Embracing Online Possibilities

It is perhaps an understatement to say that my first year as Director at the Clements Library has not gone precisely how I had expected. Since the library closed in mid-March, so many people have told me how hard it must be to have stepped into a new job, in a new city, under these circumstances. And it has been hard—for me, and for everyone else on the staff—to not be able to do what the library is set up to do. The Clements exists to provide opportunities for students, faculty, and researchers from around the world to have in-person encounters with physical artifacts from the nation’s past. That mission is what animates the talented staff of the Clements Library, and it is why generous supporters over the past 97 years have donated items to the Clements—so they would be used. Since March, we’ve had to work to find ways to replicate that experience remotely, over Zoom and through digital surrogates of collections materials.

But while these past 11 months have been hard, compared to so many others, I have had this year easy. The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated communities across the United States, and has killed over 500,000 of our fellow citizens. It has changed almost everything about how all of us work, and play, and worship, and mourn. Millions of Americans—myself included—have lost family members to COVID-19, and the endless upward progression of terrible numbers has made all of us wonder if 2020 would ever actually end. Even so, I have been reminded every day of how lucky I am, to be working with the marvelous collections of the Clements Library on the campus of a world-class university with a group of dedicated, deeply knowledgeable colleagues. Collaborating with them to build on the library’s great strengths and to discover new ways to introduce our collections to students and scholars under challenging circumstances has been a constant joy.

We do our work in different ways, from different places, and wearing different shoes (if any), but the core work of the Clements Library remains the same. And my colleagues at the Clements have been endlessly inventive and persistent in finding ways for the library to continue offering students and researchers the opportunity to study all aspects of American history and culture before 1900. Of course, the materials in the Clements collections can do more than just tell us about the history of a single nation. The questions that our collections help scholars answer are the great questions that have animated all humanistic inquiry: What constitutes a good life? How do we create meaning out of suffering? What is the right relationship of the individual to the state? What are the responsibilities of those with more power to those with less?

Despite unusual market constraints, the Clements has still been able to acquire exciting new materials, like this lithograph. Featuring the parade held in Baltimore in 1870 celebrating the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, the central image is surrounded by vignettes of African American life and portraits of proponents of emancipation and civil rights.

These questions have been given new salience by the events of the past year, events that have made even clearer how necessary institutions like the Clements Library are for the future of our country. None of the questions that scholars investigate using the library’s materials exist in a vacuum. All bear some relation to our current circumstances, from the terror inspired by the arrival of cholera in the 1830s—the United States’ first experience with a global pandemic—to the long and difficult tradition of state responses to urban protest, from the Boston Massacre to the Haymarket Riot. All of my colleagues at the Clements Library are more committed than ever to helping students and faculty shed light on these connections using the materials on our shelves.

This issue of The Quarto is a bit different than what you’re used to. In many cases, instead of receiving a handsome hard copy in your mailbox, this issue is being delivered to you electronically (although we’ll be glad to create a paper version of this issue if you prefer). And instead of addressing a particular historical topic or a specific set of materials in the collection, this issue will highlight how the Clements has adjusted its work when confronted by the COVID-19 pandemic. My colleagues have developed new ways of reaching out to our supporters—think of the online Clements Bookworm program—and have modified existing practices to suit new realities, as you will see with the discussion of our remote research fellowships.

Another crucial element of the Clements’ work that looks very different now than it did in March is acquisitions. My visit to the New York Antiquarian Book Fair in early March now feels like the last “normal” thing that I did—it was the last time I was in an airport, or in a museum; the last time I rode public transportation or ate in a restaurant; the last time I was indoors with a large group of strangers. The book dealers who are our crucial partners in continuing to build the Clements’ collections have been forced to pivot as well, distributing electronic catalogues and setting up virtual “booths” in online book fairs. And yet, under these altered conditions, we have been able to continue building on the great strengths of the Clements Library’s collections, and have added many exciting new items. I hope that when things are back to whatever will pass for “normal” in the future, you’ll be able to stop by to see some of them in person.

Additions to the James V. Mansfield Papers include portraits of James V. Mansfield (1817-1899) by George Freeman (1789-1868) and Mary Hopkinson Mansfield (1827-1883) by an unknown artist. Hand-colored photographic prints, reverse-mounted on glass, 1857.

