, Martin (Martin Van Buren Papers)%,%Letter, Andrew Jackson to Martin Van Buren discussing the nullification crisis, 13 January 1833.%,%13 January 1833%,%The nullification controversy of 1832-33 confronted Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) with the greatest crisis of his presidency--the defiance of the federal government by South Carolina. The doctrine of nullification, which asserted that a state could on its own authority declare a federal law unconstitutional, had manifested itself in American life before, but never to such a dangerous degree. The passage of tariff bills in 1828 and 1832, favoring northern manufacturing over southern agriculture, had been the immediate cause of the crisis leading to South Carolina's Ordinance of Nullification of 24 November 1832, declaring the tariff acts null, void, and not binding upon her. Jackson's swift response, his Proclamation to the People of South Carolina, 10 December 1832, considered the greatest state paper of the era, made it clear that any action taken to uphold nullification by armed force was treason. In this 13 January 1833 letter from Jackson to his newly elected vice-president Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), the president shows he was standing firm--nothing would be permitted "to weaken our government at home or abroad," and the Union would be preserved.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/050/0001t%,%mm+78043828%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/v/vanburen.txt%,%mcc/050%,%A89 (color slide; pages 1 and 4); A90 (color slide; pages 2 and 3)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Constitution/Jackson, Andrew (1767-1845)/Law/Nullification/Presidents/South Carolina/State rights/Tariff/Treason/Van Buren, Martin (1782-1862)/Vice-Presidents%
%U%,%Von Neumann, John (John Von Neumann Papers)%,%Albert Einstein's handwritten draft report, in German, on theoretical physics, with English transcription of same, 23 October 1937.%,%23 October 1937%,%Physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and mathematician John Von Neumann (1903-1957) were among the first professors to join the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) created at Princeton, New Jersey, in 1933 by American educator Abraham Flexner (1866-1959). Professors at the institute were to have no laboratories, no routine, excellent salaries, and plenty of time to think. The typed draft of a "Report on Theoretical Physics," contained in the Manuscript Division's John Von Neumann Papers, was based on the accompanying manuscript pages, handwritten in German by Einstein. Although the purpose of these documents is unknown, Einstein's manuscript contains his insightful evaluation and ranking of the world's top theoretical physicists. Since the text alludes to some future invitation, it could be that Einstein was responding to Von Neumann's request for candidates for a future IAS appointment. Whatever its purpose in 1937, it affords a fascinating glimpse into Einstein's opinions and rationale concerning the best minds of his time.%,%Leonard C. Bruno, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/089/0001t%,%mm+82044180%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/v/vonneumn.txt%,%mcc/089%,%A78 (color slide; page 1; handwritten draft and typed transcription)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)/Flexner, Abraham (1866-1959)/Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, N.J.)/Mathematicians/Physicists/Von Neumann, John (1903-1957)%
%U%,%Wadsworth, James (James Wadsworth Family Papers)%,%Civil War photograph album, ca. 1861-65.%,%1861-65?%,%Cartes de visite, miniature portraits used as calling cards, were extremely popular during the American Civil War. These photographic calling cards, approximately 2½ x 4 inches in size, had been invented in France in the early 1850s, and their popularity quickly spread throughout Europe and eventually to the United States, where the corollary development of the photograph album spurred a collecting craze in the 1860s that became known as Cartomania.(1) In addition to assembling albums of family photographs, the public sought to collect images of celebrities and views of favorite places and sites. John Hay (1838-1905), a personal secretary to President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) who later had a successful diplomatic and political career of his own, is thought to have assembled the cards in this album. Many of the two hundred individuals represented in Hay's album, including numerous army and navy officers, politicians, and cultural figures, were undoubtedly visitors to the Lincoln White House. Others, such as Confederate president Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) and generals Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) and James Longstreet (1821-1904), were unlikely to have called at the Executive Mansion.
