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At the Institute’s core is the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the great archives in American history. More than 85,000 items cover five hundred years of American history, from Columbus’s 1493 letter describing the New World through the end of the twentieth century.

Moore, John (1826-1907) To Mary

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC04192.05 Author/Creator: Moore, John (1826-1907) Place Written: Cork, Ireland Type: Autograph letter signed Date: 2 August 1852 Pagination: 4 p. ; 23.2 x 18.9 cm. Order a Copy

Excerpt:
2 August 1852: "The county was generally beautiful; many parts of it exceedingly so - naturally fertile but many parts poorly cultivated and every part filled with wretchedness, starvation and beggary - owing in part to an unjust and tyrannical system of government, systematically pursued for the last hundred years, but perhaps mainly to the miserable system of letting lands, by which the tenant can be turned out at any moment, without a care of remuneration for any improvements he may have made on the Land. Another reason of the wretched condition of many of them is their own laziness and want of energy."

John Moore (1826-1907) was born in Indiana and taught school in Louisiana and Alabama. After medical school in Louisiana, he became an army surgeon and later served as U.S. Surgeon General.

Moore, John, 1826-1907

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