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New Online: The Walt Whitman Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection

(The following was written by Barbara Bair, historian in the Library’s Manuscript Division.)

Ralph Waldo Emerson to Walt Whitman, July 21, 1855, on the impact of “Leaves of Grass.” Manuscript Division.

As a special collections repository, the Library of Congress holds the largest collection of Walt Whitman materials anywhere in the world. The Manuscript Division has already made available online the Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of Walt Whitman Papers and the Walt Whitman Papers (Miscellaneous Manuscripts Collection). Now joining these online is the Library’s most extensive collection of Whitman primary documents, the Walt Whitman Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection.

Charles E. Feinberg (1899-1988) was a prominent Whitman collector and Detroit businessman. Through a series of gifts and purchase arrangements, the Library acquired the Feinberg collection of Whitman materials between 1952 and 2010. Rare book editions and related materials from the Feinberg collection are held in the Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division, and many visual images from the Feinberg collection are housed in the Prints and Photographs Division. The Manuscript Division is home to the incomparable Feinberg-Whitman Papers manuscript collection, now newly available to the public, teachers, students, Whitman biographers, poetry lovers and scholarly researchers online.

The Feinberg-Whitman Papers can be accessed electronically through the Library’s Digital Collections portal, or more precisely through folder-level links embedded in the Feinberg-Whitman Papers finding aid created by the Manuscript Division.

Walt Whitman, edited page proof for advertising circular, “Leaves of Grass” and other publications, c. 1889. Manuscript Division.

The digitized Feinberg-Whitman papers include some 28,000 items in a great variety of primary-document formats, including handwritten notebooks and diaries; scrapbook-like commonplace books; trial lines and draft and edited versions of poems, essays, and speeches; articles and book reviews; annotated maps; original correspondence; and page proofs and other items that document Whitman’s creative process as a writer, poet, newspaperman and book marketer and designer.

The items span from 1763 (prior to the famous poet’s birth in 1819, to a farm family of primarily Dutch heritage on Long Island, N.Y.) to 1985 (through Whitman’s death at his home in Camden, N.J., in March 1892, and extending into Whitman scholarship and publications in the modern era).

Included in the collection are several small artifacts, including a walking stick given to Whitman by his close friend, the naturalist John Burroughs; a haversack that Whitman used when he visited ill and wounded Civil War soldiers in military hospitals in war-time Washington; and a plaster bust created by Sidney H. Morse, as well as a pair of Whitman’s eyeglasses, a pocket watch and a pen.

Walt Whitman’s haversack, c. 1860s. Manuscript Division.

Whitman is known today as one of the nation’s – indeed, the world’s – greatest poets, whose work “Leaves of Grass” (first published in 1855 and published in several revised and expanded editions through the last authorized “death-bed” edition in 1891-92) revolutionized American Literature and spoke for a new democratic age.

Printed program, Charles E. Feinberg address on “Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman,” a Lincoln Sesquicentennial event, July 12, 1959, Friends of the Library, University of Detroit. Manuscript Division.

Whitman made a living as a young man in New York as a school teacher, apprentice printer, freelance writer and newspaper editor and writer. He maintained close ties with friends and family and developed strong acquaintances with some of the leading reformers and literary figures of his day. When he lived in Washington, D.C., in the 1860s and 1870s, he continued to write but also made a living as a civil servant, working as a clerk in federal agencies. In the last period of his life, in Camden, N.J., he produced additional prose works and gave a series of public lectures about the death of Abraham Lincoln.

All these periods of Whitman’s life – as well as his legacy and impact on other writers and poets who lived in generations after him – are documented in the Feinberg-Whitman Papers collection.

World War I: Restoring Poland

(The following guest post is by Ryan Moore, a cartographic specialist in the Geography and Map Division.)

Prior to World War I, Poland was a memory, and its territory was divided among the empires of Germany, Russia and Austro-Hungary; these powers along with France and Great Britain were wrestling for dominance of the continent, as illustrated in this serio-comic map. The Germans dominated the resource rich lands of Silesia, which were found on the then German eastern border and included cities such as Posen. Germany also controlled the Baltic coastline and the important port city of Danzig. Russia exercised jurisdiction over Warsaw and the eastern regions of historic Poland. Austro-Hungary occupied Galicia. The area contained the culturally important city of Lviv (Lemberg) and mines and oil fields found along the Carpathian Mountains. A 1912 Rand McNally map illustrates Europe without Poland.

