“publish a Manifesto to the World, shewing the necessity of dissolving their connection with a nation whose Ministers were aiming at their ruin....”

Relates a conversation with Peter Rothermel on the need to nurture an “American School of Design,” with sharp criticisms of the deleterious effects of European study on budding talent as seen in Emanuel Leutze’s latest work.

“[Rothermel] during the evening suggested one thing as tending peculiarly to build up an American School of Design without the extraneous influences that all young men going abroad are subject too. it was that an embargo to prevent the leaving of artists for abroad, for a space of 50 years, be put in operation, thus causing their productions to be pure emanations of their own early & intuitive feeling…”

Chief Justice John Marshall’s magisterial biography of George Washington was originally a five-volume set. This 1840 publication, revised and issued in two volumes, also includes the 1832 companion atlas of maps relating to the Revolutionary War.

Picasso donated a pen and ink “machines of war” drawing that served as the basis of this print to use in promoting the anti-war march planned for November 13-15, 1969. 250,000 or more people attended the march.

This fascinating letter by freshman Congressman and future president Gerald R. Ford to a Catholic college president in Michigan defends his early record on civil rights legislation.

“Personally, I have lived by and believe in the fundamental principle of equality of opportunity regardless of race, color or creed. I am in favor of such a policy for all citizens and will cooperate to accomplish that objective by the most practical and effective methods.”

Cardozo thanks fellow Judge Alphonso T. Clearwater for his kind words about Cardozo’s work and opinions, and grieves about the death a week earlier of his older sister Ellen Ida Cardozo, with whom he lived on New York’s West 75th Street. “Nell” was the last of Cardozo’s five siblings to die.

Excerpts

““I think what you have to say about Reinecke is certainly true and I doubt whether his conceit and egotism can ever be curbed. Certainly he is a liability in a large office. I shall await the report of Clegg… but have no doubt but that it will be necessary for me to make a change.”

“I shall look forward with considerable interest to your report upon the Pittsburgh office and as soon as you have finished that I am planning to have you move on. I realize that the New York office may be in somewhat of a hectic situation at the present time, in view of the Lindbergh case which is taking the time of so many Agents of that office, but you may be able to get a slant on how things are running there.”

Medical researchers wanted to gather “aeromedical” data and test effects on the Project Mercury astronaut’s body of “significant and unusual stresses of manned capsule flight.” The stresses they were looking into included weightlessness, acceleration tolerance, radiation, noise vibration, thermal stresses, and hypobaric and environmental control system effects. At the time, some scientists believed that weightlessness could lead to circulatory failure, disorientation, gastrointestinal and urinary disturbances, and lack of muscular coordination. The key conclusion of Project Mercury’s biomedical program was that human beings could function in the space environment for incrementally increasing flight durations of more than one day.

On his return to Liberia from a visit to the United States, Consul Turner informs Mr. Benjamin that the authorities in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, are not imposing a quarantine on passengers who land there.

Congressional attorney Elmer W. Henderson, a hero of the early civil rights movement, congratulates African American chemist Lloyd A. Hall for a recent professional honor. In 1955, Hall also became the first African American elected to the National Board of Directors of the American Institute of Chemists (AIC). The following year, the AIC awarded Hall the Honor Scroll Award. On special occasions, the AIC invites a prominent chemist or chemical engineer to lecture to the Members and Fellows of the AIC on a topic of professional interest. In September 1957, Hall delivered a lecture on “The Chemist and the AIC,” likely the occasion for this congratulatory letter from Henderson a few months later.

“What they may turn out to be I cannot say, but should like the liberty of choice when the time comes…”

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