Scope and Content Note
The papers of Montgomery Cunningham Meigs (1816-1892) span the years 1799-1971, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1849-1892. The collection consists of diaries, journals and notebooks, family papers, correspondence, drawings, maps and plans, photographs, scrapbooks, sketches and studies, and miscellaneous documents. The papers are organized in seven series: Diaries, Journals, and Notebooks; Family Papers; Correspondence, Military Orders, and Related Matter; Miscellany; Addition I; Addition II; and Oversize.
Meigs was a career army officer who graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1836. After a brief stint in an artillery unit, he was transferred to the Corps of Engineers, where he directed engineering projects for the United States Army between 1852 and 1882. Among the building programs Meigs supervised were the Washington, D.C., aqueduct and its masonry arch at Cabin John, the wings and dome of the national Capitol, an addition to the General Post Office building, a post-Civil War extension of the aqueduct, and from 1882 to 1892 after his retirement from the army, the Pension Office building. Lincoln put Meigs in charge of secret plans for the aid of Fort Pickens, Florida, immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War and in June 1861 appointed him quartermaster general of the army. Meigs supplied the Union forces throughout the war and supervised the construction of at least four major federal buildings. In 1875 he visited Europe to study the organization and command of continental armies.
The papers in this collection consist mostly of private entry books and personal correspondence. Although some material relates to the fighting during the Civil War, the bulk of the papers deals with the construction of federal buildings in Washington. Meigs's journals contain detailed notes in mid-nineteenth century shorthand on the planning for the aqueduct as well as the expansion of the Capitol and the erection of the Pension Office building. Interspersed throughout the journals and sketchbooks are clippings, photographs, and architectural drawings of major buildings under various stages of construction. The combination of written and illustrative material provides a rich source for the study of nineteenth-century Washington and its architecture.
The Family Papers contain correspondence and printed items from Meigs's immediate relatives and descendants. The major portion, however, comprises his letters to his father, Charles D. Meigs, his brother, Emlen, and his wife, Louisa Rodgers Meigs. The letters to his father, a Philadelphia surgeon and medical editor, are concentrated in the Civil War period; those to his wife and other family members are focused on Meigs's trip to Europe in 1875.
Correspondents in the Meigs Papers include Spencer Fullerton Baird, James Buchanan, Bernhard Ernst von Bülow, Adolf Cluss, Jefferson Davis, Charles P. Manning, Graf Helmuth von Moltke, David D. Porter, Frederick William Seward, William T. Sherman, and Joseph Gilbert Totten. The letterbook, much of which is illegible or undecipherable, contains copies of outgoing letters to family members as well as friends and associates and also includes numerous drawings. The volume for April 1861-February 1862 pertains exclusively to the Civil War, while later volumes focus principally on architectural projects.
Addition I
Addition I of the Meigs Papers parallels the earlier portion in scope, arrangement, and content. There are unbound diary entries, a commonplace book from Meigs's first years in the military, and an illustrated journal which he kept during a trip to Texas, 1869-1870. The Family Papers, the dominant feature of Addition I, include letters between his wife, Louisa Rodgers Meigs, and Rodgers family members and correspondence between Montgomery Meigs, his wife and family members, and other relatives. Especially notable in the Family Papers is a sequence of personal and official communications regarding the killing of Meigs's eldest son, John Rodgers Meigs, by Confederate guerrillas in 1864. Meigs believed that his son was the victim of a cold-blooded murder, possibly because of his status as the son of the Union quartermaster general. John Rodgers Meigs had been heralded for his bravery during early battles of the Civil War, and his hand-drawn map of the First Battle of Bull Run and other Civil War documents and correspondence amplify other material in the collection from that period. Also prominent in Addition I are letters, documents, sketches, drawings, and other designs relating to Montgomery Meigs's work on construction of the Capitol, the Washington Aqueduct, and other Army Corps of Engineers projects. Noteworthy as well are correspondence and career papers pertaining specifically to the younger Montgomery Meigs (1847-1931), who followed in his father's footsteps as a public works engineer.
Correspondents include family members Charles D. Meigs and Samuel Emlen Meigs (who often used his middle rather than first name or first initial) and prominent individuals such as Ambrose Everett Burnside, Simon Cameron, Jefferson Davis, John B. Floyd, Horace Greeley, Joseph Henry, Joseph Holt, George Brinton McClellan, William Henry Seward, and Edwin MacMasters Stanton.
Addition II
Addition II includes a Book of Common Prayer inscribed by Meigs and carried by him to Fort Pickens at the start of the Civil War; a handwritten letter of 1879 concerning personal matters; and photocopies of two typewritten letters, dated 1891, to his daughter, Louisa Meigs Forbes. Also in Addition II are photocopies and typed transcripts of a poem written by John Rodgers Meigs, presumably while a cadet at the United States Military Academy between 1859 and 1863, and six volumes of the translated text of Meigs's shorthand journals, 1853-1859, 1861, as well as an index to the journals.