The Gouverneur Morris Collection

RICHARD B. .MORRIS
 

Y' If ^HF, acquisition by

I      the tiouverneur A

J*.      most impressive ad
 

I by the Columbia University Libraries of
Morris papers* constitutes one of the
iprcssivc additions in recent years to the archives
of Special Collections. Of the nearly fourteen hundred items in¬
cluded in this collection a substantial part has never been pub¬
lished. Others have never been published accurately. For example,
original holograph letters of George Washington among the
Morris papers often vary in details from the published letters in
the Fitzpatrick edition, which in many cases were based upon
copies made by an amanuensis. These papers supplement in im¬
portant respects the published material on Gouverneiu- Morris,
notably Jared Sparks's Life, a three-volume collection published
back in 1832. That edition represented only a sampling, and the
editor took liberties with the manusctipts, changing phraseology,
making deletions, and combining letters,—practices which would
not be condoned by scholars at the present time. The corres¬
pondence to and from Morris supplements his illuminating diary
owned by the Library of Congress and published in editions by
Ann Cary Morris in 1888 and in a more accurate but less compre¬
hensive form by Beatrix Cary Davenport in 1939.

* This collection, acquired by means of the Bancroft Fndowment Fund, con¬
sists of 1,368 pieces, of which the majority are incoming correspondence, includ¬
ing such impressive lots as thirteen letters from George A^'ashington, fifteen from
Thomas Jefferson, five ftom Nathaniel Greene, twenty-one from Rufus King,
five from Philip Schuyler, and two from John Paul Jones. Also present are many
manuscripts of Gouverneur Morris's speeches and articles, including two of
peculiar interest to Columbia—his bachelor's essay at King's College, "Oration on
Wit and Beauty" (1768) and his master's essay, "Oration On I.ove" (1771).

A detailed list of the collection has been prepared and is available in the Special
Collections Reading Room in Butler Library. The collection itself, however, is
not as vet open to general use; individual papers may be consulted in line with
definite research projects, but direct quotation is not permitted without written
petmission from the Director of Fibraries, granted specificalK' in each instance.
-Editor.

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