[image error]The start of World War I reignited Polish dreams of self-determination. Two years later, in 1916, the Polish cartographer, Eugeniusz Romer (1871-1954), illustrated the rise and fall of his country in this map, pictured left, titled “History.” The map was part of his atlas known as the “Geographical and Statistical Atlas of Poland” that later helped shape Poland’s independence in the Paris peace negotiations of 1919.

Romer produced his atlas in secret, as the authorities of Austro-Hungary, where he lived, reacted harshly to anything that might foment political unrest. Romer combed the archives of the Austrian government, researching census data and economic reports, which he used to craft 32 map plates replete with tables and textual accompaniment in Polish, French and German. His highly detailed depictions included geography, geology, climate, flora, history, political administration, population, ethnography, religious groups, education, land ownership, farming, natural resources and communication networks. The atlas was hailed as masterpiece.

The Germans and Austrians responded swiftly to stamp out this cartographic declaration of independence, and the publication was banned. Romer was forced into hiding to avoid arrest and prosecution. However, copies of the atlas were smuggled to the United Kingdom and the United States and reached policymakers. Upon the American entrance into the war in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson articulated the idea of a free Poland among the goals outlined in his Fourteen Points.

The defeat of Germany and Austro-Hungary, and the collapse of imperial Russia, ended the main barriers to Poland’s independence. Poland’s Prime Minister, the celebrated American concert pianist Ignacy Paderewski, along with Romer and other negotiating team members, believed their territory should stretch as far east as Lithuania and should subsume German-held territory in the west and along the Baltic Sea. To the exasperation of the Americans, British and French, the Poles made seemingly conflicting arguments for territory. In the cases of Silesia and the Baltic coast, they argued that the areas had a majority of Polish speakers and therefore should be Polish. Whereas, in the east, in the case of Galicia and modern-day Lithuania, the argued that historic Polish cultural institutions, such as universities and churches, proved that the land should belong to Poland despite Poles being the minority population.

President Wilson and his team were often sympathetic to the Poles; however, Wilson wanted a “scientific” solution and directed his team to draw borders based on the dominant language of the people in a given area, such as in this map found in the Woodrow Wilson papers. Great Britain, on the other hand, was deeply concerned about this approach. They feared Poland would appropriate too much of Germany’s important natural resources and industry in the east. Britain wanted Germany left in a position to pay restitution for the war and to avoid a communist uprising, like the one in Russia.[image error]

The solution was a compromise that was despised by the Poles and the Germans. The port of Danzig, with its majority German population, was placed under the administration of the League of Nations and placed into a binding customs union with Poland. The port was situated in a narrow strip of Polish territory known as the Polish Corrider. The land was dangerously sandwiched between Germany proper in the west and German East Prussia. Romer illustrated the problem in his map “Administration” (1921), pictured right. Angry about the diplomatic settlement in the west, Poland decided that force of arms was the means necessary to achieve its goals in the east. It mobilized an army and appropriated land that included the city of Vilnius and oil fields in eastern Galicia.

In 1919, the Second Polish Republic was born. The country, however, lacked the population and industrial might of its foreboding German and Russian neighbors. It was forced to count on Great Britain and France to provide military assistance. When the hour of need arrived, however, Poland was largely left to fight alone. In 1939, the Nazis overran Poland in weeks, showing the world a new form of warfare called blitzkrieg (“lighting war”). The Nazi’s occupation lasted until 1944, when the Soviet army drove them back into Germany. The Soviets stayed in Poland until 1989. Today, Poland is a free republic and member of the NATO alliance. Its current borders are illustrated in this Central Intelligence Agency map.

World War I Centennial, 2017-2018: With the most comprehensive collection of multi-format World War I holdings in the nation, the Library of Congress is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about The Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.  

Campaigning for President

(The following was written by Julie Miller, Barbara Bair and Michelle Krowl, historians in the Library’s Manuscript Division, for the January/February 2017 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

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Andrew Jackson ticket. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Presidential candidates have used popular culture to promote their campaigns for nearly 200 years.

Today’s political candidates can reach millions of people – on a 24/7 basis – in ways their predecessors could only dream of.

American presidential campaigns from 1789 through the 1820s were different from modern ones in almost every way. Presidential candidates thought it was undignified to campaign. Political parties were embryonic and in flux – nothing like the organizational powerhouses they are today. Before the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 there was no mass electorate. In most states, legislatures, not citizens, chose presidential electors. Enslaved people, free women, and free propertyless men – constituting most of the adult population at the time – were denied the vote.

