INDEX TO THE John Tyler Papers THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS • PRESIDENTS' PAPERS INDEX SERIES INDEX TO THE John Tyler Papers MANUSCRIPT DIVISION • REFERENCE DEPARTM'ENT LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WASHINGTON: 1961 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-60078 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington 25, D.C. - Price 20 cents Preface THIS INDEX to the John Tyler Papers is a direct result of the wish of the Congress and the President, as expressed by Public Law 85-147 of August 16,1957, to arrange, microfilm, and index the papers of the Presidents in the Library of Congress in order "to preserve their contents against destruction by war or other calamity," to make the Tyler and other Presidential Papers more "readily available for study and research," and to inspire informed patriotism. An appropriation to carry out the provisions of the law was approved on July 31, 1958, and actual operations began on August 25. The microfilm of the Tyler Papers became available in 1960. Positive copies of the film may be purchased from the Chief, Photoduplication Service, Library of Congress, Washington 25, D.C. A positive print is available for interlibrary loan through the Chief, Loan Division, Library of Congress. Contents Introduction PAGE Provenance . V Selected Bibliography. viii How To Use This Index viii Reel List .. x Abbreviations x Index The Index ......... 1 Appendices National Union Catalog of lvlanuscript Collections Card. 8 Description of the Papers 9 Sources of Acquisition 9 Statement of the· Librarian of Congress 10 iii Introduction Provenance On the following day, June 14, 1864, Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside's Ninth Army Corps was en route from OHN TYLER valued highly the papers he Cold Harbor to the James River, In the corps was a?cur:nulated in the course of his long career. * In hospital steward Stephen Farnum Peckham of the 7th JhIS wIll, drawn on October 10, 1859, he appointed Regiment, Rhode Island Volunteers, who later his sons, Robert, John, Tazewell, and David, and his reported: 3 ". • • passed along a road that led by the sons-in-law, James Semple and William Waller, to be rear of the residence of ex-President John Tyler at his literary executors, "bequeathing to them for revi­ 'Sherwood Forest,' Charles City County, Virginia. sion and publication if they shall think proper all such The beautiful location of the house on rising ground of my papers as relate to my own times and relate with an immense garden stretching down to the toad, either to my own Biography or to public affairs." filled with roses and honeysuckle, led the writer and a He went on to direct that "my collection of Auto­ friend to straggle from the command and visit the graphs and all my private papers not relating to public house. It was found to be deserted. affairs I give to my wife." 1 At the ~time he directed "The house consisted of a cental portion of two this disposal of his papers, he could not foresee the stories each of four large rooms separated by halls, in calamities that were to befall them, shortly after his the form of a Greek cross. On either side of this death, when the Civil War came to his home. central portion were wings of one story, consisting of a When the will was drawn, most of his papers were succession of rooms, each reached by passing through at "Sherwood Forest," a large plantation in Charles the other. Those on the right were the library City County, Va., where he lived from the time he and private rooms of the master of the house. In the left the White House in March 1845 until his death on middle of the largest of these rooms was a cart-load, January 18, 1862. Shortly thereafter, the first of what more or less, of papers that had apparently been were to be many Union contingents traversed the emptied from drawers as rubbish. This pile attracted region. A number of these callers made their visits a my attention, and I was very soon absorbed in matter of record. On June 13, 1864, Col. Mason W. selecting letters and papers from historic personages. Tyler wrote: 2 ". • • two or three of our staff "Among other things, my eye fell on a package of mounted horses and went in search of the distinguished yellow manifold paper that appeared to have been Virginian's home. The house was in charge of negro pressed hard together from having been carried in a servants, who tried faithfully to keep watch and ward, pocket. It had a band of white paper pinned around but the soldiers soon invaded the premises, and upon it, on which was written, in the handwriting of being admitted into the rear, forced their way into President Tyler: 'Peace Convention.' We opened the front of the house. It was a plain, comfortable and examined the pieces of yellow paper, and found habitation, on a slightly elevated plateau, surrounded that they were copies of telegrams. that had been sent by stately trees, with bookshelves and many books, President Tyler from all over the South, while he was and indications of literary work by its recent occu­ the presiding officer of the 'Peace Convention,' pants. Some books were carried off by the soldiers, giving him all sorts of information concerning the and not a few letters from prominent leaders in the preparations that were being made to put the South in Confederacy to the ex-President were discovered and a condition to fight. A fort was being built in one appropriated. Aside from this I do not think much place, guns were mounted in another, a company was harm was done. The next day the place was being enlisted here, and a regiment there. The value protected by a guard." 3 Stephen Farnum Peckham, "An Echo from the Civil War," Journal of American History, V (October 1911), 613-14. He *Grateful acknowledgment is made to Oliver P. Chitwood saved 12 of these manuscripts and published them, partly in for reading and commenting on a draft ofthis essay. facsimile, in Journal of American History, VI (January 1912), 1 Photostat in John B. Murphy Collection of Presidential 73-86. See also a similar account in William P. Hopkins, Wills, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Seventh Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers in the Civil War 1862-1865 2 Recollections of the Civil War, with Many Original Diary Entries (Providence, 1903), 189-90. For an account of Peckham's and Letters Written from the Seat of War, and with Annotated ReJer­ career, see Peckham Genealogy (New York, 1922), 508-11, and ences(NewYork, 1912),217. Dictionary of American Biography, XIV, 386-87. v of these telegrams, as compared with autograph letters Tyler's record, Captain Larned's letter, and Mr. Peck­ with which we filled our pockets, did not occur to me ham's account all confirm that in the following month until I had gone too far from the house to return with there were still Tyler manuscripts.in the house. Noth­ safety. ing else has been discovered about the "private letters" "On getting into camp at the Ninth Corps Head­ which Larned "gathered up" and "placed ... in a quarters, where I was on duty, I immediately sought box." It may be that they remained there until Mrs. Colonel [Lewis] Richmond, General Burnside's Tyler returned to Sherwood Forest a year later. Adjutant-General, and told him that the papers were A small part of Tyler's papers must have been at in the house. He asked permission of the General to "Villa Margaret," a summer house near Hampton, send me back with an escort to get them. General Va. George Templeton Strong described a visit there Burnside replied that he was extremely sorry that I in his diary on June 4, 1861: 6 "called at ex-President had left them, but he would not authorize diso­ Tyler's country house and entered it through a cellar bedience of his own orders. The examination of the window. He was out. He and all his family fled with 'Peace Convention' telegrams established beyond precipitation some ten days ago. Signs of hasty, ter­ any possibility of doubt the fact that John Tyler, a rified flight abounded in the house; bureau drawers man who had filled the exalted position of President pulled out and left on the floor, unimportant papers of the United States, had run the 'Peace Convention' scattered over the floor. I secured two or three scraps simply to kill time, while the South got ready to fight. of the Tylerian correspondence . ." "The papers that I did bring away were hastily Julia Gardiner Tyler, the President's widow, was a looked over, tied in a bundle, and only lately carefully New Yorker by birth but a Southerner by conviction. examined." She and her children were able to spend most of the In the afternoon of the same day General Burnside war years with her mother on Staten Island, N.Y. and his staff stopped at Judge William H. Clopton's Since she had highly placed friends on both sides of neighboring plantation. The General's private secre­ the conflict, she managed to keep in touch with events tary, Capt. Daniel R. Larned, wrote to his sister:4 at her home and even to make a trip by sea late in "With her [Mrs. Clopton] was a Miss Tyler, niece 1~62 and in 1863 to Sherwood Forest and back to of Ex President Tyler whose place (Sherwood) was Staten Island.