Manuscripts and Archives

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The papers consist of correspondence and business papers of Aaron Columbus Burr, merchant of New York City and adopted son of Aaron Burr. The papers relate to an attempt by Burr and James Grant to establish a colony for freed American slaves in Honduras. There is also material relating to the American Honduras Company, a firm formed by Burr and Grant for the cutting and exporting of mahogany.

Correspondence, diaries, proclamations, and drafts of letters chiefly relating to the Civil War, but also including letters from the Jacksonian period. The major portion of the collection concerns the siege of Fort Sumter with letters from both Major Robert Anderson and General P.G.T. Beauregard. Included also are a diary kept by General S. Wylie Crawford during the siege and two letters from Abraham Lincoln.

The papers consist of correspondence, newspaper clippings of a historical and religious nature, journals, and other papers of the Bacon family. Included are sermons and writings of Leonard Bacon, and papers and journals of Leonard Woolsey Bacon and Benjamin Wisner Bacon. Leonard Bacon was actively involved in colonization, missionary, and antislavery movements throughout his career. His brother, David Francis Bacon, served as a medical professional in Liberia.

Roger Sherman Baldwin (1793-1863) graduated from Yale University in 1811, and began his law practice in New Haven in 1814. He served in New Haven and Connecticut politics (1826-1838), established a national reputation for his anti-slavery defense of slaves in the “Amistad” case (1839-1840), was elected governor of Connecticut (1844-1845), accepted the appointment and subsequent election to the U.S. Senate (1847-1851), and served as a delegate to the National Peace Convention (1861). Baldwin’s notebook on the Amistad case and correspondence with the captives are included in the collection.

Correspondence, writings, speeches, diaries, clippings, printed matter, sermons, and other papers of two centuries of Beecher family members. The papers relate principally to Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), popular 19th century clergyman and orator, and members of his family. Among those represented are his father, the Reverend Lyman Beecher (1775-1863), clergyman; his brothers, Edward Beecher (1803-1895), educator and antislavery leader, and Thomas Kinnicut Beecher (1824-1900) and Charles Beecher (1815-1900), both clergyman and antislavery activists; and his sisters, Harriett Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe (1811-1896), author, Catherine Esther Beecher (1800-1878), pioneer educator and writer on ‘domestic economy,’ and Isabella Homes (Beecher) Hooker (1822-1907), well-known suffragist.

The papers consist of correspondence, writings, and topical files, primarily documenting the professional career of historian C. Vann Woodward. A Yale professor for many years, Woodward was a leading scholar of the U.S. South.

The collection contains plantation records and a manuscript volume, “Obras completas de Juan Francisco Manzano esclavo de la Isla de Cuba.” The volume includes Manzano’s autobiography, letters, poetry and the drama, Zafira. Also included is a list of people who contributed money to purchase Manzano’s freedom.

The papers consist of diaries, letters, and miscellanea documenting Charles Griswold Gurley Merrill’s voyages as a seaman on the ship Merrimac and experiences as a Union army surgeon, including the command of black troops, during the Civil War.

 

The Civil War Manuscripts Collection was created to give the researcher more direct access to small and fragmentary collections of material on the subject of the Civil War in the United States, 1861-1865. It is an intentionally assembled collection of diaries, correspondence, photographs, printed material, and ephemera primarily documenting military events and daily camp life, as well as family life on the home front and civilian activities.

The records consist of correspondence written by Civil War soldiers from Yale College, 1855-1865. These records might be more revealing for what they do not say about slavery and emancipation than what they do offer on the subject. See also similar holdings at the Beinecke Library.

The papers consist of miscellaneous personal papers of Edward Parmelee Smith including letters to his future wife (1851-1854) and letters to his daughter (1872-1873) with an account of a sea voyage to California and his impressions once there. His years at Yale College are documented by an autograph album with messages from his teachers and classmates (1849-1855). Among the four photographs in the papers is one showing Smith with six students when he was president of Howard University, Washington, D.C. (1875). Clippings and correspondence describe his work as Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1873) and his death in Africa in 1876 while an envoy of the American Missionary Association.

The papers consist of correspondence and business papers relating to Eli Whitney’s interests in developing the cotton gin and the manufacture of firearms employing a system of interchangeable parts. The cotton gin, created in 1793, revolutionized southern argiculture and was a major factor in the spread of plantation slavery during the nineteenth century.