Most of the portraits in Hay's album are signed, greatly increasing their value. It was common practice during the war to acquire such portraits through gift or purchase, mail them to the individuals represented, and hope for their return--signed. Thus on the back of many of the cartes are notes requesting that the sitter affix his signature at the bottom of the carte, high enough to be seen when in an album. It was also customary for many photographers, including both Mathew B. Brady (1823-1896) and Alexander Gardner (1821-1882) whose work is well documented in this album, to keep stocks of autographed cartes for sale to souvenir album collectors. Hay was acquainted with both Brady and Gardner and went to the latter's studio with Lincoln for the president's sitting and separately to have his own photograph taken. He could quite possibly have purchased cartes from Gardner and others to supplement those he acquired directly from the sitters.
Hay thoughtfully arranged his collection of cartes in a decorative, leather-bound album patented by Altemus & Company of Philadelphia on 21 July 1863. Like many such albums, this one has gold-stamped decoration on the cover and spine, engraved circular ivory bosses at each corner of the cover, and two brass foredge clasps. The text block consists of a title page, a blank index page, twenty-five album pages, and a back flyleaf. Each album page holds eight cartes--four on the front and four on the back--inserted in recessed pockets. Since the cartes were placed back-to-back in the album, sometimes the ink instructions to one sitter bled from the back of one carte onto the verso of another. The text block edges are gilt, as are the edges of the openings for each photograph. The openings have been numbered 1 through 200, possibly by the same hand who wrote on the first page "Do not touch the pictures with the fingers." Of particular interest to book conservators is the album's "hinged-back" spine, ingeniously engineered to permit flexible movement of the heavy, stiff-paged text block. The pages of the album are attached to the spine by leather hinges that are slotted and have metal pins inserted. Each pin alternately picks up hinges for the page in front of it and in back of it, forming a continuous attachment of leaves. As the pages are turned, they rotate on the pin.
This digital reproduction of the album allows viewers the opportunity to page through the cartes as if they were perusing the volume in Hay's home. These "album page views" enable readers to consider Hay's selection and arrangement of the photographs. For example, Hay began the album with Lincoln followed by his vice presidents and members of his Cabinet. Elsewhere in the album there are groupings of politicians and military officers, with images of cultural and literary figures toward the end of the book. By selecting the "View these cartes" option from any of the album pages, readers may see the images as they would appear outside the album. Both the front and verso of each carte is fully displayed, revealing studio logos, addresses, and other imprint information on the approximately twenty photographers and/or photographic firms represented in the album. One especially elaborate imprint is for Alexander Gardner's studios, which features an image of the United States Capitol and its grounds, complete with strolling figures on the esplanade.
The Hay album became the property of the Wadsworth family through Hay's daughter Alice, who married James W. Wadsworth, Jr. It was subsequently donated to the Library as part of the Wadsworth Family Papers.
(1) William and Estelle Marder, Anthony the Man the Company the Cameras: An American Photographic Pioneer: 140 Year History of a Company from Anthony to Ansco to GAF (Plantation, Fla.: Pine Ridge Publishing Company): 88.%,%Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division; Jan Lancaster, National Digital Library Program; and Mary Wootton, Conservation Division%,%mcc/051/0001t%,%mm+78044297%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/w/wadswrth.txt%,%mcc/051%,%B&W negatives exist for each carte de visite (images of the fronts of the cards only). Negative numbers are displayed when viewing the cartes individually. Additionally, one color slide (A95) reproducing two pages of the album, containing cartes 141-148, is available.%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Army officers/Autographs/Brady, Mathew B. (1823 (ca.)-1896)/Calling cards/Carte de visite photographs/Civil War, 1861-1865/Davis, Jefferson (1808-1889)/Gardner, Alexander (1821-1882)/Hay, John (1838-1905)/Lee, Robert E. (Robert Edward) (1807-1870)/Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865)/Longstreet, James (1821-1904)/Naval officers/Photographs/Soldiers/Wadsworth, Alice Hay/Wadsworth, James (1768-1844)%