We were fortunate in February 2020 to have been very successful at an auction featuring a wide range of materials related to the prominent mid-19th-century American Spiritualist James Valentine Mansfield (1817-1899). The lots we acquired multiplied our previous collection of Mansfield materials several-fold, and established Spiritualism as a great strength of our manuscript collections. We realized, however, that the Book Division was not as strong in the robust print culture of the Spiritualist movement as it should be in order to support research in Spiritualism across the Library. So we set out to address that gap. Among the many fascinating titles that we added, this one stands out: Andrew Jackson Davis’ The Diakka and their Earthly Victims (New York: Progressive Publishing House, 1873). Davis (1826-1910) was one of the most prominent clairvoyants and spiritualists of the 19th century, and he was a prolific author but The Diakka is one of his more obscure books. According to Davis, a “diakka” was the spirit of someone who in life was wicked or unprincipled. After death, the person’s spirit did not change, and these “diakkas” would return from the spirit realm to plague the living. Davis’ book offers a counterpoint to views of Spiritualism that focused on the benign nature of spirits, and will support research in the Mansfield papers and in other collections.

This single manuscript item was presented to the Corporation of New York City for the clean-up following the Astor Place Riot. For custodial services including “shaking carpets,” the $24 bill in 1849 translates to roughly $800 today.

One of the most exciting additions to our map collection is perhaps the smallest. Earlier this fall we were delighted to acquire this quite tiny (3.5 x 6 inches) manuscript map of Cap-Français (now Cap-Haïtien) in Haiti from 1793. This is one of the only surviving contemporary manuscript maps depicting the Great Fire of Cap-Français of 1793 that virtually destroyed the most important French city in the Americas during the early period of the Haitian Revolution. In June 1793, the French governor of Saint-Domingue tried to raise a revolt of the island’s white residents against the republican commissioners who had arrived in Haiti from France to administer the colony. The commissioners responded by promising freedom to any enslaved people who would fight with them. This pen, ink, and watercolor map shows the aftermath of the siege and burning of Cap-Français by the commissioners’ forces, which had reduced 80 percent of the city to ashes. The Clements holds two contemporary prints of the conflagration, as well as several manuscript accounts of the fire.

The Cap-Français map adds to the Clements’ strength in West Indies materials. The brown shaded squares indicate buildings destroyed in the 1793 blaze.

All of you are no doubt familiar with the marvelous Pohrt Collection of Native American Photography at the Clements, made possible by the generosity of the collector Richard Pohrt Jr. as well as Tyler J. and Megan L. Duncan. This collection of over 1000 photographs has been an invaluable addition to the Graphics Division, and photographs from the collection have already been used in a marvelous online exhibit on the Native Midwest and the history of photography. But we did not stop adding to the collection, nor did Richard’s generosity come to an end. With his support, we were able to purchase a set of five spectacular albumen print portraits of leaders from Plains tribes who took part in delegations to Washington, D.C., in the 1850s and ’60s and were photographed there. All of these prints were made by Antonion Zeno Shindler, although some of them were from negatives made by other photographers that he was given permission to reproduce. These delegation images were one of the few weak spots in the original collection, and the addition of these portraits helps highlight an important avenue for Native American political agency. The set includes an image of Tshe-ton-wa-ka-wa-ma-ni, or Little Crow, a Dakota chief who was one of the leaders of the Dakota Uprising in Minnesota in the early 1860s. But the most arresting image of the group, at least to me, is this portrait of Psicha Wakinyan, or Jumping Thunder, a Yankton warrior, made in 1858. These images were part of the first museum exhibition of photography in the United States, an 1869 show at the Smithsonian (following its disastrous 1865 fire) entirely of photographs of Native Americans.

As you will see from this issue, my colleagues at the Clements Library are doing marvelous work under trying conditions to help continue fulfilling the library’s mission of connecting students, faculty, and researchers with original source materials from America’s past. I look forward to seeing you in person at the Clements when the public health situation permits, but in the meantime I am eager to see all of you online under the Virtual Clements banner.

—Paul Erickson
Randolph G. Adams Director of the Clements Library

Supplementing the Clements’ collection of satires, these brightly colored cards were intended to entertain through mixing and matching, “by which different combinations of sentences may be made, representing ludicrous utterances of the figures,” according to the patent holder, Walter Strander. Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) and clergyman Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832-1902) are two of the six figures included in the set.