Throughout this period, however, both an electorate and campaign machinery began to develop. As Americans moved west and into cities, states began to drop their property requirements for voting. Citizens gradually replaced state legislatures as voters in presidential elections. Political parties evolved from informal “factions” into effective organizations. By the early 1830s, cheap newspapers, known as the “penny press,” allied themselves with political parties, and a growing network of roads, canals and railroads began to carry political information nationwide.

By the Jacksonian era and the elections immediately following, presidential candidates still let their surrogates do most of their campaigning for them. As the franchise continued to expand to include more working-class and propertyless male voters, campaigns involved greater popular participation. The presidential election process was also increasingly competitive and campaign posters began to appear.

In the 1836 presidential election, the Whig Party chose former military commander William Henry Harrison of Ohio to challenge Democrat Martin Van Buren, the incumbent vice president. A past New York governor, senator and secretary of state, Van Buren was a consummate politician. It was during the 1836 campaign that the donkey –that faithful beast of burden who could also be an ornery, strong-willed opponent – emerged as the symbol of the Democratic Party. In his 1870s illustrations, political cartoonist Thomas Nast would associate the elephant with the Republican Party, which succeeded the Whig Party.

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William Henry Harrison and John Tyler emblem from the 1840 presidential campaign. Prints and Photographs Division.

The presidential campaign of 1840 is often called the first “modern” grassroots campaign. It was also one that further solidified the two-party system of the time – Whigs and Democrats. The campaign was a rematch between Harrison and Van Buren. This time Harrison prevailed. The son of an aristocratic Virginia family, Harrison was nonetheless depicted as a western folk hero. That image was in keeping with the party’s theme of “Log Cabin and Hard Cider Democracy” and Harrison’s frontier status as the first governor of Indiana territory.

Harrison gained fame at the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe, part of a military campaign to suppress a confederation of Indians loyal to the Shawnee leaders Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh. With southerner John Tyler of Virginia as Harrison’s vice presidential running mate, one of the most famous campaign slogans of all time emerged: “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too.” Campaign souvenirs of all types proliferated, as did commercial products such as Tippecanoe Tobacco and Tippecanoe Soap. Political hype was high and campaigns became popular entertainment. The campaign song emerged, pairing political lyrics with popular tunes.

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An Abraham Lincoln cigar box label. Manuscript Division.

By the election of 1860, parades, banners and music were part of the political landscape, as were newspapers that openly supported political parties. Advances in printing technology by the mid-19th century allowed Americans to express their political sympathies through their choice of cigars and stationery. Cigar box labels in 1860 included images of Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln and his democratic opponent, Stephen A. Douglas. For those who might have heard of “Honest Old Abe” and the “Little Giant” but had never seen their likenesses in print, the cigar box label introduced the candidates’ faces to the public.

Political buttons touting presidential candidates increased in popularity during the 19th century. Metal campaign buttons were available in 1860, but the election of 1896 saw the first use of the mass-produced, pin-backed, metal buttons. These became ubiquitous and collectible in 20th-century presidential campaigns and remain so today.

The electorate continued to expand. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted the right to vote to male citizens “regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 gave women nationwide the right to vote. The first election in which all American women could vote was a match between two Ohioans – Democratic Governor James M. Cox and Republican Sen. Warren G. Harding, who prevailed. Campaigns reached out to the ladies, reminding them to do their civic duty and vote.

The advent of film and radio in the early 20th century, followed by television in the early 1950s, provided even larger audiences for political campaigns. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign for president was the first to run a television advertisement. The black-and-white ad featured cartoon characters singing “I like Ike, You like Ike, Everybody likes Ike for President.”

A decade later, television ads would become more dramatic, with Lyndon Johnson’s “Daisy Girl” ad against Barry Goldwater. Created by media consultant Tony Schwartz, whose collection is housed at the Library, the ad featured a child counting daisy petals, followed by a countdown to a nuclear explosion. “ These are the stakes,” warned Johnson. The spot only ran once but remains one of the most memorable in the annals of campaign ads. Negative ads continue to be a mainstay of political campaigns today.

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Bumper sticker for the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign. Manuscript Division.

In the post-war era, Americans took to the new interstates in their cars and soon bumper stickers proliferated. Later in the 20th century, personalized or “vanity” license plates began promoting candidates.

