Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Letters, typescripts, typescript notes, and related printed materials. Most of the collection consists of typescript notes compiled by Pratt in the preparation for his book STANTON, LINCOLN'S SECRETARY OF WAR. The notes chiefly relate to the Civil War. It is not always possible to determine the source of a given note. There are 17 letters to Pratt which relate to his book, most of them from Gideon T. Stanton. Also, typescripts for three other books by Pratt: THE EMPIRE AND THE GLORY (N.Y., Sloane, 1941) on the Napoleonic campaigns; ORDEAL BY FIRE (N.Y., Sloane, 1948) on the Civil War; ELEVEN GENERALS; STUDIES IN AMERICAN COMMAND (N.Y., Sloane, 1949). Each of these typescripts has handwritten corrections and instructions for the printer. The printed materials include earlier serial versions of ELEVEN GENERALS and travel brochures and maps of Civil War sites used by Pratt in his research on Stanton.

Papers of the Jay family and of those families related to the Jay family, including Bruen, Butterworth, Chapman, Clarkson, Dawson, Du Bois, Field, Iselin, McVickar, Mortimer, O'Kill, Pellew, Pierrepont, Prime, Robinson, Schieffelin, Von Schweinitz, Sedgwick, and Wurts. In addition to family and personal matters, the correspondence deals with anti-slavery, New York State civil service, repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Civil War, the Blair Bill, international affairs, and New York City and State politics and government. There are letters from numerous prominent persons including George Bancroft, F.A.P. Barnard, Bismarck, William Cullen Bryant, Aaron Burr, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hamilton Fish, Albert Gallatin, Horace Greeley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Washington Irving, Frances Anne Kemble, Jenny Lind, Henry W. Longfellow, Seth Low, James Russell Lowell, John Stuart Mill, Alice Duer Miller, Clement Clarke Moore, J.P. Morgan, Thomas Nast, Commodore Matthew Perry, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Carl Schurz, William H. Seward, William T. Sherman, Charles Sumner, and John Greenleaf Whittier.