This letter, by former President John Quincy Adams,
is in response to a request by the Mechanical Library Association of Baltimore for
Adam’s to speak at their facility at some future date. This association was connected
to and an outgrowth of the Baltimore volunteer Mechanical Fire Company, formed
by the company for member’s self education. Adams is informing them that he will not
be able to speak at the Association’s venue on the date requested. For a full description see the collection page.
Letter to A. C. Cazenove, Esq. concerning Nicolas Basler, by James Buchanan., 1.0 Comments: James Buchanan (1791-1868) was the 15th President of the United States (1857-1861). He is the only president from Pennsylvania, the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor, and the last president born in the 18th century. He was a U.S. Congressman and Senator for Pennsylvania and later served as Minister to Russia under Andrew Jackson. Buchanan was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 1844. He became Secretary of State under President James K. Polk (March 1845 - March 1849 - through all of Polk’s Presidency). The two most important international events during his tenure was the settling of the Oregon Territory boundary with Canada and the Mexican War (1846-1848). (This is the period in which this letter was written.) After he turned down an offer for an appointment to the Supreme Court, President Franklin Pierce appointed him minister to the Court of St. James's.
Buchanan was nominated and elected President in 1856. He was viewed as a compromise between the two sides of the slavery question. His election victory took place in a three-man race with John C. Fremont and Millard Fillmore. As President, he was often called a "doughface", a Northerner with Southern sympathies. He battled with Stephen A. Douglas for the control of the Democratic Party. Buchanan's efforts to maintain peace between the North and the South alienated both sides, and the Southern states ultimately declared their secession in the prologue to the American Civil War in December of 1860
in the last days of his presidency.
Letter from Jane Cunningham to her cousin in response to a request for genealogical information. Cunningham discusses her father, uncles, and brother, with significant detail on their involvement in the Battle of Ramsour’s Mill in North Carolina (June 20, 1780) and conflict with Native Americans in Tennessee.
This letter was written in 1849 by a forty-niner in St. Louis, one William H. Morse, to a friend back home in New England. He’s been in St. Louis for three weeks, the last stop on the frontier, as he prepares to embark on a journey westward on the overland trail, making his way to California in search of gold. He describes his 35 day trip thus far, from an unnamed town in the northeast, south through Baltimore to Harpers Ferry, through the Cumberland Gap to Morgantown, where he caught steamboats that carried him to Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, down the Ohio River, and up the Mississippi to St. Louis. Morse provides a colorful commentary along the way, describing the towns and major landmarks he passed.
Two letters written by Samuel Rothgeb to his parents in 1847. Rothgeb was a young man just off the farm when he took up a position as a merchant and cook aboard a flatboat plying the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers at the twilight of the flatboat age. His letters chronicle storms, river trade, daily rafting life, and more.