Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

This is an artificial collection comprising letters, document, portraits, and object for various RBML manuscript collections. The source of each item is noted after its description.

Approximately 12,000 letters to Allan Nevins from various correspondents including James Truslow Adams, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Willa Cather, Frances Folsom Cleveland, Van Wyck Brooks, Robert Frost, Newton D. Baker, Archibald MacLeish, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Carl Sandburg, and Henry Wallace; notes and typescripts for Nevins' books including Emergence of Lincoln, The Ordeal of Democracy, Rockefeller, and History and Historians, with notes by editor Ray A. Billington; miscellaneous transcripts, clippings, newspapers, and photographs. Also, autograph letters and manuscripts by presidents, Civil War figures, financiers, politicians, and authors. There are also the Brand Whitlock World War I Diaries and letters to him by such people as Herbert Hoover, Gen. John J. Pershing, and others.

Cotton's 15 nonconsecutive manuscript pocket diaries for the period from 1850 to 1877. The diaries outline his life and travels. The entries for the Civil War years are especially interesting. He often describes the capital's fear of enemy invasion, recent nearby incursions, troop movements, and the general preoccupation with all aspects of the war. He called on President Lincoln, attended his second inauguration, and notes the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation. He describes the capital's joyous mood at the fall of Richmond and the gloom over the assassination of Lincoln. He attended the military court to see the conspirators. Later volumes talk about Pension Bureau affairs and his health and that of his family.

A collection concerned with the various phases of black life in America, containing clippings, pamphlets, photographs, pictures, extracts from periodicals, and a representative group of approximately 350 letters, signatures, manuscripts, and documents. Among the letters are several each from Countee Cullen, Frederick Douglass, Alexander Dumas, fils, William Lloyd Garrison, Claude McKay, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Mencken, William Pickens, Albert A. Smith, and Booker T. Washington. Also, eighteen slavery documents.

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.

This collection of letters, manuscripts, autographs, and illustrations of English and American authors and statesmen was assembled by George Dunlop. Many of the letters relate to Robert Burns and to the Burns country of Ayrshire. Among the early items are letters from Robert Burns, Samuel Johnson, Hester Thrale Piozzi, Edgar Allan Poe, and Abraham Lincoln.

Letters of Rhoades written to William Kimberly Palmer and covering a broad range of subjects including the Civil War, Lincoln, the theater, New England authors, and travels in the Orient and the Arctic.

Letters, documents, memorabilia, printed material, prints, medals and sculpture relating to Lincoln and the Civil War period. Included are a letter from Edward Everett, a Philip Henry Sheridan autograph, a document by W. H. Herndon, Linclon's law partner, 19th century leters and documents and 20th century clippings, pictures, etc. of or about Lincoln. The collection features a John Rogers sculpture, "The Council of War," several busts of Lincoln and other two and three dimensional works of art.

Letters, manuscripts, prints, portraits, memorabilia, clipping, pamphlets, and other printed materials relating to Abraham Lincoln and his contemporaries. Included are four autograph letters from Lincoln, two of which are photostatic copies; one letter each from Salmon P. Chase, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Horace Greeley, and Robert Lincoln; two manuscript passes (military); a bust of Lincoln; a cast of his hands and a reconstruction of Lincoln's library. Also, five letters from Hill to his grandson David Schrady Hill, and typescripts of his sermons and speeches.

Correspondence, documents, and photographs of the Kelley family. The members of the family most prominent in the collection are Albert Kelley, Caroline B. Kelley, Florence Kelley (1859-1932), John Bartram Kelley, Margaret Dana Kelley, Nicholas Kelley, and William Darrah Kelley (1814-1890). There are letters to William D. Kelley from Andrew Carnegie, Rutherford B. Hayes, Lajos Kossuth, Abraham Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, and Gideon Welles. Also, a group of twenty letters to Florence Kelley from Jane Addams, dated 1900-1931.