With this order, new President Chester A. Arthur authorized Secretary of State James G. Blaine to affix the seal of the United States to the fully ratified Angell Treaty of 1880 that suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States. Further discriminatory steps were enacted by subsequent legislation continuing until 1943.

In an insightful paper he read before the Navy Board in 1896, Admiral Francis M. Bunce predicted that the best way to isolate Cuba and support the insurgents in their war with Spain was to use the U.S. Navy to neutralize the Spanish navy and blockade Cuba and Puerto Rico.

This small archive also includes Bunce’s 1899 honorary degree from Yale University and a copy of a fascinating April 1898 letter by Union Army veteran John J. McCook to President William McKinley, urging him to leave any fighting in a war against Spain to the professional military men rather than the “Jingoes” (of whom Theodore Roosevelt was the most famous).

Canadian photographer George Barker was one of the first professional photographers to visit Florida. In the late 1880s, he documented the landscapes and people of northern and central Florida. Barker took this large-format photograph of an African American cartman at the city gate of St. Augustine.

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

“...neither have the right to inflict punishment or impose restrictions that will maim, or injure the health of, the children. As to the particular case under consideration, I cannot believe that you are unduly severe or that your restrictions and exactions will hurt a robust, stubborn pupil.”

Susan B. Anthony addresses an envelope from the National Woman Suffrage Association headquarters in Philadelphia to prominent Kansas suffragist Mary Tenney Gray. The pointed questions on this envelope urged women’s claims to suffrage as an essential part of their being citizens of the Republic. On July 4, 1876, Susan B. Anthony read The Declaration for the Rights of Women from a podium in front of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to a cheering crowd.

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.”

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

The July 8, 1876 issue of Harper’s Weekly, containing a supplement celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, complete with a centerspread facsimile of one of Jefferson’s draft manuscripts and the signatures of the signers, along with related engravings.

CAUGHT! Thomas Nast’s classic image of Santa Claus being hugged by a little girl graces the front cover of this issue of Harper’s Weekly.

The double-page centerfold is another nice Thomas Nast Christmas print, “Christmas Fancies – ‘Don’t You Wish You Wore Stockings?’,” showing children and their dog in front of a fireplace. Will Carleton’s poem, The Christmas Tree, is illustrated with art by Howard Pyle which fills nearly an entire page. Other prints include the “Electric Railway at Berlin, Prussia,” “The Ring Theatre, Vienna, Recently Destroyed by Fire,” “Hon. Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, Secretary of State,” “The Late John W. Forney,” “Short and Sweet – ‘It’s Too Too Too Funny!’,”  and “The Interrupted Journey.” Thomas Nast is credited with creating the modern version of Santa Claus.