As it had a century earlier, technological development at the turn of the 21st century – namely the internet – ushered in a new model of political campaigning. The web also allows the Library a new means of documenting modern campaigns. Since 2000, the Library has archived websites related to the U.S. presidential, congressional and gubernatorial elections.

Al Gore, the 2000 Democratic presidential candidate, was a big proponent of the “information superhighway,” but Barack Obama was the first presidential candidate to harness the power of social media. His use of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook began in early 2007. On the eve of the 2008 election, Obama had more than 1 million “friends” on Facebook – significantly more than his opponent, John McCain. By the 2012 presidential campaign, both Obama and his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, were actively campaigning on social media.

Use of Twitter by both candidates in the 2016 presidential election was unprecedented. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton tweeted into the wee hours of the morning, delivering their messages directly to the voters, and reaching them in record numbers. The 2017 inauguration promises to set new records for all of today’s social media platforms.

New Online: The George Washington Papers Move to a New Digital Platform

(The following post is written by Julie Miller, early American historian in the Manuscript Division.)

George Washington, painted by G. Stuart; engraved by H.S. Sadd, N.Y. 1844. Prints and Photographs Division.

George Washington was not only the first president of the United States, he was also the first digital president. In 1998 the Library of Congress’s monumental collection of George Washington papers was opened to the world online. The digital Washington papers were part of American Memory, the Library’s first project to digitize its holdings. Begun in 1990 at the dawn of the Internet age, by the year 2000, American Memory had made more than 5 million items available to the public online. Among them were the approximately 77,000 items that constitute the George Washington papers. Now this early foray into cyberspace is being retired and replaced by a new digital platform. The George Washington papers were recently relaunched there.

If you are one of the many scholars, teachers, students and members of the curious public who have relied on the George Washington papers on the American Memory site, don’t worry. All of Washington’s papers are still online. You will, however, see changes in the way the site works. Among the most significant of these changes are the methods you can use to search for items and display your results.

There are multiple ways to search. One is to enter text into the search box that appears at the top of the collection’s landing page. Documents can be found by entering their dates, titles, or, in the case of letters, the names of Washington’s correspondents. Since transcriptions accompany some of these documents (see the landing page for an explanation of what transcriptions are available on the site), it is possible to find some documents with a full-text search.

Another search method, replacing the browse function on American Memory, is to scroll down the landing page and click on the links to the collection’s series. Series are logical groupings that follow the original order of a collection of papers. The George Washington papers have series for diaries, correspondence, financial papers and more.

The collection’s finding aid, or guide, provides a third way to search. There is a link to the finding aid and to other useful tools in the Expert Resources box on the left side of the landing page and on each search results page. Click on the finding aid’s Contents List and you will see series-level links that will take you to images of the papers. Additional links are in the works.

Once you have your list of results, you can limit, order and display it in a variety of ways. The view function allows you to display results in a list, or in gallery, grid or slideshow views. Multipage letters can also be displayed in this range of views or as single images. All these images can be zoomed, and single images can be rotated. While the slideshow view simulates the experience of looking at a reel of microfilm, the single image view allows you to choose pages to view from a box labeled Image.

Search results can be downloaded as GIF’s and JPEGS. When transcriptions are available they can be presented side-by-side with the original text. When transcriptions are not available on the site, viewers have the option of using Founders Online, which includes a digital version of the modern published edition of Washington’s papers. A link to it is available in the Expert Resources Box. Because Founders Online is full-text searchable, it can help you to find dates, correspondents and other information that will allow you to do more accurate searches on the Library of Congress Washington papers site.

Even with these enhancements, the George Washington papers, which layer the 21st century on top of the writing conventions of the 18th, can be confusing to use. To help you we have updated and augmented the explanatory essays that appeared in the browse function of American Memory and renamed them Series Notes. These explain the twists and turns of the more complex series. The note for Series 5, which contains Washington’s financial papers, has been updated, and one for Series 2, Washington’s letterbooks, has been added. The Series Notes can be found under the heading Articles and Essays, where you will find more to help you navigate the collection.

The diaries of George Washington. Manuscript Division.

Maybe you have never looked at Washington’s papers online and are wondering what they have to offer you. The short answer is that they bring George Washington, who we tend to think of as stony and remote, to warm and complicated life. Also, and more unexpectedly, the papers contain documentation of the many lives that intersected with his: fellow military officers and government officials, family members, servants, slaves, neighbors, tradespeople, even the dentists who helped him with his famously failing teeth. By digitizing Washington’s papers, and with this recent digital update, the Library of Congress has made Washington’s papers accessible to everyone, everywhere, anytime.

