Forbes House Museum Visits MHS Library

By Elaine Grublin

On Tuesday, April 26, eight women from the Forbes House Museum in Milton, MA, visited the library at the MHS for an introductory tour.  The visitors, a mix of docents, staff, and trustees from the museum spent the morning learning about how to access the MHS collections (both in the library and online), taking a tour of the library, and getting up-close to some specially selected documents from the Robert Bennet Forbes Papers, the Forbes Family Papers, and the Thomas Handasyd Perkins Papers.

The group posed for a picture on their library tour

The MHS is home to a number of manuscript collections, including but not limited to those listed above, with strong connections to the Forbes House Museum.  This visit, organized by the efforts of Robin M. Tagliaferri, executive director of the museum, was a step in developing a stronger connection between the MHS staff and the Forbes House Museum docents, preparing them to conduct research in the MHS collections in support of projects and other initiatives undertaken by the museum. 

Looking at documents with Librarian Peter Drummey

We look forward to a long and productive relationship with the Forbes House Museum docents and staff.  Our first major collaboration, Three Days, Three Viewpoints: The Worlds of Thomas Hutchinson, is a workshop scheduled for July 12 – 14.  The workshop, which is open to the general public with special added sessions for K-12 teachers, travels from the MHS through downtown Boston, and out to the Forbes House in Milton (which is on property that once comprised Hutchinson’s 95-acre country estate) over the course of the three days.  Please contact Kathleen Barker at the MHS if you are interested in more information about the workshop.  And thank you to the folks at Forbes House Museum for such a wonderful visit. 

 

2011-2012 Research Fellows Announced

By Elaine Grublin

Each year the MHS grants a number of research fellowships to scholars from around the country.  For more information about the different fellowship types, click the headings below. 

As you can see the fellowship program brings a wide variety of researchers working on a full range of topics. If any of the research topics are particularly interesting to you, keep an eye on our events calendar over the course of the upcoming year, as all research fellows present their research at brown-bag lunch programs as part of their commitment to the MHS. 

MHS-NEH Long-Term Research Fellowships:

Joshua R. Greenberg, Associate Professor of History, Bridgewater State University, “Face to Face: American Engagement with Paper Money in the Early Republic’

Joanne Pope Melish, Associate Professor of History, University of Kentucky, “Making Black Communities: White Laborers, Black Neighbors, and the Evolution of Race and Class in the Post-Revolutionary North”

Margot Minardi, Assistant Professor of History and Humanities, Reed College, “American Citizens of the World: The Political Culture of Peace Reform, 1812-1865”

Suzanne and Caleb Loring Research Fellowship On the Civil War, Its Origins, and Consequences (with the Boston Athenaeum):

Jordan Watkins, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, “The Place of the Past in the American Civil War”

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) Awards (with 16 other institutions)

Lisa Brooks, Assistant Professor of History and Literature and Folklore and Mythology, Harvard University, “Turning the Looking Glass on King Philip’s War.”  Colonial Society of Massachusetts Fellow

Kathleen Daly, Ph.D. Candidate in American and New England Studies, Boston University, “Shapely Bodies: The Material Culture of Women’s Health, 1850-1920”

Jennifer Egloff, Ph.D. Candidate in History, New York University, “Popular Numeracy in Early Modern England and British North America”

Hannah Farber, Ph.D. Candidate in History University of California, Berkeley, “The Insurance Industry in the Early Republic”

Kara French, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Michigan, “The Politics of Sexual Restraint: Debates Over Chastity in America, 1780-1850”

Mazie Harris, Ph.D. Candidate in Art History, Brown University, “Photography and American Property Law in the 1850s”

Caroline Hasenyager, Ph.D. Candidate in History, College of William and Mary, “Peopling the Cloister: Women’s Colleges & the Worlds We’ve Made of Them”

Carrie Hyde, Ph.D. Candidate in English, Rutgers University, “Alienable Rights: Negative Figures of U.S. Citizenship, 1787-1868”

Sarah Kirshen, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Columbia University, “The Family’s Values: Marriage, Statistics, and the State, 1800-1909.”  Bostonian Society/New England Women’s Club Fellow

