In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of The March on Washington we want to call attention to our copy of Speeches by the Leaders: The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This publication was printed by the NAACP in 1963 and contains the text of many of the speeches delivered at this event. The speakers included in this booklet are: A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, Rev. Eugene Carson Blake, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, Whitney M. Young, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Mathew Ahmann, John Lewis, and Walter Reuther.

Along with the text of the speeches this program includes an opening two page introduction titled:  Statement by the heads of the ten organizations calling for discipline in connection with the Washington March of August 28, 1963. This statement is followed by the ten names of the speakers. One of the statements for the Washington March is that “it will be orderly, but not subservient. It will be proud, but not arrogant. It will be non-violent, but not timid. It will be unified in purposes and behavior, not splintered into groups and individual competitors. It will be outspoken, but not raucous.”

The final page in the booklet is called What We Demand and lists ten numbered demands followed by a commitment pledge with a place for signature and address at the bottom. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 reflected the demands of the march.

We invite you to visit Special Collections to read the text of the speeches that were given on that special day fifty years ago.

Jim Bricker
Senior Library Technician

One of the main responsibilities of the Walter Havighurst Special Collections is to ensure continued access to the materials in the collection. One way we achieve this is through various preservation measures to ensure the physical well being of the materials. Preservation initiatives can take many forms, from proper storage and handling, to environmental monitoring and pest control. The process of encapsulation is one such technique we use on fragile and/or important documents and papers housed in the manuscript collections.

Encapsulation is when you place a flat sheet of paper between to sheets of inert polyester plastic (one particular brand of polyester is Mylar, often used as a blanket term, like Kleenex is for tissue). The sheets of polyester are then sealed on either two edges, creating an L-sleeve, or on all four edges, creating an enclosed document. The polyester can be sealed with either heat or ultrasound. When using heat an L-sleeve is usually created, as you do not want to heat the polyester with the document already inside, but rather seal the two edges and then place the document inside the sleeve. Alternatively, when using ultrasound, one can either create an L-sleeve, or fully encapsulate the document by sealing all four sides. Here at Miami we use an ultrasonic welder, usually choosing to seal all four sides of the polyester.

Double-sided tape is another method that has been utilized to create an encapsulation sleeve, although this method  is not recommended. It is possible for the edges of a document to slip too close to the double sided tape, thereby damaging the document. In addition, the adhesive on the double sided tape can break down over time and spread past the tape itself, potentially damaging any document edges that come into contact with it.

Another option is to purchase pre-made polyester L-sleeves, available in a variety of standard sizes, all of which can be trimmed down to the desired size. This is a good option if only a few items need encapsulated, or if one does not have access to ultrasonic welding/heat sealing equipment. Inert polyester sleeves should not be confused with the standard clear plastic binder sleeves one finds at most office supply stores, which can break down over time and cause damage to the enclosed item.

Encapsulation should also NOT be confused with lamination. Lamination is a process by which a piece of paper is heat-fused between two pieces of plastic laminate. Not only is this process irreversible (or only reversible with solvents) it can also cause great damage to the item. As the lamination breaks down, so too does the document fused inside.

Encapsulation is an excellent way to protect documents during handling and storage. The electrostatic charge of the polyester holds the document in place, offering support, protection from fingerprints and other foreign substances, and preventing paper from crumbling or tearing while being handled. Below is a demonstration of crumpling a sheet of brittle paper, one half is crumpled as is, the other half is encapsulated, then crumpled.

While the demo may be extreme in it’s rough handling, the photos illustrate just how protective encapsulation can be. You can see quite a difference in the end result.

While encapsulation is an excellent solution for many documents, it is not a perfect solution for everything. Often times encapsulating a document creates a closed environment for the document, which can be problematic if stored in warm, humid areas. The closed environment can speed up the deterioration caused by acid inherent in the document, leading to brittle, crumbling paper. Often times items are treated with a deacidification spray before being encapsulated (although these sprays have their own limitations and drawbacks). The use of an ultrasonic welder can limit the effects of a closed environment, as the weld is not actually a solid weld, as it appears to the naked eye, but rather a series of small dots which allows for some airflow through the encapsulation environment. Another way to avoid the closed environment effect is to utilize the L-sleeve method of encapsulation. The electrostatic charge of the polyester holding the document in place makes the L-sleeve as effective as a four sided weld.

Another potential drawback lies in the very characteristic that makes encapsulation so effective, the electrostatic charge. Any document that contains friable media, such as charcoal, pastels, colored pencil, graphite, and even some paints such as gouache should not be encapsulated. Documents with flaking ink should also not be encapsulated. The electrostatic charge of the polyester can lift the media right off the paper, thereby causing significant damage. It is best to use an acid-free folder for these types of items. Encapsulation should also not be used for photographs.

