Ainsworth Rand Spofford (1825-1908) was one of the longest-serving Librarians of Congress. But in 1861 he was uncertain about living in Washington, and busily covering the Civil War as a journalist. His letters home tell the tale.
The Manuscript Division has been following the lives of people and organizations who shape American history and culture into digital spaces, acquiring dozens of collections with an ever-growing accumulation of digital content. But you don’t have to be a computer wizard to do research in them.
As the year draws to a close, it seems like a good time to look back and highlight some of the political, social, cultural, military, and scientific manuscript collections and resource guides that the Manuscript Division has recently made available for researchers to explore. We’re already hard at work acquiring, arranging, and describing the historical …
The holiday cards of Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson convey more than season’s greetings, providing insight into her career as a photographer in the 1930s and her life as the spouse of a U.S. foreign service officer from 1940 to 1958.
On the 200th anniversary of Clara Barton’s birth on Christmas Day 1821, a look at Barton’s birthday diary entries and her published holiday greetings reveals the complexities of this well-known figure. Volunteer to transcribe and review newly added materials from the Clara Barton Papers on the Library of Congress’s By the People crowdsourced transcription website during Barton’s birthday month.
George S. Patton kept a personal journal during his involvement in the 1916 Mexican Expedition. While serving as aide-de-camp to General John J. Pershing, he recorded many observations of the military campaign against Pancho Villa’s forces - everything from day to day activities, to the first use of airplanes by the U.S. Army in a combat roll and its last use of mounted cavalry. This is the first of many wartime diaries that Patton kept during his military career.
World War I had a wide ranging impact on Europe and the United States particularly in the management of news, information, and propaganda. Join the Library of Congress Manuscript Division and author John M. Hamilton on November 10 at 12 noon for a discussion of the Committee on Public Information (CPI) and its influence on civil liberties, news gathering, and the issuance of propaganda in the United States and abroad.
Introducing a new blog with stories from one of the world’s most extensive archives related to American history, the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.