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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.

Ewing, Thomas, 1829-1896 to Thomas Ewing, Sr.

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC03598 Author/Creator: Ewing, Thomas, 1829-1896 Place Written: Leavenworth, Kansas Type: Autograph letter signed Date: 7 January 1858 Pagination: 4 p. : Height: 26 cm, Width: 21 cm Order a Copy

Writes to his father that he has been very busy with politics. Gives his eyewitness account of the fraudulent Kansas elections of 4 January 1858. "We have warrants for the arrest of illegal voters & for judges of the Election at Kickapoo & Delaware but only caught two - the others fled ... I was at Kickapoo all day Monday, & saw more than I ever heard before of election frauds. Boys 15 years of age voted, men voted two or three times in an hour, about 50 Missourians voted, in all there were not over 450 votes put in, & yet the judges reported at the close of the polls 905 votes!" Discusses the free staters response to the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution. "If the pro-slavery men have carried the day, & we are admitted under the Lecompton Constitution, I apprehend Civil War. Calhoun is now in danger of death at the hands of the mob... " Part of page four is cross-written.

Ewing, Thomas, 1829-1896
Ewing, Thomas, 1789-1871
Calhoun, John Caldwell, 1833-1859

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