Robyn McMillin, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, “Science in the American Style, 1680-1815: A School of Fashion and Philosophy, of Liberty and People”

Hari Vishwanadha, Professor of English, Santa Monica College, “Passages to India”

Marjorie E. Wood, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Chicago, “Emancipating the Child Laborer: Children, Freedom, and the Moral Boundaries of the Market in the United States, 1853-1938”

 

MHS Short-Term Research Fellowships:

African American Studies Fellow

Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Michigan, “Not as Supplicants but as Citizens: Race, Party, and African American Politics in Boston, Massachusetts, 1864-1903”

Alumni Fellow

Megan Prins, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Arizona, “Winters in America, 1880-1930”

Andrew Oliver Fellow

Mary Katherine Matalon, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Texas, Austin, “From Painting to Porcelain: American Women Collectors, c. 1780-1915”

Andrew W. Mellon Fellows

Sean Adams, Associate Professor of History, University of Florida, “Home Fires Burning: Keeping Warm in the Industrializing North”

Jane Fiegen Green, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Washington University, St. Louis, “The Boundary of Youth: Employment, Adulthood, and Citizenship in the Early United States”

Kerima Lewis, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of California, Berkeley, “Atlantic Fires Burning: Arson as a Weapon of Slave Resistance in the British American Colonies, 1675-1775”

Andrew Lipman, Assistant Professor of History, Syracuse University, “The Saltwater Frontier: Indians, Dutch, and English on Seventeenth-Century Long Island Sound”

Bonnie Lucero, Ph.D. Candidate, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Race, Space, and Nation: Social Change amidst Imperial Transition in Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1895-1906”

Patricia Roylance, Assistant Professor of English, Syracuse University, “Anachronisms: The Temporalities of Early American Media”

Nancy Siegel, Associate Professor of Art History, Towson University, “Political Appetites: Revolution, Taste, and Culinary Activism in the Early Republic”

Jared Taber, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Kansas, “Last Dams Standing: Environmental Perspectives on Deindustrialization in Twentieth-Century Massachusetts”

Ben Wright, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Rice University, “Early American Clergy and the Transformation of Antislavery: From the Politics of Conversion to the Conversion of Politics, 1770-1830”

Benjamin Franklin Stevens Fellow

Randi Lewis, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Virginia, “To ‘the most distant parts of the Globe’: Trade, Politics, and the Maritime Frontier in the Early Republic, 1763-1819”

W.B.H. Dowse Fellows

Robyn McMillin, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, “Science in the American Style, 1680-1815: A School of Fashion and Philosophy, of Liberty and People”

Tyler Boulware, Assistant Professor of History, University of West Virginia, “Next to Kin: Native Americans and Friendship in Early America”

Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellow

Amy Morsman, Associate Professor of History, Middlebury College, “Reading, Writing, Race & Respectability: ‘Yankee Schoolmarms,’ Race Reform, and Northern Views on Reconstruction”

Marc Friedlaender Fellow

Jonathan Beecher  Field, Associate Professor of English, Clemson University, “Antinomian Idol: Anne Hutchinson & American Historiography”

Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellow

Trenton Jones, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Johns Hopkins University, “‘Deprived of Their Liberty’: Prisoners of War and American Military Culture”

Ruth R. and Alyson R. Miller Fellows

Kathryn Goetz, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Minnesota, “A Consuming Femininity: Gender, Culture and the Material Worlds of Young Womanhood, 1750-1850”

Jessica Linker, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Connecticut, “‘It is my wish to behold Ladies among my hearers’: Early American Women and Practices of Natural History, 1720-1860”

 

Congratulations to all the fellowship recipients.  We look forward to seeing you all in the library!

A Patriotic Shawl for Mrs. Andrew

By Elaine Grublin

On Wednesday, 24 April 1861. the following story ran in the third column of page two of the Boston Evening Transcript  (Vol. XXXII, no. 9507):

“APPROPRIATE PRESENTATION TO MRS. GOV. ANDREW. A large and elegantly wrought shawl, patriotic in every feature, was this morning presented to Mrs. Gov. Andrew, by Messrs. R. H. Stearns & Co., Summer street. It is of the finest worsted, in red, blue and white stripes, with thirty-four stars and the Union shield of the same material, so arranged as to give the whole a symmetrical appearance and an exceedingly fine effect. It was designed and executed by a lady in Newton, and for its novelty and appropriateness to the times is well worthy of examination. It may be seen for a few days in Messrs. R. H. Stearns & Co.’s window, 15 Summer street.” (View the original page online through Google News.)

