The 1876 presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden came down to a dispute over Florida’s electoral votes. These pamphlets and documents include official signed copies of key Florida court and executive decisions. From the papers of Edward Louden Parris, an attorney for Tilden, who ended up losing in the “Compromise of 1877.”

“As a MAN OF THE PEOPLE, understanding them and trusted by them, he has proved himself the man for the time.”

An unusual and possibly unique Lincoln portrait above patriotic banners and a quotation from his first inaugural address.

Decades before the landmark Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade, a passionate Roosevelt expresses his concern for the morality and “virility” of the American people. “As you are a minister of the Gospel I think I ought to say to you that I am so sure of it that I feel that no man who is both intelligent and decent can differ with me …”

“Seriously, unless we were to go back to the Dred Scott decision, I fail to see how the Supreme Court could do otherwise than it did.”

“the National Committee can not defeat the wishes of the rank and file of the Republican voters by unseating delegates honestly elected & seated…” With note on verso, “I think I could probably be nominated”

After former president Theodore Roosevelt won nine of thirteen Republican primaries in 1912, he was convinced that he was the choice of the people to succeed fellow Republican William Howard Taft. After the Republican National Committee refused to seat Roosevelt delegates instead of Taft delegates chosen by state committees, Roosevelt cried foul. Most of his delegates abstained from voting, and Taft just reached the number of delegates needed for the nomination.

In response, Roosevelt formed his own Progressive Party and divided the Republican vote, allowing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win the general election.

“The poll this time was most interesting, particularly on 'Withholding.' This is the one area I feel it's necessary to hold out even if the poll is against me. Withholding may make it easier to pretend you aren't being taxed but it's also easier for govt. to raise taxes without getting a protest from the people....”

“In Congress, July 4th 1776. The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America.”

“the Court is packed now, and has been for fifty years, against progressive legislation…. The country will be just as safe, the Constitution just as strong, and the Republic just as great… [if we] let the privileges of our Government be for the whole people and not for just a favored few.”

“justice and the support of the public credit require, that provision should be made for fulfilling the engagements of the United States, in respect to their foreign debt, and for funding their domestic debt upon equitable and satisfactory terms.”

“The negro vote was not at all committed to Kennedy, but it went there because Mr. Nixon did not do anything to win it.  I understand his view but felt he was making a mistake …”

The famous retired baseball star – at that time an NAACP fundraiser and vice president of Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee – campaigned hard for Richard Nixon in 1960. Here, in the aftermath of defeat, he offers suggestions as to how the party of Lincoln might attract more future African-American voters in his (and Nixon’s) native California.

Washington issues the first Thanksgiving proclamation under the new Federal Constitution, one of only two known copies, and the only one in private hands.

“for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness... for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge”

On September 25, 1789, as the momentous first Federal Congress drew to its close in New York, the new national capital, Representative Elias Boudinot introduced a resolution calling on President Washington to “recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer . . .  acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” 

A leading opponent of the resolution, Thomas Tudor Tucker, asked, “Why should the President direct the people to do what, perhaps, they have no mind to do?” The skeptical Congressman noted that the people “may not be inclined to return thanks for a Constitution until they have experienced that it promotes their safety and happiness.” He also argued that it was a religious matter and thus proscribed to the new government. Regardless, the House passed the resolution — one of their last pieces of business before completing the proposed Bill of Rights. The Senate concurred three days later, and a delegation was sent to meet the President. George Washington, who had in fact anticipated the question in a letter to James Madison a month earlier, readily agreed. 

On October 3, George Washington signed the document offered here, America’s first Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation. Washington employed the exact language of the resolution to begin his proclamation, though he went further, giving thanks for “tranquility, union, and plenty” and asking the Almighty to guide the new nation’s leaders and government. He used the same approach a year later when he wrote what is now one of his most celebrated letters: “For happily the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, [and] requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” Washington willingly echoed Moses Seixas’s stance on tolerance and added to it, just as he did in his Thanksgiving Proclamation when asking the Almighty “To render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and Constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed.”

Writing to a New York City philanthropist, President Theodore Roosevelt advocates equal rights for African-Americans and frames his sentiments in historical context. “I have never seen that letter. I am genuinely interested in it and of course heartily admire the way in which the Virginia President saw the kernel of the situation. What he says about emancipation is just as true now in reference to the policy of fair and square treatment of the freed blacks.”

“I am a good example of the melting pot—and I am straight United States.”

From his summer residence in Oyster Bay, Long Island, Theodore Roosevelt writes to historian Theodore C. Blegen.  While Blegen would go on to a prominent career in higher education, at this time, he was teaching high school in Minnesota.  Here, the former President criticizes Woodrow Wilson’s immigration policies while discussing his own family’s immigration experience.

Just ten days into his impactful two-year stint as President of the Board of Police Commissioners, Roosevelt attempts to shape the complex debate over competing reform proposals in the state legislature. In part due to Roosevelt’s advocacy, and veteran upstate legislator D.A. Ainsworth’s reversal of positions, the “Supplemental Re-Organization Bill,” granting autocratic powers to longtime Police Chief Thomas Byrnes, was defeated. “Only a brave and honorable man will frankly and openly revise his action, when he receives trustworthy information that the measure is not what it seemed to him to be…”