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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.

Gibson, Tobias, fl. 1861-1865 [to Loula Gibson]

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC04501.095 Author/Creator: Gibson, Tobias, fl. 1861-1865 Place Written: Oak Forest, [LA] Type: Autograph letter signed Date: 14 April 1864 Pagination: 3 p. : Height: 25 cm, Width: 20 cm Order a Copy

The recipient is inferred from the content of the letter. Gibson completed an "unpleasant affair" (settled a contract) with the hands who will work on the plantation. He bitterly complains of being under the rule of the Provost Marshall and Federal occupation, "American ideas of liberty have totally changed since this Negro War began & education for them is soon to be the order of the Day by Regular Military order. Whilst as far as I know the white [2] Children are to grow up in ignorance or mix in the same cabin with the Negro with the same Yankee Marm for the teacher! How much farther this system is to go is broadly hinted at in the newspapers of the North with what real foundation I have as yet no means of judging but with the prevailing tendency to fanaticism at the North I would not be at all surprised if 'miscegenation' became the fashion as well as the sentiment of those people..." Hart has been imprisoned at Fort Delaware; he moved from Columbus.

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