%U%,%Warren, Earl (Earl Warren Papers)%,%Notes, William O. Douglas to Earl Warren, 11 May 1954; Harold H. Burton to Warren, 17 May 1954; and Felix Frankfurter to Warren, 17 May 1954, concerning Chief Justice Warren's decision in Brown v. Board of Education.%,%11-17 May 1954%,%The justices of the United States Supreme Court communicate with one another about individual cases throughout the judicial process, from the initial decision about accepting jurisdiction to the final judgment on the merits. This collection of notes to Earl Warren (1891-1974) from three of his colleagues, however, was most unusual. In paying tribute to Chief Justice Warren, justices Harold H. Burton (1888-1964), Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965), and William O. Douglas (1898-1980) underscored their sense of gratitude, delight, and relief that the chief had led the brethren to a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954). It was widely believed by informed observers that the Brown case, which held that racial segregation in the public schools was unconstitutional, would be decided by a badly divided Court. The justices had been split on many other controversial issues, and even an optimistic Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), who argued the case for the opponents of segregation, thought that several justices would dissent. Chief Justice Warren carefully structured a six-month debate about the case within the Court, adopting the important recommendation of Justice Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) to delay taking a formal vote until the issues were thoroughly explored. During the course of many meetings, Justice Frankfurter was particularly resourceful about identifying a number of areas upon which all could agree. The Court would continue to issue unanimous decisions in cases involving racial segregation for many years, which lent an enhanced legitimacy to a major development in constitutional law.%,%David Wigdor, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/052/0001t%,%mm+82052258%,,%mcc/052%,%A79 (color slide)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%African Americans/Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas/Burton, Harold H. (Harold Hitz) (1888-1964)/Civil rights movement/Douglas, William O. (William Orville) (1898-1980)/Education/Frankfurter, Felix (1882-1965)/Integration/Jackson, Robert H. (1892-1954)/Law/Marshall, Thurgood (1908-1993)/Schools/United States Supreme Court/Warren, Earl (1891-1974)%
%U%,%Washington, George (George Washington Papers)%,%George Washington's first inaugural address, 30 April 1789.%,%30 April 1789%,%George Washington (1732-1799) delivered his first inaugural address to a joint session of Congress, assembled in Federal Hall, New York City, on 30 April 1789. The newly elected president delivered the speech in a deep, low voice that betrayed what one observer called "manifest embarrassment." Aside from recommending constitutional amendments to satisfy citizens demanding a Bill of Rights, Washington confined himself to generalities. He closed by asking for a "divine blessing" on the American people and their elected representatives. In delivering an inaugural address, Washington went beyond the constitutional requirement of taking an oath of office and thus established a precedent that has been followed since by every elected president.
The Confederation Congress had set the date of the first inauguration as Wednesday, 4 March 1789. Members of the new Congress, however, were delayed in arriving in New York and were unable to count the electoral ballots as early as anticipated. Consequently, the inauguration was postponed until Congress officially notified Washington and the president-elect travelled from Virginia to New York. Subsequent inaugurations took place on either 4 March (or 5 March when the fourth fell on a Sunday), until 1937 when the Twentieth (or Lame-Duck) Amendment changed the date to 20 January (or 21 January when the twentieth fell on a Sunday).%,%James H. Hutson and Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/053/0001t%,%mm+78044693%,,%mcc/053%,%A115 (color slide; page 1)%,%The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Bill of Rights/Congress/Constitutional amendments/Inaugurations/Presidents/Speeches/Washington, George (1732-1799)%
%U%,%Washington, George (George Washington Papers)%,%Letter, Benedict Arnold to George Washington pleading for mercy for his wife, 25 September 1780.%,%25 September 1780%,%Brig. Gen. Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) of the Continental army had fought gallantly for the American side since the beginning of the Revolutionary War. With Ethan Allen (1738-1789), he captured Fort Ticonderoga in 1775, led an unsuccessful assault on Quebec that same year, stopped the British movement from Canada down Lake Champlain in 1776, repulsed the British in the Mohawk Valley and aided in forcing Gen. John Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga in 1777, and a year later assumed command of American troops in Philadelphia. But by spring 1779, Arnold had begun a treasonous correspondence with the British, motivated partly by greed for money, partly by his opposition to the French alliance of 1778, and partly by his resentment towards authorities who had reprimanded him for irregularities during his command in Philadelphia.
