Manuscripts of Early National and Antebellum America

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections' Early National and Antebellum manuscript classification includes all manuscript groups originating, wholly or primarily, in North America in the years 1788 to 1860. The great majority of these items originated in the United States. Manuscripts of Early National and Antebellum America contains collection-level descriptions of the Department's processed holdings in this area. Individual collections are typically distinguished by unity of provenance; consequently, the collections described on this site vary greatly in size, from a single manuscript to more than seven hundred.