An image of an older Garrison, as he appeared after his life’s work of abolition had been successfully completed.

Best known for his seminal Birds of America, Audubon’s prints are among the world’s most recognized images.

Best known for his seminal Birds of America, Audubon’s prints are among the world’s most recognized images.

Best known for his seminal Birds of America, Audubon’s prints are among the world’s most recognized images.

Best known for his seminal Birds of America, Audubon’s prints are among the world’s most recognized images.

Best known for his seminal Birds of America, Audubon’s prints are among the world’s most recognized images.

A detailed, despairing letter on campaign politics after the reelection of Ulysses S. Grant. Lawrence observes the humiliating defeat of Democrats and “Liberal Republicans” – who united behind Horace Greeley because of corruption in the Grant administration – in the Election of 1872. Lawrence laments the elevation of personality over merit and virtue in elections, an observation which resonates today. He also expresses concern about how newly enfranchised African Americans tended to vote.  “The negroes are naturally disposed to support those who are in power & whom they invest with superior dignity, on account of the possession of power. …the extraordinary denouement of the Cincinnati Convention has placed in bold relief the mode most unsatisfactory to an intelligent people, by which party conventions are constituted & which are readily made, the instruments of the vilest partisan combinations, carried on by men without character & without principle.”

Complete Translation

Dear Mademoiselle,

It will give me great pleasure to see my work figured in the respected publication of Mr. Harper. I am thinking of returning to New York on Monday and I will have the pleasure of bringing you, in person, the block and the notes that you asked for.

Would you be so kind to thank Mr. Harper for <2> his appreciation of my work and yourself accept the expression of my most devoted feelings of friendship.

                                                                        Bartholdi

Philadelphia 8 June 1876

Schuyler Colfax, U.S. representative from Indiana and vice president under Ulysses S. Grant, pens a famous quote from Lincoln’s Cooper Institute speech.

“As you and I have both expressed friendly sentiments towards the citizens of the Flowery Kingdom, we may hope to be in high favor should we live till that time.”

“Yesterday the Hon. S. B Bowman called … asking the loan of “the sword or sabre I wore” during the famous March to the Sea … I explained to Mr Bowman that the truth was I did not have a sword or sabre during that march, nor at any time after I succeeded General Grant in the command of the Western Armies at Nashville March 1864.”

After having recently stepped down as Commanding General of the Army, Sherman reviews a biographical article. While explaining the story of his being labeled insane in 1861 for believing that 200,000 Union troops would be needed, he asks that Secretary of War Simon Cameron’s name be left out. Smalley published his article in the Century Magazine, January 1884.

Davis expresses his hope for a future Union based on Confederate principles:  “…The sentiment to which you refer as ‘common,’ is I hope the utterance of time serving self seekers, rather than of the people who dared and did and sacrificed so much for principle, and the rights their Fathers left them.  I trust your four boys will imbibe the patriotism of their Father and when in the fullness of time the restoration shall come that they may enjoy the blessings of liberty and community independence which the Constitution of the Union was designed to secure.  With this I enclose the autograph for which you asked…”

After the North’s retreat from Reconstruction, Davis’s vision of individual rights, limited government, and white racial superiority still held great sway in the South.

The former Union major general discusses the Washington Monument in relation to the Egyptian pyramids and shares other news and happenings back home. Reading in part:

“The Washington Monument had got a crack of a thunderbolt which knocked the top of it somewhat, and as the pyramids are the next highest things, and had stood so many years, I wondered whether there were any thunder claps there, and whether the lightening [sic] had ever troubled them --whether there was any such thing in Egypt, and I did not know where to turn to the authorities. Because if the pyramids have been open to thunder claps during the ages they have stood there must have been a good deal of demolishment, apparently, as in the year the Washington Monument was finished the top of that got badly knocked, although great pains had been taken to draw off the lightening [sic] by conductors, and I did not suppose they had lightening [sic] rods on the pyramids….

If you see something quite rare and not too expensive that would adorn the mantlepiece in my new office, which is a very fine room, and will send it to me, I should be very glad of it for I know you have taste in bric-a-brac. You are now Judge in Egypt. I think the administration is inclined to let you alone. Batchelder has tried to make mischief but I don’t think he has succeeded…”

Stewart sending thanks, urging General Walker to visit.