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Lincoln On The Abolition Of Slavery, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

That man who thinks Lincoln calmly sat down and gathered his robes about him, waiting for the people to call him, has a very erroneous knowledge of Lincoln," wrote Abraham Lincoln's long-time law partner, William Henry Herndon. "He was always calculating, and always planning ahead. His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest." And in no other pursuit was Lincoln more ambitious than in politics. As a lawyer and Whig political organizer in Illinois, "Politics were his life and his ambition and his motive power." [excerpt]

Ms-048: World War I Service Questionnaires, Keith R. Swaney

All Finding Aids

After the conclusion of the First World War, two distinct entities at Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College—Professor S. N. Hagen and the Phi Delta Theta fraternity— endeavored to document and commemorate the experiences of the college’s graduates in the First World War.

The first section contains the Phi Delta Theta questionnaires, which the fraternity sent to its alumni to record their participation in the field or on the home front. As the questionnaires note, the historian of the Pennsylvania College chapter wished to use this information in a publication to be entitled the “Karux.”

The second section contains questionnaires that Hagen, a …

Ms-041: Thomas Meiser, Company F, 93rd Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, Christine M. Ameduri

All Finding Aids

The bulk of the collection consists of letters written by Thomas to his grandfather and grandmother. It includes miscellaneous correspondence including four letters written to Thomas from his grandparents during his service in the 31st Regiment (Emergency). The collection also includes various bonds, receipts and subpoenas as well as business correspondence relating to George Person (or Parson), Thomas’s grandfather. It contains various tintype photos, mainly of Thomas’s descendents, and a wallet from a bank in Lebanon. Lastly, it contains copies of research relating to Thomas Meiser, transcriptions of his letters as well as a Senior Paper written by Christopher Culig, …

Ms-042: Lt. Sylvester Crossley, 118 Regiment Of Pennsylvania Volunteers, Company H (Corn Exchange), Christine M. Ameduri

All Finding Aids

This diary/journal consists of entries that Sylvester Crossley kept between December of 1864, his sixth month as a prisoner of war in Marion, Georgia, and May 15, 1865, about three months after his escape. It is a first hand account of his day to day life in a southern military prison camp, his experiences while an escapee and eventual return to his unit.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More …

The Slave Birth Register Of Adams County

Adams County History

This record is from a book, deposited in the Prothonotary's office, which shows the dates of birth and registration of 109 children born to slave mothers between 1799 and 1820. Several pages at the beginning of the book are missing, including the page on which are recorded the names of slaveholders whose surnames begin with A. That register might not be the original record, however. [excerpt]

The Slaveholders Of Adams County

Adams County History

This catalog of slaveholder names includes all known slaveholders in Adams County both before and after its split from York County in 1800. Included with each name are the place or places of residence and the year or years of documented slave ownership. In order to achieve some conformity, in certain instances the spelling of surnames is arbitrary, based on experience with what the names actually were or have become.

Distribution Of Slaveholders In Adams County

Adams County History

This roster repeats the names of "The Slaveholders of Adams County," from this journal, separating them, however, by their places of residence. The aim is to give an idea of where in the county slavery was most prevalent and at the same time a glimpse at the national origins of settlers in different areas.

There is a considerable duplication of names, which reflects the movement of families within the county or the establishment of new townships and the incorporation of Gettysburg as a borough. An accounting is given for each distinct place an individual lived, whether by actual move or …

The Slaves Of Adams County

Adams County History

This compilation of named slaves surely does not represent anything near the total number who toiled in the county; without a doubt many are now irretrievable. Of those who can be isolated, a large number may be identified to some extent by age or sex or name of owner, or by a combination of those definers. This list, however, comprises only those slaves whose names are recorded. [excerpt]

Pennsylvania Legislation Relating To Slavery

Adams County History

The following acts have been taken, complete or in part, from the published volumes of The Statutes At Large of Pennsylvania and Laws of Pennsylvania. These extracts are not all-inclusive, but do cover the years 1725/6-1847, from the province's first general statement of the legal standing of blacks, full-blooded and mixed, and the treatment to be afforded them, up to the state's rewritten and strengthened prohibition of the kidnapping of free blacks and the seizing of fugitive slaves. Included are not only acts showing the status and the protection of slaves, whether residents or sojourners, but also those requiring resident …

Adams County History 2003

Adams County History

No abstract provided.

Slaveholders And Slaves Of Adams County, Larry C. Bolin

Adams County History

A close study of the African-American community of Adams county waits to be written. By whatever standards adhered to, however, an in-depth investigation of the subject would be a daunting task at best, and in some areas an all but impossible one. Sadly, the early years, if seen at all, are often barely visible through the mists of repression and slavery. And yet, unfortunate and illogical as it might seem, slave owners very frequently offer the only glimpses of the downtrodden now obtainable....

This study consists of four lists, centered on the names of the county's slaveholders and designed to …

So Far From God And So Close To Stonewall Jackson: The Executions Of Three Shenandoah Valley Soldiers, Peter S. Carmichael

History Faculty Publications

Mount Pisgah Church had long been a place where Orange County Baptists sought salvation and spiritual comfort. Wars have a way of turning such holy places into brutal scenes of killing. Although a battle was never fought on the sacred ground of the church, Pisgah witnessed man's inhumanity on 19 August 1862, when a firing squad executed three deserters from Brig. Gen. William B. Taliaferro's division of Stonewall Jackson's command - all of whom were conscripts from the Shenandoah Valley. Until that depressing afternoon, when veterans formed a hollow square and waited for the condemned, no deserters in Jackson's command …

"He's My Man": Sherman Adams And New Hampshire's Role In The "Draft Eisenhower" Movement, Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

On presidential primary day, March 11, 1952, wet snow fell steadily over much of New Hampshire, and campaign managers became anxious about getting out their vote. Governor Sherman Adams, manager of the "draft Eisenhower" campaign, had a lot riding on a primary that President Harry Truman had dismissed as little more than "eyewash." By all evidence, Americans wanted change in Washington. The New Hampshire primary results would surely influence the making of a president. Adams knew there was only one thing to do: stop worrying about the weather and start moving his people to the polls.

Understanding Emancipation: Lincoln's Proclamation And The Overthrow Of Slavery, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The most common trope that governs understanding of Abraham Lincoln and emancipation is that of progress. The variations on that trope are legion, and they include notions of Lincoln's journey toward emancipation, his growth in understanding the justice of emancipation, and his path to the Emancipation Proclamation. "Lincoln was," as Horace Greeley put it, "a growing man"; growing from a stance of moral indifference and ignorance at the time of his election in 1860 toward deep conviction about African American freedom by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation less than two years later. That was a generous sentiment, since it …

"The Tenter-Hooks Of Temptation": The Debate Over Theatre In Post-Revolutionary America, Meredith Bartron

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

In Royall Tyler’s 1787 play The Contrast, the innocent and simple Yankee Jonathan unknowingly attends a playhouse, mistaking it for a hocus pocus show. The historian and eighteenth-century theatre manager, William Dunlap, later criticized Tyler’s play because his hero was a clown who misrepresented the new nation that the Revolutionary War created. Tyler’s satirical portrait of his hero, however, is not an attack on the Yankee, but rather a symbol of the ideological conflicts within America. Jonathan repeats the religious charges against theatre, but he also joins in the fun at the playhouse. He is simple and honest, but he …