In 1780, Arnold asked Gen. George Washington (1732-1799) for command of the American fortress at West Point, New York, which he was given. Shortly thereafter, on 23 September 1780, Arnold's attempt to surrender West Point to the British was uncovered with the arrest of Maj. John André (1751-1780), the British spy with whom he had plotted. Two days later, when Arnold heard of Andre's arrest, he fled to the Vulture, a British warship on the Hudson River. That same day, he wrote this letter to Washington, begging help for his wife, the young and beautiful Margaret ("Peggy") Shippen Arnold (1760-1804). Solicitous for a young lady's welfare and unaware of her participation in her husband's duplicitous dealings with the British, Washington provided an escort for Mrs. Arnold back to her family home in Philadelphia. There authorities forced her to flee to her husband in New York. During the remainder of the Revolutionary War, Arnold served as a brigadier general in the British army, leading raids on Virginia and Connecticut. After the war, he and his family moved to England, where he died in 1801, his name having become synonymous with traitor in the United States.%,%Gerard W. Gawalt and Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/054/0001t%,%mm+78044693%,,%mcc/054%,%A80 (color slide; page 1); A81 (color slide; page 2)%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%André, John (1751-1780)/Army officers/Arnold, Benedict (1741-1801)/Arnold, Margaret Shippen (1760-1804)/New York (State)/Presidents/Treason/Revolution, 1775-1783 (U.S.)/Washington, George (1732-1799)/West Point (N.Y.)%
%U%,%Washington, George (George Washington Papers)%,%Enclosure, John Hancock to George Washington concerning the reading of the Declaration of Independence to the Revolutionary army, 4 July 1776.%,%4 July 1776%,%Among the resolutions passed by the Continental Congress on 4 July 1776 was one which called for the president of the Congress, John Hancock (1737-1793), to send to several commanding officers of the Continental army copies of the Declaration of Independence, which had just been adopted by Congress and printed by John Dunlap (1747-1812). Hancock sent this copy of the resolutions together with the "Dunlap Broadside" of the Declaration to Gen. George Washington (1732-1799) on 6 July. Washington had the Declaration read to his assembled troops in New York on 9 July. Later that night, the Americans destroyed a bronze and lead statue of King George III (1738-1820), which stood at the foot of Broadway on the Bowling Green. Washington's personal copy of the Dunlap printing of the Declaration of Independence remains in the Manuscript Division's George Washington Papers.%,%Gerard W. Gawalt, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/090/0001t%,%mm+78044693%,,%mcc/090%,%A121 (color slide; page 1); A122 (color slide; page 2)%,%Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Army officers/Continental Army/Continental Congress/Declaration of Independence (1776)/Dunlap, John (1747-1812)/George III, King of Great Britain (1738-1820)/Hancock, John (1737-1793)/Presidents/Resolutions, legislative/Revolution, 1775-1783 (U.S.)/Washington, George (1732-1799)%
%U%,%Webster, Daniel (Daniel Webster Papers)%,%Daniel Webster's notes for his speech to the United States Senate favoring the Compromise of 1850, 7 March 1850.%,%7 March 1850%,%Daniel Webster (1782-1852), United States senator from Massachusetts, rose on 7 March 1850 to support a complex series of statutes introduced by Henry Clay (1777-1852) of Kentucky that came to be known as "The Compromise of 1850." This "Seventh of March" speech, which Webster preferred to call his "Constitution and the Union" speech, contained the famous opening lines, "I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States." These lines are reflected in Webster's notes for the exordium (or beginning) of his speech.
The genesis of Clay's compromise resolutions was the territorial accessions to the United States resulting from the war with Mexico, thereby thrusting the question of the expansion of slavery dramatically to the forefront once again. Webster, in speaking in support of Clay, was attempting to close the widening gap between the North and South, and in these same introductory remarks said "I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union. 'Hear me for my cause'." One of the most controversial speeches ever heard in the Senate, its espousal of compromise measures won approval in many quarters, but outraged much of New England. A proviso for a new and more stringent fugitive slave law was especially galling and led the poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) to declare of Webster in his poem "Ichabod,"
All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead.
