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At the Institute’s core is the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the great archives in American history. More than 85,000 items cover five hundred years of American history, from Columbus’s 1493 letter describing the New World through the end of the twentieth century.

[Reconstruction leaflet denouncing the Freedman's Bureau and supporting Andrew Johnson]

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC00329 Author/Creator: Place Written: Pennsylvania Type: Broadsheet Date: 1866 Pagination: 2 p. : Height: 25 cm, Width: 16 cm Order a Copy

One side titled, "ECONOMISE AND PAY YOUR DEBT!: Restore the South and increase your resources." The other side titled, "ONLY SEVEN MILLIONS!" One side denounces the funding Congress passed in the Freedman's Bureau Bill as support for "lazy negros." The other argues the money is needed for the national debt and praises President Johnson's veto of the bill. Echoes Johnson's belief that buying land, building schools, and offering relief to freedmen was unprecedented, would make paupers and vagrants out of freemen already prone to indolence, and was unaffordable. This break between the president and congress cemented Johnson's alliance with Northern Democrats and southern whites in opposition to Radical Republicans.

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