Who might you meet when you go through this portal to the past? A teenaged George Washington writing in his diary about a surveying trip “over the Mountains” in 1747, or the young aide-de-camp to British general Edward Braddock during the French and Indian War carefully copying his correspondence into a letterbook. Washington later returned to this letterbook and corrected the writing of his younger self. After his marriage in January 1759 to the widowed Martha Custis, the new Mrs. Washington appears in her husband’s ledger books purchasing goods from London suppliers, among them a “coach & 6 in a box,” a toy for her children.

Washington’s commission as commander of the Continental Army, issued to him by the Continental Congress in June 1775 at the start of the Revolutionary War is in the collection. So is a June 17, 1778, report containing this modest admission by the Marquis de Lafayette in response to Washington’s request for military advice from a group of officers: “I am almost the yungest of the general officers who knows less the country I rather refer to theyr Sentiments” the 20-year-old wrote in his uncertain English.

The start of Washington’s presidency is documented by the inaugural speech he delivered at Federal Hall in New York on April 30, 1789. The papers from the era of his presidency also contain a small, paper-bound book that records the Washingtons’ daily expenses during 1793-1794 when the capital was in Philadelphia. This modest volume contains the raw material to construct multitudes of stories about life in 18th-century Philadelphia. The purchases it records include books Martha Washington bought for herself (here a “Ladies Geography” and Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1787 “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters”), a gift of “gold ear drops” the president bought for Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Eleanor Custis; shoes and stockings for Ona Judge and Molly, two of the slaves that served the Washingtons in Philadelphia; and wages for their servants.

The correspondence dating from Washington’s presidency shows him mediating between his feuding cabinet secretaries, Thomas Jefferson, secretary of state, and Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the treasury. On August 23, 1792, fed up, he wrote Jefferson chidingly: “How unfortunate, and how much is it to be regretted then, that whilst we are encompassed on all sides with avowed enemies & insidious friends, that internal dissentions should be harrowing & tearing our vitals.”

Washington found relief from stresses like these by staying in close touch with the manager of his farm at Mount Vernon, who sent him weekly reports. These not only kept him up to date, they also indulged his lifelong passion for agricultural innovation. This passion is equally apparent in Washington’s collection of books on agriculture. His papers document his purchases of these books and preserve the notes he took as he read such works as “The Practical Farmer,” by John Spurrier (1793) and “A Practical Treatise of Husbandry,” by Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1759).

The farm reports are also one of the windows that Washington’s papers open onto the lives of the people who worked for him in bondage – slaves. One of these (August 22, 1789) from the summer after he became president, shows men, women, and children hard at work hoeing, harrowing, plowing, weeding, threshing, hauling, stacking, and loading Washington’s wheat, oats, tobacco and vegetables. Slavery, the tragic, unresolvable paradox of American history, is present in Washington’s papers just as it was in his life.

Washington’s papers have long been an inspiration for the hundreds of thousands of people who have used them over the years. We hope that this updated website will make them even more accessible.

President for a Day

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David Rice Atchison. Photo by Mathew Brady, between 1844-1860. Prints and Photographs Division.

All eyes turn to Washington this week, as the nation’s 45th president is inaugurated on January 20. However, until the passage of the 20th Amendment in 1933, inauguration day was always March 4 in order to allow enough time after Election Day for officials to gather election returns and for newly elected candidates to travel to the capital. With modern advances in communication and transportation, the lengthy transition period proved unnecessary and legislators pressed for change.

In 1849, March 4 fell on a Sunday, and incoming president Zachary Taylor moved the ceremony to the following day. This was the second instance of the inauguration being rescheduled because of observing Sunday as the Sabbath – the first being in 1821 and the reelection of James Monroe.

Precedent had already been set in 1821 with Monroe officially taking up his duties one day after his term constitutionally began. Yet, 25 years later, Taylor’s start was a point of contention. Some historians have argued that Sen. David Rice Atchison, a Democrat from Missouri, was president during those intervening hours. He was  of the Senate, and according to the 1792 law in effect at the time, the Senate’s president pro tempore was directly behind the vice president in the line of succession.

Today, most historians and constitutional scholars dispute that claim. At the time, his first term as senator was finished, and he hadn’t yet been sworn in for his second term. So, he didn’t exercise any power.

Atchison spoke with the Plattsburgh Lever in 1792 that he “made no pretense to the office.”