The compromise measures were later introduced and passed as separate bills in September 1850. These provided for California to be admitted to the Union as a free state, abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia, allowed the question of slavery in Utah and New Mexico territories to be decided by popular sovereignty, settled Texas border disputes, and amended the Fugitive Slave Act. The issues in contention between the sections did not go away, but civil war was deferred for another decade.%,%John J. McDonough, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/091/0001t%,%mm+78044925%,,%mcc/091%,%A82 (color slide); LC-MSS-44925-2 (B&W negative)%,%Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Abolitionism/Abolitionists/Antislavery movements/Clay, Henry (1777-1852)/Compromise of 1850/Congress/Fugitive slaves/"Ichabod" (poem)/Legislators/Mexican War, 1846-1848/Sectionalism (U.S.)/Slave-trade/Slavery/Speeches/United States Senate/Webster, Daniel (1782-1852)/Whittier, John Greenleaf (1807-1892)%
%U%,%Whitman, Walt (Walt Whitman Collection)%,%Letter and corrected reprint of Walt Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain" with comments by author, 9 February 1888.%,%9 February 1888%,%Inspired by the death of President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), Walt Whitman (1819-1892) wrote his famous dirge "O Captain! My Captain!" in 1865. A rare example of his rhymed, rhythmically regular verse, the poem was published in the Saturday Press to immediate acclaim and was included in the poet's Sequel to Drum-Taps also published that year. Whitman revised the poem in 1866 and again in 1871. It quickly became his single most popular poem, much to his consternation, and it was the only one of his poems in his compendium Leaves of Grass to be widely reprinted and anthologized during his lifetime.
In one such anthology, Riverside Literature Series No. 32, Whitman spotted some errors, and sent the publishers this corrected sheet with the following note written on the verso, dated 9 February 1888, from Camden, New Jersey. "Thank you for the little books, No. 32 "Riverside Literature Series"--Somehow you have got a couple of bad perversions in "O Captain," & I send you a corrected sheet." The editors apparently erred by picking up earlier versions of punctuation and whole lines, which the poet had revised in 1871 and now repudiated: "Leave you not the little spot" in the first stanza was supposed to be "O the bleeding drops of red." In the second stanza, Whitman corrects "This arm I push beneath you" to "This arm beneath your head." In the final stanza, the editors quoted, "But the ship, the ship is anchored safe, its voyage safe and done" whereas it should have read, "The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done."
Whitman's lecture on Lincoln was much in demand during the poet's old age, and in the 1880s he usually included a recitation of "O Captain." He gave the lecture and recitation almost annually in the 1880s--four times in 1886. He once told his friend Horace Traubel (1858-1919), "Damn My Captain . . . I'm almost sorry I ever wrote the poem" though it did have "certain emotional immediate reasons for being." One of these was the centrality of the Civil War to Whitman's personal and poetic life and his perception of the war as a reflection of the nation on trial. Whitman also once envisioned Lincoln as an archangel captain and reportedly dreamed the night before the assassination about a ship entering a harbor under full sail.%,%Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/055/0001t%,%mm+82077909%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/w/whitman.txt%,%mcc/055%,%A83 (color slide of letter); A84 (color slide of poem reprint); LC-MSS-77909-1 (B&W negative of poem reprint)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Assassinations/Civil War, 1861-1865/Leaves of Grass/Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865)/Literature/"O Captain, My Captain!" (Poem)/Poems/Poets/Presidents/Riverside Literature Series/Traubel, Horace (1858-1919)/Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)%
%U%,%Williams, John Sharp (John Sharp Williams Papers)%,%Letter, Philip Avery Stone to John Sharp Williams requesting support for William Faulkner's appointment as postmaster at the University of Mississippi, 1 May 1922.%,%1 May 1922%,%In recent years, government support for arts and letters flows chiefly through formal programs and institutions such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. In an earlier era, however, government subsidies sometimes followed the channels of political patronage. In this 1922 letter, Philip Avery Stone (1893-1967), an Oxford, Mississippi, lawyer, urged his United States senator, John Sharp Williams (1854-1932), to proceed with Senate confirmation of William Faulkner (1897-1962) as United States postmaster at the University of Mississippi.
