Founding Era
Slavery and the Antebellum Era
Civil War and Reconstruction Era
Modern Era
Women’s History
Colonial Era
Beginning with a 1493 Latin printing of Columbus’s letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, the Collection contains more than 4,000 Colonial-era documents that chronicle the establishment of European settlements in the New World, relations with Native Americans, the French and Indian War, Quaker settlements, and commerce in the colonies. The materials in the Collection focus on the English and Dutch colonies, with some materials relating to the Spanish and French territories. Official documents include treaties between European powers and Native Americans, Acts of Parliament, and decrees of the colonial governments. The colonists’ letters describe the hardships of daily life, relations with Native Americans, the establishment of communities, and economic activity.
The Livingston-Redmond Family Archive (1637-1850) is an excellent source for individuals studying early New York, economics, or relations with Native Americans. Newspapers from this period include John Peter Zenger’s New York Weekly Journal, The Pennsylvania Packet, The Gazette of the United States, and more than 450 issues of Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette.
Founding Era
The Collection contains materials written by Colonial and Revolutionary War leaders and by every signer of the Declaration of Independence. The personal letters of the founders reveal their private views of contemporary people and events. Materials from this era include more than 400 documents written by George Washington, 270 documents by Thomas Jefferson, 140 documents by John Adams, 140 documents by John Q. Adams, and 75 documents by Alexander Hamilton, many of them unpublished.
The Henry Knox Papers (1750-1820) contain nearly 10,000 documents relating to Knox's tenure as Chief of Artillery during the American Revolution and as the first Secretary of War. The Papers include official letters and documents detailing virtually every aspect of the military effort during the Revolution, as well as personal correspondence with such luminaries as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Some 30 letters from Lucy Knox describe the conditions in Boston after the British evacuation in 1776.
The Pierce Butler Papers (1787) consist of notes and documents from the Constitutional Convention. The Papers include a rare printed first draft of the Constitution with Butler’s notes detailing the changes being made during the convention. There is material relating to the establishment of governmental agencies, the contested election of 1800, and the War of 1812. Treasures from this period include a unique South Carolina printing of the Declaration of Independence and all five first editions of the Constitution printed by Dunlap and Claypoole.
Slavery and the Antebellum Era
The Gilder Lehrman Collection has compiled a century-by-century archive on slavery; from George Washington's 1786 letter calling for the "slow, sure & imperceptible" abolition of slavery to slave revolts in the South, the renowned Amistad shipboard slave revolt and trial, the controversial 1857 Dred Scott decision, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Compromise of 1850, and a variety of materials relating to John Brown. The Collection also includes letters by John Quincy Adams protesting the "gag rule" that prohibited Congressional discussion of slavery, and documentary and visual material relating to the Fugitive Slave Law and the trans-Atlantic and domestic slave trade. Many Civil War-era letters by Southern soldiers contain valuable information about life in the antebellum South. The collection’s newspapers include more than 410 issues of The Liberator, dating primarily from the 1840’s.
Other materials in this period cover a wide range of topics; including Manifest Destiny and westward expansion, the settlement of the Mormons in Utah and the resulting “Mormon War,” the Mexican War, the removal of Native Americans from tribal lands, the nullification crisis, and Jacksonian politics.
Civil War and Reconstruction Era
Information on nearly every aspect of the Civil War can be found in the Collection through general orders, orderly books, recruitment broadsides, maps, photographs, newspapers, journals, official dispatches, and personal letters of military commanders, politicians, soldiers, and civilians. There are more than 1,600 Confederate newspapers, including 74 issues printed on wallpaper due to the paper shortage in the South. Thousands of soldiers’ letters and diaries, most of them unpublished, comprise the bulk of the Collection’s Civil War era materials. These documents capture the experience and opinions of the common soldier and his family in great detail. There are some 500 documents written by Abraham Lincoln, 270 documents by Ulysses S. Grant, 110 documents by Robert E. Lee, and 100 documents by Jefferson Davis.
Highlights from this period include a rare diary written by an African-American soldier, William Woodlin, copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment signed by Abraham Lincoln, and a letter from Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant asking for a ceasefire in order to discuss terms of surrender.
A variety of materials demonstrate the rise and fall of Civil Rights for African-Americans during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Reconstruction materials include the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, as well as sharecropper contracts, letters and documents detailing the rise and decline of the Ku Klux Klan, and more than 100 issues of The National Anti-Slavery Standard, dating from 1866-1867.
Modern Era
Although the bulk of the Collection is pre-1872, the Collection contains key documents for understanding the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They include several archives of soldiers from World War I and World War II and the diary of a nurse from World War I. The Walter T. Brown Papers contain detailed information on the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900. Brown served on the U.S.S. Monocacy and was trapped with the U.S. Marines and a multinational force in Tientsin. A small collection of documents from the Manhattan Project demonstrates scientists’ fears about the possible misuse of nuclear energy.
There are materials relating to poverty in America, the labor movement, women’s rights, and the Civil Rights movement. A 1915 broadside with instructions to movie theater owners for showing the film Birth of a Nation, various broadsides and books published by the NAACP in the 1920's, and a summary of the Civil Rights movement for 1962 written by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, are just a few of the documents that chronicle the struggle for equality. The stock market ticker tape from November 22, 1963 demonstrates the way Americans learned of the tragedy of Kennedy’s assassination.
Women's History
The Collection is rich in documents that represent the spectrum of women’s history in America from the Revolutionary era to the turn of the twentieth century. Revolutionary era materials include correspondence from Lucy Knox, who pointedly writes to her husband that when it comes to their household “there is such a thing as equal command.” The Civil War soldiers’ letters give a unique insight into the day-to-day lives of women whose husbands went to war. Many women, obligated to take over their husbands’ businesses and affairs, became heads of household during the war. Documents relating to important social movements in women’s history such as the suffragist and abolitionist movements can be found in the Collection as well. These documents include a signed manuscript by Susan B. Anthony stating the purpose of her work for equality for women, as well as mixed collection of broadsides, pamphlets, and leaflets relating to abolitionism, women’s suffrage, and slavery.
