Lamont, A Lecture on the Civil War in America

I am always keen to acquire titles that offer foreign (chiefly European) views of the American Civil War. We recently acquired an interesting volume--James Lamont's "A lecture on the civil war in America / delivered at the Rothesay Mechanics' Institute" (Glasgow : Printed by W.A. Eadie, 1864.)

As evidenced by Lamont's armorial bookplate (J. Lamont of Knockdow), this was his personal copy, made even more interesting by the inclusion of a newspaper clipping mounted after page 30., advertising a "slave for sale" and also a reward for a runaway slave.

A search of a proper name in the text ("Martha Frazer") of the newspaper clipping (in America's Historical Newspapers, published by Readex) reveals that clipping was likely from the May 2, 1856 issue of the New Orleans Daily Picayune (p. 6; the same ads also appeared in issues of the same paper on May 8 and May 9, 1856)

In his lecture, Lamont noted his travels in the United States during 1856:

"When in the United States in 1856, I held a long conversation on the subject of slavery with a gentleman of Kentucky, a proprietor of many human chattels. He argued the question, unlike most slaveowners, in a temperate, gentlemanlike, and sensible manner, admitted that slavery was, in the abstract, a bad system and a great evil to the country, but could not see how it was to be done away with, without ruin and injury to many. I told him what I had seen in South America, and suggested that such a plan of gradual emancipation was the only way that I saw of meeting the difficulty. I regret to state that his reply was of such a nature that I cannot venture to repeat it, but it showed, as much as anything that ever came under my observation, the inveterate habit that even the refined and educated slaveowners invariably acquire, of regarding their slaves not as human beings, but as cattle, -- as beasts that perish."

One may surmise that Lamont saved the clipping from his 1856 travels and appended it to his copy.

Cornell University Library has digitized a copy of Lamont's lecture as part of their magnificent Samuel J. May Antislavery Collection.

Civil Rights interviews

The Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Vanderbilt University has recently created a fascinating digital archive of primary sources compiled by Robert Penn Warren for his 1965 book "Who Speaks for the Negro?"

Closer to home, Stanford's Department of Special Collections, University Archives, and the Archive of Recorded Sound hold a similarly fascinating collection of interviews (known as the "KZSU Project South interviews") with Civil Rights workers, recorded in 1965 by Stanford students affiliated with campus radio station KZSU.

New York Journal-American Photographic Morgue--HRC, UT-Austin

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has recently launched a fabulous website designed to expose the holdings of the New York Journal-American photographic morgue, acquired by the center in 1966. The site includes both an image gallery (containing over 900 images) and a database which enables researchers to search the file headings of photo folders within the archive. As the HRC's site notes:

"The photographic morgue consists of approximately two million prints and one million negatives created for publication in the New York Journal-American newspaper. The bulk of the material covers the years from 1937 to the paper's demise in 1966. Earlier decades are represented in the collection, but with decreasing frequency toward the beginning of the twentieth century. Roughly half of the prints are images taken by Journal-American staff. The backs of these prints usually bear the stamped date of publication and a pasted-down clipping from the newspaper. The majority of the other prints come from wire services such as the Associated Press, United Press International, and other syndication entities, and a small portion of the prints are publicity photos from sources such as airlines, public relations firms, movie studios, etc. Many of the prints in the morgue show crop marks and/or heavy retouching with either pencil or ink as evidence of their use in publication"

"Until now, access to the photo morgue collection has been limited, resulting from its uncataloged status. In keeping with the Ransom Center's mission to advance the study of the arts and humanities by preserving and making accessible creations of our cultural heritage through the highest standards of cataloging, conservation, and collection management, the Center has now constructed this website as a portal to the prints in the New York Journal-American photo morgue. It is intended to serve as an introduction to the collection and its imagery and to provide a searchable database of more than 64,000 folder titles by which the prints were organized by the newspaper staff."

Americana--recent acquisitions, antiquarian and ephemera

U.S.S. Boston Photograph album. 7 3/8 X 10 3/4 in. Black fabric over cardboard covers. 96 pp; 148 photographs affixed to all pages including inside back cover. 1888-1907.

Herman, Frederick John, The Forty-second foot; a history of the Forty-second regiment of infantry, United States volunteers, organized for service in the Philippine insurrection. 1899-1900-1901. Arranged and compiled at the request of the survivors of the regiment, organized as the 42nd regt. of inf. U.S.V. association, by Colonel Frederick J. Herman. [Kansas City, Mo., 1942]

Croffut's Trans-Continental Tourist's Guide, Containing a Full and Authentic Description of over Five Hundred Cities, Towns, Villages, Stations...From the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Fourth Volume, Third Annual Revised. Crofutt, George, pub: New York. 1872.