Faulkner, later recognized as one of America's greatest literary figures, was then only twenty-four years old and unknown. Stone explained that those who supported Faulkner's appointment wanted him to "have some money and leisure to go ahead with his writing, for which he shows a rather unusual talent." At that time, a postmaster's position provided a decent full-time salary for duties that could usually be performed in just a few hours a day. Faulkner could devote most of his time to his writing while being assured of financial security.
A political supporter of Williams, Stone assured the Democratic senator that although Faulkner's uncle was aligned with their political opponents, William Faulkner himself was indifferent to politics and followed Stone's guidance on voting. The United States Senate confirmed Faulkner's appointment soon after Williams received Stone's letter. Faulkner, however, found even the part-time duties of postmaster irksome. His performance was noticeably inept, and he resigned the position in 1924. Stone, however, continued to arrange financial support for his friend, confident that his literary talent would grow and be recognized, which it was, with the publication of such Faulkner classics as The Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Faulkner went on to win both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize in literature.%,%John E. Haynes, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/056/0001t%,%mm+78045823%,,%mcc/056%,%A86 (color slide; pages 1-2)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Congress, Law, and Politics/Congress, Law, and Politics Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Authors/Congress/Faulkner, William (1897-1962)/Legislators/Literature/Mississippi/Oxford (Miss.)/Patronage, political/Stone, Philip Avery (1893-1967)/United States Postal Service/Williams, John Sharp (1854-1932)%
%U%,%Wilson, Woodrow (Woodrow Wilson Papers)%,%Woodrow Wilson's speech notes, in shorthand, for his "Fourteen Points" address, [8 January 1918].%,%8 January 1918%,%President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) frequently used shorthand to record his first thoughts on topics. Here in 1918 he outlined his famous Fourteen Points, the terms which he believed should be used as the basis for the peace treaty settling the First World War, which the United States had entered in April 1917 on the side of the Allies--Great Britain, France, Italy, and Russia.
Wilson had several aims and audiences in mind when composing his Fourteen Points address, delivered to Congress on 8 January 1918. One goal was to give the American people a clear set of war aims, which both appealed to their idealism and expressed his view that the country had entered the conflict as "a war for freedom and justice and self-government." Wilson's second audience was comprised of the peoples of the Central Powers--the enemy. While America had been in the war less than a year, by 1918 Europe was into the fourth year of what can only be described as a catastrophe. The war had produced military casualties on a scale that had been hitherto unimaginable. By 1918 a significant share of Europe's young men was dead or wounded, and the civilian populations were beginning to experience serious malnutrition, economic privation, and war weariness. Further, the Central Powers were dominated by three multinational empires (German Hohenzollern empire, Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg empire, and Ottoman Turkish empire), and as the war dragged on, many of these empires' subordinate nationalities grew increasingly restive and yearned for independence.
With these factors in mind, Wilson sought to break the will of the Central Powers by promising a just peace and an end to the human slaughter and privations of war. He also exacerbated the growing ethnic unrest of the multinational empires by promising national independence and self-determination for all peoples involved in the conflict. The latter promise of national independence for the peoples of Central Europe helped to mobilize support for the American war effort among immigrant groups in America.
Also contained in Wilson's fourteen points was a response to an initiative by the new Bolshevik regime, which had withdrawn Russia from the Allied war effort and sought peace with the Central Powers. To discredit continued participation in the war, the Bolsheviks had made public various secret agreements between the former Tsarist government and several Allied nations, which suggested that the Allies were chiefly concerned with imperial gain. Wilson's first point promised that peace would not be driven by secret deals.
The Fourteen Points were:
1. Open agreements openly arrived at.
2. Freedom of the seas.
3. The removal of economic barriers and equality of trade conditions among nations.
4. Reduction of national armaments.
5. A readjustment of colonial claims in which the interests of the colonial populations must be given equal weight with the claims of the governing power.
6. The evacuation of Russian territory by non-Russian forces and Russia left to determine its own political destiny.
7. Removal of foreign forces from Belgium and restoration of its national independence.
8. Removal of foreign forces from France and the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France.
9. Readjustment of the frontiers of Italy along national lines.
10. Self-determination for the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
11. A redrawing of the boundaries of the Balkan states along historically established lines of nationality.
12. Self-determination of the peoples under rule of the Turkish empire and freedom of navigation of the Dardanells under international guarantees.
