Our Collection

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.

Pickens, Francis Wilkinson (1805-1869) to the House of Representatives

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC09197 Author/Creator: Pickens, Francis Wilkinson (1805-1869) Place Written: s.l. Type: Manuscript document Date: 28 January 1861 Pagination: 2 p. Order a Copy

Informs the legislature of J. W. Hayne's confidential mission to negotiate with Buchanan over the right to reinforce Fort Sumter. "The letter of the President...asserts in plain terms, his right to send reinforcements, and I cannot disconnect this positive assertion of his right from an intention, or expectation, speedily to exercise it."

From the wartime papers of South Carolina Governors Francis W. Pickens and Milledge L. Bonham.

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