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The inauguration of Gen. Zachary Taylor. 1849. Prints and Photographs Division.

John Wilson Townsend, writing for the Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society would have you believe otherwise. In an article from the May 1910 issue of the register, Townsend cited a story that appeared in the Philadelphia Press that had been “rather thoroughly circulated and has actually been accepted by several otherwise reliable biographical dictionaries.”

Stated the article, “That Senator Atchison considered himself President there was no doubt, for on Monday morning, when the Senate reassembled he sent to the White House for the seal of the great office and signed one or two official papers as President. These were some small acts in connection with the inauguration that had been neglected by President Polk.”

While Atchison may or may not have been “president for a day,” by right of succession, he was vice president from April 18, 1853, until December 4, 1854, when President Franklin Pierce’s vice president, William R. King, died.

The Library has numerous collections and presentations related to U.S. elections, presidents, politics and government, including this great resource guide on presidential elections from 1789-1920 that includes resources on the 1848 election.

Also, you can check out all the Library’s digital collections on government, law and politics, which include the papers of Zachary Taylor.

Sources: history.com 

Trending: The Inauguration Will Not (Just) Be Televised

(The following post is featured in the January/February 2017 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM, and was written by Audrey Fischer, LCM editor. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

The inauguration of the 45th president will be the social media event of the year.

Calvin Coolidge speaks at his inauguration on March 4, 1925, National Photo Company Collection, Prints and Photographs Division.

Today, social media provides an unlimited opportunity for individuals and media outlets to record and be a witness to such historical events as the presidential inauguration. These sounds and images are then instantaneously shared through computers and mobile devices with a global audience.

This is, of course, a relatively new development.

For the nation’s first 100 years, people got their news by word of mouth and from the printed page. Newspaper accounts of presidential inaugurations – with images largely engraved – informed the public. A number of prolific diarists provided first-person accounts for those unable, or uninvited, to attend the festivities in the nation’s capital. Those who received telegrams or glimpsed the first photographic image of the event – James Buchanan’s 1857 inaugural – must have felt that the modern age had truly arrived.

William McKinley’s March 4, 1897, inauguration was the first to be recorded by a movie camera. The 2-minute film footage shows the inaugural procession down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. Film footage from McKinley’s second inauguration in 1901 shows the president addressing crowds on Pennsylvania Avenue, riding in a processional to the Capitol and taking the oath of office. The short clips, produced by Thomas Edison, came to the Library through the copyright registration process and are part of the Library’s Paper Print Collection. Discovered in 1942, the paper copies were converted into projectable celluloid images.

McKinley was shot by an assailant while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, on Sept. 6, 1901, and died a week later from complications. The Library holds film footage of McKinley’s day at the exposition and scenes from his funeral in Canton, Ohio.

Herbert Hoover, Mrs. Hoover and William Howard Taft watch the inaugural parade on March 4, 1929, National Photo Company Collection, Prints
and Photographs Division.

Calvin Coolidge’s inauguration in 1925 was the first to be broadcast nationally on radio. The address delivered by the man known as “Silent Cal” could be heard by more than 25 million Americans, according to a New York Times report, making it an unprecedented national event.

Herbert Hoover’s inauguration in 1929 was the first to be recorded by a sound newsreel. It marked the second and last time that a former president, William Howard Taft, administered the presidential oath.

Harry S. Truman’s inauguration in January 1949 was the first to be televised, though few Americans owned their own set. In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s inauguration was broadcast on television with closed captioning for the hearing-impaired. During Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985, a television camera was placed inside his limousine – another first – to capture his trip from the Capitol to the White House.

Barack Obama takes the oath of of ce on Jan. 20, 2009. Susan Walsh, Associated Press Photo/Corbis.

Bill Clinton’s 1997 second inauguration was the first to be broadcast live on the Internet. President Clinton had signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 at the Library of Congress the previous year.

Barack Obama’s historic first inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009, garnered the highest Internet audience for a presidential swearing-in. It was the first inaugural webcast to include captioning for the hearing-impaired. According to the Wall Street Journal, President Obama’s second inauguration generated 1.1 million tweets – up from 82,000 at the 2009 event.

Pic of the Week: Congressional Kick-Off

The Library of Congress welcomed new members of Congress and their family, friends and supporters at events marking the start of the new term of the 115th Congress last week.