In May 1922, Edith and Henry Hersey Andrew, the children of Gov. & Mrs. Andrew, gave the shawl described in the Transcript to the MHS and it has been part of our collections since that time.  Currently Anne Bentley, our art curator, is preparing the shawl to be loaned to the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts. The shawl, along with other MHS artifacts, will be displayed as part of the ATHM’s upcoming exhibition Homefront & Battlefield: The Civil War through Quilts and Context, which is scheduled to open in spring/summer 2012.  Anne’s recent work with the shawl has given many MHS staff members a chance to view the item up close.  It is an interesting and intricate piece, as you can see in the detail photograph below. 

 

You can contact the library staff if you are interested in making an appointment to view the item at the MHS.  Naturally it will not be available for viewing here during the time it is out on loan, but can otherwise be made available to researchers on an appointment basis.

Photography by Anne Bentley, Curator of Art

 

 

This Week @ MHS

By Elaine Grublin

This week we have two evening events: a special event for MHS members and fellows and a seminar. Plus the exhibition hall and portrait gallery are open daily.  

On Tuesday, 26 April at 5:30 PM there is a special Behind-the-Scenes Tour for MHS members and fellows.  The event does require an advance RSVP and space is limited.  Call 617-646-0554 with questions or to reserve your space.  This unique opportunity to glimpse the inner workings of a manuscript repository, and other special events scheduled throughout the year, is just one of the benefits of being an MHS member.  Visit our membership page for additional information.

On Thursday, 28 April at 5:15 PM you can join us for the next installment of the Boston Immigration and Urban History Seminar series.  This week Timothy B. Neary of Salve Regina University will present his paper “A Catholic ‘League of Nations’: Redefining Ethnic and Civic Identity in New Deal Chicago.”  The comment will be provided by Howard P. Chudacoff of Brown University.  Advance copies of the paper — and other papers in this series — are available through the MHS website for a small subscription fee. 

And do not forget that our current exibition History Drawn with Light: Early Photographs from the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society is open Monday through Saturday, 10 AM to 4 PM.  The exhibition runs through 3 June.  With May approaching quickly, June will be here before you know it! Do not miss your chance to view the exhibition. 

Finally please note that there will not a building tour on Saturday, 30 April.  The tour will return on Saturday, 7 May. 

 

 

 

Guest Post: Research Fellow Finds More Than She is Looking for in Sarah Louisa Guild’s Diary

By Laura Prieto, Simmons College

I have come across several surprises in the reading room recently, as is entirely typical in manuscript research. One archival pleasure is finding what we hope is there, but another is encountering the unexpected.

I eagerly opened Sarah Louisa Guild’s diary for 1898 anticipating some insights on the Spanish-American War, as the MHS catalog promised. I was seeking a woman’s personal view of that conflict and Guild did not disappoint me. Her observant, intelligent entries demonstrate how avidly she followed news on the war as well as on local politics. She decried the “wretched Mugwumps who cry ‘down with imperialism’. . . .  Mugwumps seem to always pull down but never build up.” Her partisan interests were likely influenced by her older brother Curtis; “Curty” had volunteered to fight and had political ambitions, supported by his family. But the passion with which she wrote about political candidates and issues suggests that “Lulu” would have been engaged by them anyway.

I feel fortunate to have Guild’s careful, candid thoughts on what was happening around her. As is the case with most war correspondence, her “homefront” letters did not make it into the archive, even though her brother’s letters from Army camp are preserved. Without her diary, we’d have no trace of what Sarah Louisa made of the war or of her relationship to it.