Manuscripts and typewritten copies of newspaper articles, ships’ logs and letterbooks in the Library of Congress relating to the slave trade after 1806, especially during the years 1810-1811, 1816-1821 and 1860-1863. These were collected but not used in connection with herDocuments Illustrative of the Slave Trade, published 1930-1934.

The papers consist of correspondence and official government and military directives to and from Holwell Walshe, which document his career in the 1st and 2nd West India Regiments, particularly his years as commander of Sherbro Island, Sierra Leone. Walshe took possession of Sherbro in September 1862 and successfully defended the island and revitalized its economy. He remained as Civil Commandant until 1871, when he was transferred to Singapore as a police magistrate.

Correspondence, diaries, writings and other papers of John Pitkin Norton, professor of agricultural chemistry at Yale from 1846-1852. Norton’s diaries contain observations on slavery and abolition, the Amistad case, the Liberty Party, religion, and temperance, among other topics. Professor Norton was also closely associated with the early days of the Sheffield Scientific School and was a pioneer in the application of scientific principles and methods to agriculture.

John W. Blassingame served as the acting chairman of Afro-American studies at Yale (1971-1972, 1976-1977) and as chairman (1981-1989). In the mid-1970s, he also became the editor and publisher of the papers of Frederick Douglass. He wrote and edited numerous works on the history of slavery in America. The papers consist of electrostatic copies of reseach materials and note cards used in the preparation of Blassingame’s 1971 Yale University Ph.D., A Social and Economic History of the Negro in New Orleans, 1860-1880.

Correspondence, diaries, writings, photographs, scrapbooks, research materials, and miscellanea documenting the personal life and literary career of Katherine Mayo, an author of several historical and investigative articles, essays, and books from 1896 to 1940. Prior to Mayo’s success as a literary figure she was employed by Oswald Garrison Villard to conduct extensive field research for his biography of John Brown. The collection includes a piece of the rope allegedly used to hang Brown.

The records include correspondence, notes, printed circulars, and memorabilia which document the organization and functioning of the Liverpool Emancipation Society. The society sought to educate the public and thereby garner support for the Union side during the American Civil War. The society also raised funds to aid distressed freedmen.

The collection consists of photoduplicates of original Mary Chesnut manuscripts, from the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina and from private owners, collected by C. Vann Woodward for the preparation of his book, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War.

A collection of correspondence; government documents, including reports, commissions, decrees, and awards; church documents; published illustrated materials; maps; and writings and poems from Mexico on civil, military, economic, religious, and social topics. Includes numerous documents about slavery. This collection is also available online.

The papers include correspondence, journals, memorabilia, and photographs that document the life of Samuel Willard Saxton and the career of his brother General Rufus Saxton during the Civil War. Samuel Saxton’s journal highlights his ardent abolitionist and reformist interests, his work on behalf of freedmen’s education, and his strong Republican loyalties. The letterbooks reflect Saxton’s position as an aide-de-camp for his brother and Rufus Saxton’s administration of the Department of the South and the former slaves under his jurisdiction.

Includes seven scrapbooks titled “Tracts on Slavery in the United States, and on the U.S. Constitution and Organic Laws.” Also includes a manuscript book containing records of punishments administered to slaves in a South American mining camp between 1836 and 1847, numerous deeds for slaves dating from 1783 to 1848, newspaper clippings from the 1840s through the 1860s relating to the anti-slavery movement in Kansas, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, and a manuscript census of slaves in Chester County, Pennsylvania, from 1780 to 1815.

The papers consist of the research files of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, an author and history professor. The papers include Phillip’s notes and transcripts of historical source materials and the collected papers of several southern families from 1712-1933. The collected papers include correspondence, account books, business records, farm and plantation records, diaries, and other papers which focus on the years 1790-1865, and the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia and the Piedmont region of Georgia. Numerous photographs drawn from the collection are available online.

The papers consist of correspondence, writings, notes and research materials, clippings, memorabilia, photographs and financial records of William Graham Sumner, a sociologist, professor at Yale University, and advocate of free trade and the gold standard. The correspondence (over 13,000 items) documents many of Sumner’s interests including the Yale College curriculum and economic and political issues. It also includes substantive accounts from friends in the South about Reconstruction, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Tilden-Hayes election.