Vice President Joe Biden congratulates new Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester on Jan. 3. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Five new members of Congress – joined by about 800 guests – held receptions in the Jefferson or Madison buildings: Reps. Anthony Brown (D-Maryland), Tom O’Halleran (D-Arizona), Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware) and Lloyd Smucker (R-Pennsylvania). Vice President Joe Biden also made a special appearance to congratulate Blunt Rochester, the newest (and only) member of the House from Delaware – a state Biden represented in the Senate for 36 years. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden also stopped by some of the festivities to welcome the new members.

Carla Hayden greets Rep. Lloyd Smucker in the Members Room. Photo by Shawn Miller.

World War I: Understanding the War at Sea Through Maps

(The following guest post is by Ryan Moore, a cartographic specialist in the Geography and Map Division.)

Sperrgebiete um Europa und Afrika. 1925. Geography and Map Division.

Soldiers leaping from trenches and charging into an apocalyptic no man’s land dominate the imagination when it comes to World War I. However, an equally dangerous and strategically critical war at sea was waged between the Central Powers and the Allies, with Germany and Great Britain as the primary belligerents. The primary strategy was to disrupt the flow of supplies, thereby diminishing the other side’s ability to fight.

In 1914, the Allies commenced a blockade, which included the draconian measure of declaring food as contraband of war. Germany responded with one of its own, using its submarine fleet, known as U-boats, to sink merchant ships. The map “Sperrgebiete um Europa und Afrika” (“Restricted zones Europe and Africa”) depicts areas where Germany threatened to sink both Allied and neutral merchant ships.

Although Germany publicized its plan, the strategy ran contrary to the accepted rules of war. The practice prior to attacking a merchant ship was to fire a warning shot; inspect the ship for contraband of war, and if found, evacuate the crew and passengers, providing them with safe refuge; or finally sink or capture the ship. This method was impractical for small submarines, which could not accommodate additional persons aboard. But more so, it sacrificed the submarine’s surprise attack potential. After weighing their options, the Germans proceeded with a shoot without warning policy that became known as “unrestricted submarine warfare.”

American civilians were soon after caught in the crossfire. On May 7, 1915, the passenger ship RMS Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk off of Ireland by a U-boat, and of the 1,959 people on board 1,198 died, including 128 Americans. President Woodrow Wilson was outraged, because he believed that Americans had the right to “Freedom of the Seas” and should be able to travel safely on any civilian ship despite the war. He demanded that the Germans conform to the rules of war. American newspapers explained the issue with maps that illustrated areas where Germans submarines were active as well as minefields.

“British Islands: Approximate Positions of Minefields. 19th August 1918.” Hydrographic Department of the Admiralty, under superintendence of Rear-Admiral J.F. Parry, C.B. Hydrographer, August 6th, 1917. Geography and Map Division.

The Germans feared the political repercussions of their strategy and curtailed these attacks. Germany continued, however, to employ some 43,000 sea mines that claimed more than 500 merchant vessels by the end of war. The British Navy lost 44 warships and 225 auxiliaries to mines. The British, in response, constantly swept for mines that frequently threatened their naval facilities, commercial ports and ports in Ireland, which were often a stopover for ships sailing from North America. This blog post from World’s Revealed looks at these sea mines.

Britain hoped to use its superior surface fleet to destroy the German counterpart in Trafalgar-type engagement, an allusion to Admiral Horatio Nelson’s destruction of the French fleet in 1805. The opportunity came at the Battle of Jutland (May 31-June 1 1916), where the British lost 14 ships and more than 6,000 men, and the Germans lost 11 ships and more than 2,500 men. Though a German tactical victory and an utter shock to British pride, the Kaiser’s fleet never again seriously challenged British control of the North Sea and the blockade of Germany continued.

Desperation to break the deadlock in the land war and growing short of supplies, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917. Attacks were planned on all commercial vessels, which included attacks on American ships, as illustrated in the map “Amerikanisches Sperrgebeit.” In response, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Germany, and the two nations were at war within months.

The U-boat attacks were devastating. The map “Die Schiffsversenkungen unserer U-Boote” (“Ships sunk by our U-boats”) highlights the carnage. By the end of the war, Germany had sunk more than 5,000 merchant ships and more than 100 warships; tens of thousands of lives were lost. This was achieved at a high cost to the German navy, as 217 of its 351 submarines were sunk with a loss of more than 5,000 sailors. The German effort, nonetheless, could not overcome Allied sea power and their industrial capacity to replace lost ships and supplies.

More information on the Library’s World War I maps can be found in this guide.

