Today I want to showcase some items from a part of the collection that I have neglected in previous posts. I may have mentioned in earlier posts that the Littlejohn Collection at Wofford College will contain some books, but I have yet to share any with you.
Mr. Littlejohn collected a wide variety of published materials: hardbacks, paperbacks, pamphlets, art books, picture books, rare books -- the list goes on. I'll come nowhere close to doing the breadth of the collection any justice in this brief post, but I would like to post a few examples from the collection.
A considerable strength in the collection in terms of published materials is the number of 19th century pamphlets. There are now several dozen here in the Black Science Annex. A considerable portion of them date from or discuss in some manner the American Civil War or War Between the States. The one I am about to show you, however, bears only a tenuous connection to that era -- but that doesn't make it any less interesting.
These first three images are from a Senate report from the Committee on Internal Improvements and is dated May 30, 1855. As you will see, it is concerned with "the use of Camels on the Plains."
As the country expanded during the 1840's and 1850's locomotive technology and rail construction lagged behind as the frontier surged West. The main mode of transportation was horse and mule, yet frontiersmen noted that these animals struggled to cope with the dry and hot conditions in the Southwestern desert. Apparently, several public figures touted camels as the solution to this problem. One of these figures was none other than the future President of the Confederate States Jefferson Davis. In 1855, the year in which this pamphlet was published, Davis had risen to the office of Secretary of War in the Pierce administration. With his blessing, camels were procured from the Middle East, and the fascinatingly ill-fated U.S. Camel Corps was born.
These next images are of a pamphlet published in 1915 entitled: "Lincoln, as the South should know him." What is interesting, to me at least, about this pamphlet is the context in which it was written. In 1915, the Great War (or World War One) was raging in Europe, but the United States had not yet entered the war (and would not do so until 1917). You will notice from the excerpts on the title page (second image) and from the text of the opening page (third image) that a main motif of the pamphlet is the comparison between the acts of Germany's Kaiser and those of Abraham Lincoln.
To give my two cents, I suppose what I find interesting about this pamphlet (aside from the convergence of historical events - 'history making history,' to coin a phrase) is that the author appears to be trying to kill two birds with one stone: a) making an argument for isolationism (the platform on which Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1916) by minimizing the acts of the Kaiser, while b) making a villain out of Lincoln by recounting and emphasizing the inhumanity and brutality of his actions. (Note that the pamphlet was printed by a chapter of the Children of the Confederacy; not to imply that all ex-Confederates or descendants thereof are or were so vehemently anti-Lincoln.)
Please keep watch for the conclusion of this post (Part II), which will feature some very old and very interesting rare books in the collection.
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