Ashley Jones
Preservation Librarian

 

One hundred and fifty years ago, in July of 1863, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan led 2400 troops across the Ohio River and for three weeks terrorized citizens as he moved eastward through  Indiana and Ohio. “Morgan’s Raid” produced the only battles of the Civil War fought in Ohio. The Battle of Buffington Island was fought both in Ohio and West Virginia on July 19, and the Battle of Salineville was waged on July 26^th and has the distinction of being the northernmost battle fought during the Civil War (according to the plaque at the site of the battle). Morgan was captured shortly after the battle.

After reading news accounts about the sesquicentennial of Morgan’s Raid I wanted to see what we might have on John Morgan in Special Collections.  I discovered several histories of Morgan’s Cavalry and his exploits in the “North”. I also came across a novel, The Sycamore Tree, by Marion Boyd Havighurst, the wife of Walter Havighurst, who uses Morgan’s Raid as the historical setting for her story. The chronicle of Morgan’s Raid, capture, and eventual escape is intriguing, and for those unfamiliar with it I would like to share some of what I discovered.

General John Hunt Morgan was encouraged to take his cavalry into Kentucky by his superior, General Bragg, with free reign to go wherever he chose in that state, and if circumstances permitted, capture Louisville. Bragg, however,  specifically forbade Morgan from crossing the Ohio River. As Morgan planned his raid he confided to his brother-in-law, his second-in-command, Basil Duke, that he intended to disregard Bragg’s orders and ride through Indiana and Ohio, hoping to join with the army of Northern Virginia in West Virginia or Pennsylvania.

Morgan’s cavalry crossed the Ohio River on July 8^th and their ride through Indiana and Ohio caused considerable panic. Indiana proclaimed martial law and Ohio called up fifty thousand militia. Whitelaw Reid offered this description of the invasion: “… the mania for plunder which befell this command and made its line of march look like a procession of peddlers, was something beyond all ordinary cavalry plundering.” The author, Jack Rhea, states that the citizens of Ohio referred to Morgan as “Morgan the terrible.”

On July 19^th Morgan’s forces were soundly defeated at the Battle of Buffington Island. Morgan regrouped his remaining men and moved north but was defeated again in a brief battle at Salineville one week later and was finally captured.

Morgan and his officers were sent to the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus, with the intent to treat them as horse thieves and criminals rather than as soldiers, and as retaliation for the way certain Union soldiers were being treated in Confederate prisons. Four months after their capture Morgan and six other prisoners escaped by digging up the stones in their cells with kitchen knives.  They reached an air chamber and tunneled under the walls into the outer yard. From there they climbed the wall using bed clothes as ropes.

Whitelaw Reid describes the findings reached by the State investigation that ensued:

“It was thus disclosed that the neglect which enabled the prisoners to prosecute the tedious task of cutting through the stone floors undiscovered, had its origin in the course-minded suggestion of one of the directors of the penitentiary that the daily sweeping of the cells might be dispensed with, and “the d—-d Rebels made to sweep their own cells.” This poor effort to treat the prisoners of war worse than he treated the convicts, enabled them to cover up their work and conceal it from any inspection of cells that was made.”

Morgan caught the Little Miami train to Cincinnati, jumped off outside of town and made his way back across the Ohio River to Kentucky, and eventually to the Confederate lines. In September of 1864 he was killed in an attack in Tennessee. He is buried in Lexington, Kentucky.

For this brief account of Morgan’s Raid I relied primarily on our copy of Whitelaw Reid’s Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen Generals and Soldiers, published in 1893. Reid’s history devotes nineteen pages to Morgan’s drive through southern Ohio.

We have several other volumes in Special Collections on John Morgan including History of Morgan’s Cavalry, written by Basil W. Duke, Morgan’s brother-in-law mentioned above . Duke was captured at the Battle of Buffington Island.  We also have The Thunderbolt of the Confederacy (John Morgan and his Raiders) by Jack Rhea, Morgan’s Raid in Indiana by Louis B. Ewbank, and Morgan and his Captors by Rev. F. Senour. Harpers Weekly had a front page article on the Raid, along with the illustration used above, in its August 15, 1863 issue. Please stop by Special Collections to read more about this fascinating episode in Ohio’s history.

Jim Bricker
Senior Library Technician

I am excited to announce the release of our first wholly digital exhibit: A Gift of History!

This exhibit features the original 19th century Miami annuity rolls which were donated by Margaret Sue Strass to the Myaamia Heritage Museum and Archive. Part of the agreement to the donation was that the rolls would be kept at Miami University, here in Special Collections, to be viewed by interested scholars, students, and Myaamia for genealogical research.