13. National independence for Poland and its free access to the sea guaranteed by international treaty.
14. Formation of a league of nations for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.%,%John E. Haynes, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/057/0001t%,%mm+73046029%,,%mcc/057%,%A85 (color slide; pages 1-3); LC-MSS-46029-14 (B&W negative; pages 6-8 on one negative)%,%Diplomacy and Foreign Policy/Diplomacy and Foreign Policy Items List/Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Bolsheviks/Congress/Diplomacy/Europe/Fourteen Points/Presidents/Shorthand/Speeches/Treaties/War/Wilson, Woodrow (1856-1924)/World War, 1914-1918%
%U%,%Wister, Owen (Owen Wister Papers)%,%Illustrated letter, Frederic Remington to Owen Wister containing a sketch of Remington's bronze Bronco Buster, ca. January 1895.%,%ca. January 1895%,%Two champions of the old West share their common interest in this illustrated letter, ca. January 1895, from sculptor, illustrator, and painter Frederick Remington (1861-1909) to writer Owen Wister (1860-1938). Both originally Easterners, the two men had met in 1893 when Wister went to Wyoming for his health. Remington was working on ranches there and was drawing action sketches of cowboys and Indians, some of which he later incorporated into stories he wrote largely as vehicles for his illustrations. Kindred spirits, Remington and Wister also discovered another common tie, their mutual friendship with outdoor sportsman and future United States president Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). Remington's drawings for Roosevelt's Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail (1888) made the artist famous. Wister had been friends with Roosevelt since his Harvard University days and later dedicated to Roosevelt his most famous Western story, The Virginian (1902). It became a best-seller, was widely translated, gave rise to four motion pictures, and spurred radio and television interest in the western genre. In this letter to his new friend, Remington muses about the instability of his oil paintings and watercolors, which may fade in time "like pale molasses," but he suggests that his new work in bronze--"a cowboy on a bucking broncho"-- will "rattle down through all the ages." Remington's prediction proved correct, and his Bronco Buster remains today one of his most famous works celebrating the vanishing West and helping to shape our national memory of the American cowboy at work. The Owen Wister Papers, preserving this letter with an early sketch of Remington's sculpture, were donated to the Library of Congress primarily by his daughter, Frances Kemble Wister Stokes, great-granddaughter of the actress Fanny Kemble (1809-1893).%,%Alice L. Birney, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/058/0001t%,%mm+78046177%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/w/wister.txt%,%mcc/058%,%A87 (color slide; page 2); LC-MSS-46177-7 (B&W negative; page 2)%,%Arts and Literature/Arts and Literature Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Artists/Bronco Buster (Sculpture)/Drawings/Painters/Remington, Frederic (1861-1909)/Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919)/Sculptors/West (U.S.)/Wister, Owen (1860-1938)%
%U%,%Woodbury, Levi (Levi Woodbury Papers)%,%Indian treaty signed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 13 July 1713, and addendum signed at same location, 28 July 1714.%,%13 July 1713; 28 July 1714%,%Queen Anne's War, the American counterpart to the War of the Spanish Succession, was fought between France and England in the West Indies and on the Carolina and New England frontiers from 1702 to 1713. At the end of the war, the "Eastern Tribes" of North American Indians, which had been allied with the French, surrendered to the British. On 13 July 1713, delegates and sachems of the tribes met at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with representatives of the provinces of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire to sign this treaty, which brought temporary peace to the northern frontier following years of violent warfare. The Indian delegates, who signed the treaty with pictographs and French and English names, agreed to "forbear all acts of Hostility towards all the Subjects of the Crown of Great Britain" and stated that they "hence forward hold & maintain a firm & constant amity & friendship with all the English and never will entertain any Treasonable Conspiracy with any other Nation to their Disturbance." Other articles in the treaty concern ownership of land, control of trade and commerce, submission to British law and courts of justice, and pleas "for the pardon of all our past rebellious Hostilities & violations of our promises."