But her diary is much richer than just political commentary. Guild wrote about her love of music and included capsule reviews of the concerts she attended. Sometimes I’d turn a page and find a pressed flower, or a four-leaf clover. One tiny pansy came from a bouquet sent to comfort her upon the death of her mother. Guild always appreciated such tokens of affection; she especially noted how one gift of flowers came from a friend who hadn’t much money. (Guild later sent that friend a ticket to the Boston Symphony.) The diary is also a record of Guild’s mourning and her declining health. She consulted doctors and tried bromides and tonics to no avail. She wrote the last entries from a sanatorium in Connecticut that specialized in treating nervous diseases.

On occasion, Guild trained her sights on others in her social set. One unusually acerbic entry remarked upon the death of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s husband in 1898:

Mr. Jack Gardner was seized with apoplexy at noon at the Somerset. He was carried to his Beacon St home and died at 9 P.M. Good natured clumsy man! Wonder if his nervous & fashion loving wife will marry again. He was like a Newfoundland dog at her heels.

Guild’s judgment reminds us that late nineteenth-century women continued to be the makers and breakers of reputation among the privileged classes. Such barbs could sting deeply, as any fan of Edith Wharton knows. Gardner no doubt could wield mighty social muscle in her own defense.

Pressed flowers and sharp-tongued gossip: it’s just such unexpected interruptions that helpfully unsettle what we think we’re researching.  I opened her diary searching for a “good source,” but find the privilege of glimpsing Sarah Louisa Guild, a complete, complicated human being who is more than the sum of her words.

 

Laura Prieto is currently working at the MHS as a Ruth R & Alyson R. Miller Fellow.

2011 Pulitzer Prize Finalists Have MHS Connections

By Elaine Grublin

On Monday, 18 April, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced the winners of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize.   Included on the list of finalists were two authors with ties to the MHS.  Michael O’Brien was named a finalist for the prize in biography for his project Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon, and Michael Rawson was named a finalist for the history prize for his project Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston.

In crafting Mrs. Adams in Winter, a lively combination of biography, travel literature, European cultural history, and Adams family history, Michael O’Brien used a number of MHS resources, including the the microfilm edition of the Adams Family Papers, the online edition of the John Quincy Adams diaries, and the published editions of the Adams Papers.  He also spent time at the MHS researching Louisa Catherine Adams’ correspondence and other writings. While researching at the MHS, O’Brien presented a brown bag lunch program recounting what he learned as he retraced Louisa Catherine Adams’ route from St. Petersburg to Paris. And on 31 March 2010, many MHS friends and members had the pleasure of attending a lecture and book signing for the Mrs. Adams project.  

Mike Rawson, a native of Medford, MA, did his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin.  In 2002, he received one of the MHS’ short-term fellowships to work on his dissertation, which was the basis of Eden on the Charles.  Rawson presented a portion of his research at our Boston Environmental History Seminar in 2004 and another portion at our conference on the environmental history of Boston in 2006.  The latter piece appeared in a collection of essays originally offered at the conference, Remaking Boston: An Environmental History of the City and Its Surroundings, ed. Anthony N. Penna and Conrad Edick Wright (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).

The MHS was thrilled to see both of these authors and their projects recognized by the Pulitzer Prize Board.  Congratulations to all of this years’ winners and finalists. 

This Week @ MHS

By Elaine Grublin

While the Monday holiday leaves plenty of time for you to look over Paul Revere’s deposition recounting the events of 19 April 1775, it also means we have less time for public programs this week.  We are offering two great programs, providing excellent opportunities for folks to visit the MHS.  And be sure to check out our online calendar for other upcoming events. 

On Thursday, 21 April, at 5:30 PM the Boston Seminar on the History of Women and Gender brings Dayo Gore of the University of Massachusetts – Amherst to the MHS to discuss the paper “Engendering and Internationalizing the Long Black Freedom Struggle.”  Ruth Feldstein of Rutgers University at Newark will give the comment.  This program is free and open to all.  Advance copies of the seminar paper are available, for a small subscription fee, through the MHS website

On Saturday, 23 April, at 10.00 AM our weekly building tour, The History and Collections of the MHS, departs our front lobby for a ninety minute tour of the building’s public spaces.  