The rolls donated include:

• Myaamia annuity, 1880
• Myaamia annuity, 1881
• Eel River annuity, 1880
• Eel River annuity, 1881
• Myaamia census, 1882
• Myaamia census, 1882, duplicates
• Eel River census, 1882

 

To make them more accessible, we digitized the rolls and they became the foundation of our new Myaamia Collection Online – a resource that is already receiving new donations. While we are excited at the prospect of further expanding the collection, we wanted to commemorate the original gift of the annuity rolls that was its beginning.

For some time, Elias Tzoc in the Center for Digital Scholarship and I had discussed developing an exhibit in Omeka, but we were limited by Omeka’s difficulty in managing compound objects like the annuity rolls, each comprising several sheets of paper. However, in a stroke of genius, Elias was able to import the compound object viewer from the Myaamia Collection Online in CONTENTdm to the Omeka platform, allowing us to move forward with the exhibit you now see. This exhibit demonstrates the power of open source platforms like Omeka, allowing designers to import and adapt tools to their specific needs.

In addition to the rolls themselves, the exhibit also details the importance of the time for the Miamis in Indiana when these rolls were compiled: in 1881, 63 registered Miami were granted citizenship to the state of Indiana and the United States, making them the last large group of Miamis in the state to receive citizenship to the United States. The exhibit also provides information on the process by which we digitized the rolls and created a digital collection around them.

This was my first major project here in Special Collections and it has been a fascinating (and, yes, sometimes frustrating) process to bring the collection and this exhibit together, and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to have worked with these rolls. I would like to thank Elias, Jody, John, and Lori for their help with the project, and invite you all to explore this fascinating gift of history.

Marcus Ladd
Special Collections Librarian

We’re happy to announce that the processing of the John H. James Collection, one of our largest manuscript collections, has been completed and finding aids for the collection are now available online.  The finding aids were written by two of our graduate assistants, Adrienne Chudzinski and Stacy Haberstroh, both Miami history graduate students, and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude for their work processing the collection.

John Hough James (1800-1881) was a native of Urbana, Ohio and a graduate of Cincinnati College.  Referred to as the “Buckeye Titan” by his biographers, William E. and Ophia D. Smith, James was a lawyer, banker, railroad builder, scientific farmer, stockbreeder, legislator, politician, editor, lecturer and writer.  A friend of both Henry Clay and William Henry Harrison, James advised Whig leaders in the General Assembly of Ohio and in the United States Congress in his work as a lawyer and politician.  James was a pioneer in the development of western banking and transportation. He was treasurer and president of the Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad, helping to build one of the earliest railroads in the country. He also pursued farming and stockbreeding. James founded Urbana University, the first Swedenborgian college in the world, giving the land for the campus and serving as a lifelong trustee for the institution.

John H. James married Abigail Bailey, the daughter of Revolutionary War printer Frances Bailey, in 1825 and the couple had four children.  Abigail and her children feature prominently in the collection and the family’s letters to each other detail everyday domestic life for a close-knit, upper middle class family in nineteenth century Ohio.

Efforts until recently were largely focused on cataloging James’s personal library, a rich collection of 17th-19th century European and American imprints. His personal papers, including diaries kept over sixty years of his life, extensive family correspondence, and business documents were available for research, but, until now, lacked comprehensive finding aids for interested scholars to use remotely before visiting the collection.  The collection opens up many avenues for historical inquiry on a variety of topics in the study of nineteenth century American life and culture, including political, economic, gender, social, and religious history.

In many ways, our newly available finding aids build on James’s own meticulous organization of his diaries, correspondence, and business records.  He bound and labeled family correspondence and business correspondence annually and, it is safe to say, that he kept the originals or copies of almost every letter or document that crossed his desk, both at home and in his office.  When a house fire threatened his entire collection of personal records a year before his death, James dutifully described the incident in his diary entry dated May 12, 1880: “This diary business seems to be well nigh run out. Yesterday as I sat at my bedroom desk writing, I heard the crack of fire in my closet where I have kept all my diaries and my files of letters. A glass lamp was burning there on the top of my drawers and heating a little can of water hung above it. A fire happened, the lamp burst and spread its infernal fluid and the fierce flame ascended and spread. Nobody to blame. A loud call for my granddaughter Nelly, and for water, brought help…. My letter books burned in volumes (by the only hand I would trust). From 1814-1871 several were scorched and one or two more than scorched- and all my diaries from 1821- 1878 injured in the burning … The worst of all, the first volume of letters from my son while in the army, written out by me from the letters when he first entered, so burned that I may not be able to replace it.”

Though much of the collection still bears the scars from that fateful fire, thousands of letters and documents, along with most of the diaries James kept between 1821 and 1881, are safe now here in Special Collections and I’d like to think that James himself would be very pleased with our stewardship of his collections.

Kimberly Tully
Special Collections Librarian