Our Collection

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.

Slavery Days.

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC09003 Author/Creator: Place Written: s.l. Type: Broadside Date: post 1865 Pagination: 1 p. : Height: 23.5 cm, Width: 10.3 cm Order a Copy

Printing of an anti-slavery poem written from the perspective of an older male slave who is close to dying. The first verse reads, "I am thinking now to day of the years that's pass'd away, When they tied me up in bondage long ago, In old Virginia State, it was there we separate, And it filled my heart with misery and woe; They took away my boy, he was his mother's joy, From a baby in the cradle we him raised, And they put us far apart, and it broke the old man's heart, In those agonising cruel slavery days."

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