 

New @ the MHS: Winslow Family Memorial

By Susan Martin

The Massachusetts Historical Society recently acquired a very interesting manuscript collection called the Winslow Family Memorial (Ms. N-2322). Begun by Boston merchant Isaac Winslow (1774-1856) in about 1837 and continued after his death by his daughter Margaret Catharine Winslow, this unique manuscript tells the story of the Winslow family in England and America from approximately 1620 to 1839. The bulk of the Memorial deals with political matters in early America, including the life of Isaac’s father Isaac Winslow (1743-1793), a Loyalist in Boston during the Revolutionary War. A combination of memoir, genealogy, and political history, the manuscript incorporates first-hand accounts of important events (excerpted from correspondence and diaries of various family members), interspersed with personal reflections and reminiscences by both Isaac and Margaret.

Though the Memorial fills only two manuscript boxes, its catalog record and online collection guide are extensive. This is because of the vast scope of the material; the manuscript touches on most of the major historical events that occurred in America and Europe between 1620 and 1839. Not just the American Revolution, but the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812 figure prominently. Other subjects include state and national politics, Federalism and Anti-Federalism, commerce and trade, slavery, smallpox, the development of the Sandemanian Church (of which the Winslows were members), and Isaac’s two trips to Europe and the Mediterranean in 1795 and 1796. The Memorial also contains philosophical digressions, depictions of family relationships, and a poignant description of the depression and suicide of Isaac’s father.

The collection consists of five volumes: three volumes of unbound pages (many with additional material attached) and two bound volumes. Isaac’s portion begins with a preface addressed to his daughter Margaret:

The present work whether viewed as autography Biography or even Family history is certainly digressive, and were I to rewrite it much would be lop’d of[f], especially if I supposed it was intended for publication—Such not being the case I leave the work as it is, assured that you my dear daughter will not suspect me of Ancestral Pride so vain yet so common to man. No New Englander ought to have this, and yet none are without it.

He continues:

The love of family is in fact but the love of country on a smaller scale. Both perhaps are a sort of instinctive feeling, but not the less agreeable for being natural—Both look with the eyes of affection and interest not only on the present, but on the past. The history of what has been, has always been interesting to man, especially of his own country—how much more so is the history of that part of his country, in which he is more immediately concerned, his own family. He feels as if he was a party in the events and circumstances in which his predecessors were actors, or sufferers. He exults in their success, sympathizes with their misfortunes, rejoices in their happiness, and feels grieved at their afflictions.

The Winslow Family Memorial was transcribed in 2009-2010 by the donor of the collection, Dr. Robert W. Newsom of the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Newsom’s transcriptions, which also contain chapter abstracts and extensive footnotes, are a great resource for researchers, so the MHS has incorporated his work into our collection guide. The guide for the Memorial, broken down by volume and chapter, includes links to Dr. Newsom’s transcriptions and detailed descriptions of each volume in PDF format.

This manuscript is a valuable addition to the many other collections at the MHS related to the Winslows. It also offers unique insight into a prominent New England family who lived through some of the greatest upheavals in early American history.

Spotlight on Collections: Henry Cabot Lodge, Part VI

By Tracy Potter

Over the last several weeks in Spotlight on Collections I discussed the life and influence of the Cabot family, the Lodge family, Henry Cabot Lodge (HCL), and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (HCL II).  Sadly, this week will be my final installment on the Lodges.  To close up the series I will look to HCL II, to his connection with the Society, and to the many collections of his papers available at the Society. 

Like his grandfather, HCL II became a member of the Society early in his career.  In 1947 the nominating committee and MHS council elected HCL II a resident member of the Society.  As the beginning of his membership corresponded with his first term as U.S. senator, HCL II was not available much of the time to take part in many of the member meetings and events.  Although his work in the Senate and then as an ambassador took him away from the normal duties of a Society member, HCL II contributed to the Society by donating important Lodge family papers.  These papers included the previously mentioned two collections of Henry Cabot Lodge papers, the Lodge-Roosevelt correspondence, the John Ellerton Lodge papers, and the papers of his father George Cabot Lodge.  HCL II also donated many other family papers such as correspondence between Henry Adams and Matilda Elizabeth Frelinghuysen Davis in the Adams-Lodge correspondence, the John Davis scrapbook (HCL II’s maternal grandfather), and the George Cabot Lodge collection.

