“I have not heard from you for a long time. I fear you are buried under an avalanche of autographs.”  -Jared Sparks to William Buell Sprague (1845)[1] In 1834, the American Antiquarian Society's tireless librarian, Christopher Columbus Baldwin (1800-1835), exhaled that he was "heartily glad [William Buell Sprague] has left New England." A Presbyterian minister in Albany,... Continue Reading →

Edward Everett’s diplomatic bag From his post as U.S. Minister to the Court of St. James in the early 1840s, Edward Everett (1794-1865) worried often about his diplomatic bag. It oscillated across the Atlantic, swinging from London, through Liverpool, and westward to the United States. He was persistently anxious about its whereabouts, how it was... Continue Reading →