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The General Manuscript Collection is an artificial collection of correspondence, diaries, lecture notes, class work, essays, administrative documents, minutes, and other documents collected by the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Single items or very small collections are generally classified as part of the general manuscript collection rather than assigned an individual manuscript number. Additionally, small additions to existing RBML manuscript collections may be classified as part of the General Manuscript Collection.

Letters written to Mrs. Josephine Sophie White Griffing relating to her interests in the emancipation of African-Americans, temperance, and woman's suffrage. It is evident that the letters have been preserved selectively from Mrs. Griffing's papers, all of them being from well-known contemporaries. Correspondents include Frederick Douglass, Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, Anna Dickinson, Lucretia Mott, William H. Seward, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Many of the letters relate to her efforts to have prominent people give lectures in support of women's suffrage. Also, a scrapbook of clippings about Mrs. Griffing's life and activities and the autograph book of George T. Driggs, a relative, which contains the signatures of prominent political and military figures, particularly members of Congress, during the late 1860s.