Author Archives: Olga Tsapina
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In March 1852, Charles Devens, the United States Marshal for Massachusetts, submitted an expense report
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On April 8, 1777, John Adams, the future second president of the United States, wrote a letter to "Mr. John Quincy Adams," his eldest son and the future sixth president
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Last December, The Huntington announced that it had acquired the historical manuscript collection assembled by L. Dennis Shapiro
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In the spring of 1838, Henry Meigs (1782–1861)—a veteran of the War of 1812, former U.S. Representative, and a successful lawyer—discovered that he was sharing his house
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Few documents of the Founding era were more admired in the United States before the Civil War than George Washington's Farewell Address. Americans liked to think of themselves as the same nation to which...
On August 26, 1852, Charles Sumner (1811–1874), the junior Senator from Massachusetts, took the floor of the United States Senate to deliver a major speech against slavery. For three hours, Sumner blasted...
By the time of his death on Feb. 20, 1895, Frederick Douglass had become one of the most celebrated personalities in the United States. Born a slave in Maryland around 1818, he escaped to New York in...
The sight of an old account ledger doesn’t generally excite many people—aside from historians and forensic accountants. But a ledger that once belonged to the famous American feminist and social...
A war is seldom thought of as a sightseeing opportunity. Yet for many young men, the Civil War offered a chance to see places they had only read about in books. One such book was Solomon Northup’s Twelve...
One of the greatest perks of a manuscript curator's job is meeting, in a manner of speaking, the nicest people who are no longer with us. I guess this is why we look at the...