Souvenirs D'une Mission Aux États-Unis D'amerique. Malézieux, Emile: Paris: Dunod, 1874.

Fooz, Jean Henri Nicolas de. Fundamental Principles of the Law of Mines. Translated from the French, with Introductory Remarks by H. W. Halleck. San Francisco: J. B. Painter, Printer, 1860.

Darrow Bros. Our Encampment. A Humorous Account of the Indianapolis Military Encampment. Highly Illustrated by our own Artist, and rich in Flagrant Falsehood [cover title]. Indianapolis, ca. 1880.

Breed, David T. The Great Trip. A Little Book for Railroad Men and Travellers. NY: American Tract Society, ca. 1850.

Chicago, and North-Western Railway. Summer Resorts of the West, North and Northwest, Showing Routes, Rates of Fare, and Hotels and Boarding Houses. Chicago, 1890.

U.S. Army Air Force. Air Power for Peace. AAF Day—1 August 1947. (Tokyo: Kyodo Printing, 1947.)

Commercial Iron Works. Commemorating the Delivery to the U.S. Navy of Our 100th Vessel. Portland, 1944.

City of Los Angeles. Home Recreation in Wartime. LA: Dept. of Playground and Recreation, ca. 1942?

Sheridan, Sol N. (words) and A. Nelson Adams(music). Beside the Pasig River. Written and composed in the Palace of Malagañan, Manila, after the American Occupation. Manila: Camelo & Bauerman, (1898).

Lunkley, Violet E. Hurray for the Heroes of the Sea. Dedicated to the Navy Boys. Words and Music by…. San Francisco: Gallur, (1914).

Central California Veterans’ Reunion Association. Popular Patriotic Songs. San Jose: Frank M. Eley, 189-?.

Watson, Pond & Riddle. California. A catalogue of country and land property for the investor and homeseeker. San Francisco [1909].

Turlock Land Co. Turlock, California. Turlock Irrigation District. (San Francisco: Western Folder Co., ca. 1910.)

Covina Chamber of Commerce. Covina, An Orchard Paradise in San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles County, California. (Covina Argus Press, 1928?)

Chamber of Commerce. Fresno County, California. Fresno: Evening Democrat Print, ca. 1905.

Alan T. Tarbell Corp. The Building of an Empire: Crescent City, California. [Los Angeles, 1929.]

North Western—Union Pacific.Introducing—The Streamliner, City of Los Angeles. Omaha:
Medlar, 1936.

Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Celebration,National Country Music Day. Official Program. Meridian,MS, 1954.

Southern Pacific. California Festival Year 1925. [San Francisco? 1925.]

My Partner Souvenir. Boston: Forbes Co., [1880].

Great Migration primary source collections

Isabel Wilkerson's excellent new book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, has garnered a great deal of press in recent weeks.

Researchers wishing to examine a wealth of primary source material on the living and working conditions of African-Americans in this era might want to take a look at a fascinating microfilm collection titled "Black Workers in the Era of the Great Migration, 1916-1929," housed in Green Library's Media-Microtext. Edited by by James Grossman, the set compiles records from various Federal agencies and departments--ranging from the U.S. Coal Commission and Bureau of Employment Security to the U.S. Children's Bureau and Bureau of Agricultural Economics. A guide is also available, with a short introductory essay.

Additionally, as David Oshinsky noted in the opening paragraph of his review of Wilkerson's book, the Chicago Defender is another invaluable primary source of the African-American migration out of the South. Stanford researchers can access the full-text archive of the Chicago Defender, a title in the ProQuest Historical Newspaper series.

Historical Census Browser and City and County Data Books--UVA Libraries

Following up on last month's post regarding the Newberry Library's Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, I wanted to blog about two exceptional resources provided by the UVA Libraries: Historical Census Browser and County and City Data Books.

Sponsored by the Scholars' Lab at the UVA Library, the Historical Census Browser is one tool in a suite of offerings provided by Spatial and Statistical Data and Services. Drawn from historical volumes of the U.S. Census of Population and Housing, the census browser enables users to "examine state and county topics for individual census years, examine state and county topics over time," and "generate maps of selected data."

Focusing on the mid-late 20th century (1944-2000), the County and City Data Books database provides a wealth of data on local governments, economies, and populations. As the site notes, "The data presented here for the 1944-1983 editions was obtained through ICPSR, the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. The 1944-77 data for cities came from study #7735 and the 1947-77 data for counties and states came from study #7736. Data for all levels of the 1983 edition came from study #8256."

New African-American historical newspapers

Adding to Stanford's holdings of African-American newspapers in the ProQuest Historical Newspaper series, the library has recently acquired two new titles: The Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005) and the Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002, excludes 1913-1921). Both newspapers are full-text searchable, as well as cross-searchable with other titles in the ProQuest Historical Newspapers line. Both are available on the library's databases and articles page.