By 1975, as HCL II’s political and diplomatic career was winding down, HCL II retired as a member of the Society.   Although his membership ended, HCL II continued a relationship with the Society by donating a very large collection of his own papers in 1978.  HCL II’s papers, the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. papers, is made up of over 66 cartons of material, most of which are stored offsite.  This collection contains letters, speeches, scrapbooks, photographs, audio tapes, newsreels, and memorabilia concerning Lodge’s career as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, Massachusetts state representative, United States senator, and representative to the United Nations. Although the Society microfilmed a small portion of this collection (Cartons 30-35 and 37), the majority of the collection is stored offsite and is available for researchers to view with advance notice. 

Upon his death in 1985, HCL II bequeathed a slightly smaller set of his papers, the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. papers II  which included papers concerning his service in World War II, his diplomatic career in Vietnam and the United Nations, and his 1952 Senate race against John F. Kennedy.  The entirety of this collection, consisting of fourteen cartons, four document boxes, and one oversize box, has been microfilmed.  The original papers are stored off-site, but researchers can make use of the microfilm edition, which is stored onsite for researcher access.

Along with each collection of his personal papers, HCL II also donated a number of photographs.  For preservation purposes, thirteen boxes, two oversize boxes, and thirty-nine volumes of photographs were removed from the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. papers and renamed the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. photographs.  This collection includes loose photographs, scrapbooks, and photograph albums that depict his political career and family life.  The 591 photographs removed from the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. papers II were renamed the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. photographs II .  This collection contains photographs of HCL II, portraits of Lodge family members and political figures, photographs of Emily Sears Lodge’s charity work in Vietnam, and photos of manuscripts.  Both of these collections are available for researcher use in the library.

Although in different ways, both HCL and HCL II contributed to the Society.  They helped shape its history, its collection, and its reputation.  In their support for the Society both men demonstrated their belief in the importance of preserving history, whether it be books, manuscripts, artifacts, or photographs.  I would like to think that their understanding of the importance of history was a key factor in making them so successful in politics and diplomacy, but I will have to leave the verification of that to the historians.  

April 12, 1861 — The Brothers’ War Begins

By Elaine Grublin

Today, we commemorate the sesquicentennial of the attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.  On that date, 12 April 1861, William Gray Brooks, a Boston merchant and diarist, writes “The evening papers gave us a telegraph announcing ‘Fort Sumter has been provisioned and not a shot fired’ no particulars & the report may well be doubted.”  Yet by the following day reports of the attack were available — if still questionable.  Below is a transcription of Brooks’ diary entry from 13 April 1861, where he summarizes the events in Charleston as he has heard them reported and reflects on the start of the conflict that would become known as the American Civil War. 

Saturday. We are at last at War accounts came last night &
this morning by telegraph giving accounts of the attack on
Fort Sumter by the Confederate powers, and have been con-
tinued through the day causing the greatest excitement through
out the country as well as here. The newspaper offices have
been thronged – by these reports the rebels opened a fire on
Fort Sumter yesterday morning from four different points
and the tenor of the whole up to this evening that of complete
success by the confederate troops and the perilous situation
of Col. Anderson these telegrams are not confidently relied
upon as correct, as it is known the telegraph at Charlestown
is in the hands & under the control of the rebels – it is almost
impossible that all the vessels, five in number sent by our
government, should be as reported lying outside the harbour
& our troops at Fort Sumter receiving no assistance – none are
reported as killed on either side after a whole days fighting.
The greatest anxiety exists regarding the safety of Washington
& the capital as it is supposed in case the Confederation
is successful Virginia and the Border States will join it &
make a descent there. Troops are concentrating there and
as we are now fairly engaged in a civil war where is it to
end. Can it be that, all this war is going on in the south
and all their slavery will remain quietly – We are fallen
upon evil times – our glorious & so much exalted & boasted
Union sent in pieces and brothers engaged against brothers.
I never expected to live to see this day.

Transcription by Sabina Beauchard