Collections

This collection contains letters and documents related to the family of Congressman Ebenezer Jackson, Jr., of Savannah, Georgia, and Middletown, Connecticut. Jackson and his father wrote and received personal letters about contemporary political issues. The letters offer commentary on the Missouri Compromise, the 1860 United States presidential election, secession, and the Civil War. Jackson also wrote about his travels in Boston, Massachusetts, and offered advice to his brother Amasa, who attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in the mid-1820s.

This collection contains 9 letters and 2 documents related to the family of Ebenezer Jackson, Jr., of Savannah, Georgia, and Middletown, Connecticut. Jackson and his father wrote and received personal letters about contemporary political issues such as the Missouri Compromise, the 1860 United States Presidential election, secession, and the Civil War. Jackson also wrote to his father about his travels in Boston, Massachusetts, and offered advice to his brother Amasa, who attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in the mid-1820s.

Ebenezer Jackson, Jr., authored 4 letters in this collection. He wrote 2 letters to his father in which he discussed his impressions of Boston, a publication in support of the War of 1812 (March 13, 1814), and his Pennsylvania to Connecticut travel plans (July 5, 1825). Jackson's mother, Charlotte Fenwick Jackson, contributed to his first letter, urging her husband to keep "Harriette" in school. Ebenezer Jackson sent 2 letters to his brother Amasa, who attended the Cheshire Academy in Cheshire, Connecticut, in 1820, and the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1823; he offered educational advice and congratulated him on his academic achievements.

Ebenezer Jackson, Jr., received 4 political letters from acquaintances. A committee in Middletown, Connecticut, strongly urged Jackson to accept his nomination for a United States Senate seat in 1834 and explained the reasons why he would be a strong candidate (March 13, 1834). Hezekiah Huntington wrote about political parties and the 1860 presidential election (August 21, 1860); former Florida governor Richard K. Call strenuously voiced his opposition to secession (January 19, 1861); and United States Senator Lafayette Sabine Foster affirmed his support for the Union's military efforts against the Confederacy, as well as his disdain for the peace efforts of Horace Greeley and others (January 27, 1863).

Ebenezer Jackson, Sr., sent 1 letter to William Van Deusen, in which he shared his opinions about the Missouri Compromise (March 25, 1820). He anticipated continued conflicts between the North and South over slavery, and mentioned the possible effects those conflicts might have on British opinion about the United States.

The collection's documents are an undated copy of a 1672 deed between John Stows and John Willcoke for land in Middletown, Connecticut, and an 1836 memorandum of the estate of Ebenezer Jackson, Sr., addressed to Mary C. Oliver of Boston, Massachusetts.

This collection holds the diaries of Sumner Burnham, a Maine resident, sympathetic to the anti-slavery movement, who recorded his personal experiences, often with religious commentary, from the antebellum period through the Civil War.

This collection holds four of Sumner Burnham's diaries from 1853 through 1868. The diaries consist of brief daily entries with some sizable gaps between volumes. Before the war (volumes 1, 2, and part of 3), the majority of entries describe daily life around Portland, concentrating on the personal, rather than the public or political, spheres: he included news of friends and family, deaths and illnesses in the community, happenings in the local Baptist church, and local events. Burnham often interjected religious passages (references to or about scripture) into his diaries. Occasionally he discussed local crimes that had recently taken place. In a few entries, Burnham mentioned speaking with prisoners and being called to talk with the sheriff.

While in Boston in late May and early June 1854, Burnham witnessed a trial deciding the fate of a runaway slave, caught and tried under the Fugitive Slave Law. His entries for this period are somewhat longer than average and record the reaction of the anti-slavery "mob" to the trial. Burnham himself was deeply sympathetic to the anti-slavery movement.

Beginning with the election of 1860, and particularly after the outbreak of war (p. 137 in volume 3), Burnham began to include political commentary in his daily entries. He recorded the occurrence of major battles and major political events of the Civil War.

In the fourth volume, he continued to report news on the war and described his job as customs inspector and general detective in Portland. The longest entry in the diary -- more than 2 pages -- is an entry on Lincoln's assassination (page 39). Entries after the war are very similar to those written before the war.

Thirty five pages have been ripped from the back of the first volume and the first two pages are missing from the third volume.