World War I Centennial, 2017-2018: With the most comprehensive collection of multi-format World War I holdings in the nation, the Library of Congress is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about The Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.

Library in the News: December 2016 Edition

Happy New Year! Let’s look back on some of the Library’s headlines in December. Topping the news was the announcement of the new selections to the National Film Registry. Outlets really picked up on the heavy 80s influence of the list.

“It’s loaded with millennials,” said Christie D’Zurilla of The Los Angeles Times. “Ten of the 25 films selected by the Librarian of Congress this year were born after 1980.”

The Washington Post noted the teen angst theme of several movies on this year’s list, including “The Decline of Western Civilization,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Rushmore” and “Blackboard Jungle.” Reporter Michael O’Sullivan spoke with “Decline” director Penelope Spheeris, who said she doesn’t find it odd that thematically related films appear on the list.

“The youth-in-revolt genre has an enduring appeal, since adolescence and early adulthood are when we are forming our identities,” she said. “[The registry has] become a vital reference library for upcoming generations of young people.”

Slate Magazine said there is “a little something for everyone in the NFPB’s latest batch.”

The Library’s Veterans History Project also received media coverage in December, particularly with the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7. Several regional outlets shared stories of collecting efforts, including Honolulu Civil Beat, St. Louis Public Radio and the Brown County Democrat.

“How much cooler is that, that our kids can archive these living histories into the Library of Congress?” said Emily Lewellen, teacher at Brown County High School who works with the school’s History Club members.

Late November, the Library announced a collaboration with the Digital Public Library of America to share its rich digital resources with DPLA’s database of content records.

“This is an important partnership for both institutions, as it bolsters the DPLA’s role as a valuable nexus for cross-institutional data and ensures the accessibility of the LOC’s significant digital resources,” wrote Allison Meier for Hyperallergic.

“You don’t have to be an historian or cartographer to appreciate why this partnership is a big deal,” wrote William Fenton for PC Magazine. “The Library of Congress isn’t just the nation’s de facto library, but also the largest library in the world. It’s an institution that Americans can and should celebrate and, under the leadership of Librarian Carla Hayden, the LOC has crafted an ambitious strategic plan that will greatly expand its online presence. Digitization will benefit students, educators, researchers, and all inquisitive citizens, particularly those who do not live within commuting distance of Washington D.C.

LC in the News: December 2016 Edition

Happy New Year! Let’s look back on some of the Library’s headlines in December. Topping the news was the announcement of the new selections to the National Film Registry. Outlets really picked up on the heavy 80s influence of the list.

“It’s loaded with millennials,” said Christie D’Zurilla of The Los Angeles Times. “Ten of the 25 films selected by the Librarian of Congress this year were born after 1980.”

The Washington Post noted the teen angst theme of several movies on this year’s list, including “The Decline of Western Civilization,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Rushmore” and “Blackboard Jungle.” Reporter Michael O’Sullivan spoke with “Decline” director Penelope Spheeris, who said she doesn’t find it odd that thematically related films appear on the list.

“The youth-in-revolt genre has an enduring appeal, since adolescence and early adulthood are when we are forming our identities,” she said. “[The registry has] become a vital reference library for upcoming generations of young people.”

Slate Magazine said there is “a little something for everyone in the NFPB’s latest batch.”

The Library’s Veterans History Project also received media coverage in December, particularly with the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7. Several regional outlets shared stories of collecting efforts, including Honolulu Civil Beat, St. Louis Public Radio and the Brown County Democrat.

“How much cooler is that, that our kids can archive these living histories into the Library of Congress?” said Emily Lewellen, teacher at Brown County High School who works with the school’s History Club members.

Late November, the Library announced a collaboration with the Digital Public Library of America to share its rich digital resources with DPLA’s database of content records.

“This is an important partnership for both institutions, as it bolsters the DPLA’s role as a valuable nexus for cross-institutional data and ensures the accessibility of the LOC’s significant digital resources,” wrote Allison Meier for Hyperallergic.

“You don’t have to be an historian or cartographer to appreciate why this partnership is a big deal,” wrote William Fenton for PC Magazine. “The Library of Congress isn’t just the nation’s de facto library, but also the largest library in the world. It’s an institution that Americans can and should celebrate and, under the leadership of Librarian Carla Hayden, the LOC has crafted an ambitious strategic plan that will greatly expand its online presence. Digitization will benefit students, educators, researchers, and all inquisitive citizens, particularly those who do not live within commuting distance of Washington D.C.