A year after the original treaty was signed, a second document was prepared recording the acceptance of the treaty by "every of the sachems and delegates that were not present & had not signed the last year." This additional document, dated 28 July 1714, also shows the delegates' use of both English and French names and pictographs.%,%John J. McDonough and Janice E. Ruth, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/059/0001t%,%mm+82046326%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/w/woodbury.txt%,%mcc/059%,%A116 (color slide; first page of 28 July 1714 addendum only); LC-MSS-12930-1 (B&W negative; first page of 28 July 1714 addendum only)%,%Diplomacy and Foreign Policy/Diplomacy and Foreign Policy Items List/Military Affairs/Military Affairs Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Diplomacy/Eastern Indians/France/Great Britain/Indians of North America/Picture-writing/Queen Anne's War, 1702-1713/Spanish Succession, War of, 1701-1714/Woodbury, Levi (1789-1851)%
%U%,%Woodson, Carter G. (Carter G. Woodson Collection)%,%Sales contract between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison for an indentured servant's remaining term, 19 April 1809.%,%19 April 1809%,%Former President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) wrote this contract on 19 April 1809 (ironically the anniversary of the Battle of Concord and Lexington which began the war for American independence) for the sale of the remainder of the term of service of an indentured servant, John Freeman, to President James Madison (1751-1836). Both Jefferson and Madison were the owners of many slaves, but neither possessed claims to many indentured servants. The servant in question was probably a free black man, with a special skill as an artisan, who would have been of particular value to Madison, because he was expanding his plantation house. Jefferson noted in a 19 April 1809 letter to Madison that the deed for John was for 76 1/2 months out of a term of 132 months at $400 for the full term.%,%Gerard W. Gawalt, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/060/0001t%,%mm+76046342%,,%mcc/060%,%A91 (color slide)%,%African-American History and Culture/African-American History and Culture Items List/The Presidency/Presidential Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%African Americans/Contracts/Indentured servants/Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)/Madison, James (1751-1836)/Presidents%
%U%,%Wright Brothers (Wright Brothers Papers)%,%Telegram, Orville Wright to Bishop Milton Wright announcing the first successful powered flight, 17 December [1903].%,%17 December 1903%,%Before crashing and damaging their flying machine, Orville Wright (1871-1948) and his brother Wilbur Wright (1867-1912) achieved partial aviation success on 14 December 1903 with a flight of 112 feet. The brothers did not consider this achievement a true flight, however, and they repaired the damage and awaited favorable flying weather. Three days later, they successfully launched their plane several times, and on the fourth flight achieved a distance of 852 feet, with Wilbur Wright staying airborne for fifty-nine seconds. After the plane was brought back to camp, it was caught by a powerful wind gust, which forcefully slammed it into the ground. The resulting damage was so severe that the 1903 flight season ended that morning.
The brothers were ambivalent about how much to tell the world of their breakthrough achievement, but after eating lunch, they walked four miles to the Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, weather station and sent this telegram to their father, instructing him to "inform press." The message went from this station to Norfolk, Virginia, where it was relayed to Western Union for transmittal to Dayton, Ohio. In transmission the fifty-nine seconds became fifty-seven, and Orville Wright's first name was spelled "Orevelle." The Wright family had anticipated success and had a strategy for disseminating the information. Lorin Wright, Wilbur and Orville's brother, took the telegram and copies of a typewritten statement, which had already been prepared by their father, to local newspaper editors, who gave the story limited exposure. In the meantime, the Norfolk telegraph operator leaked the story to the city's Virginian-Pilot, which not only gave it banner treatment, but exaggerated details and introduced fictions, which later became hard to eradicate.%,%Marvin W. Kranz, Manuscript Division%,%mcc/061/0001t%,%mm+78046706%,%/00/.ftppub/mss/msspub/fa/w/wrightbr.txt%,%mcc/061%,%A88 (color slide); LC-MSS-46706-5 (B&W negative)%,%Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention/Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention Items List/Chronological List/Words and Deeds%,%Aeronautics/Airplanes/Inventions/Inventors/Kitty Hawk (N.C.)/North Carolina/Telegrams/Wright, Orville (1871-1948)/Wright, Wilbur (1867-1912)%