Manuscripts
Memorandum concerning Columbia University
- Description
- A collection of approximately 6000 items from 1815 to 1936, the collection consists of Francis Lieber's correspondence, notes and other manuscripts and published materials accumulated in the preparation of his works during his political and academic career. The collection contains articles, essays, remarks, correspondence, volumes, commonplace books, research files, printed material, and ephemera. The manuscript material often contains various drafts, with supporting research and subject files; the correspondence contains personal and family letters and a large amount of professional correspondence. Correspondents include, among others, his wife Matilda (Mathilde) Lieber, other Lieber family members, Samuel Austin Allibone, Edward Bates, Dorothea Lynde Dix, Hamilton Fish, James A. Garfield, Ulysses S. Grant, Simon Greenleaf, Henry Wager Halleck, George Stillman Hillard, ⁹douard Laboulaye, Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Charles Sumner, Martin Russell Thayer, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Theodore Dwight Woolsey. Subjects in the collection include political science and theory; constitutional history; political economy; international law; philosophy and history of civilization; penology, including Lieber's association with the prison reform movement; education, particularly college and university administration; United States and European politics; antebellum debates and campaigns; slavery and abolitionism; politics of the Civil War, including problems of the citizenship of African-Americans, immigrants, and former Confederates; constitutional powers of the President and Congress; Republican Party, especially its radical wing; military aspects of the Civil War as reflected in Lieber's correspondence with Halleck; reconstruction, including plans for codification of international law; and Lieber's service with the United States-Mexican Claims Commission.
