The John Butler Papers, 1825-1885, 1921, and undated, consist of correspondence, journals and diaries relating to Butler's activities as a delegate from the Ohio Yearly Meeting of Orthodox Friends. Includes material on exemption of Quakers from military service during the Civil War and their opposition to the war; on Butler's meeting with President Abraham Lincoln; and on Butler's trips to Iowa with his daughter Drusilla, to the Indiana Yearly Meeting, to freedmen's camps in the South, to Kansas Indian agents and tribes, and other travels on behalf of Indians.
This collection will be useful to researchers studying the history of the Quakers and Society of Friends in the Salem, Ohio, the Western Reserve, and the Midwest during the nineteenth century. Those studying the life and activities of John Butler, including his travels in the Midwest, his meeting with President Abraham Lincoln as a delegate from the Ohio Yearly Meeting of Orthodox Friends regarding the question of drafting Quakers for military service will find this collection useful. Those interested in the Society of Friends' opposition to the Civil War and to military conscription of Quakers will find Butler's letters to President Lincoln and United States Congressman James A. Garfield, and his 1862 journal useful. Butler traveled through freedmen's camps in the American South in 1864 and kept a diary of his experiences there. He also kept an account of a trip to Kansas to visit Indian agents and tribes in 1869.
The collection has been retained in original order and is arranged in general chronological order.
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[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 559 John Butler Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.