Scope and Content Note
The papers of David Ames Wells (1828-1898) span the years 1795-1898, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1860-1886.
The correspondents represented in the collection include many of the leading politicians, economists, and journalists of the mid-nineteenth century. Some of the letters are social in nature, but many relate to such topics as economics, taxation, tariffs, and free trade.
Among the correspondents are Charles Francis Adams (1835-1915), Henry Adams, Edward Atkinson, Frederick A. P. Barnard, Thomas F. Bayard, Henry Ward Beecher, Henry W. Bellows, Samuel Bowles, William Cullen Bryant, Roscoe Conkling, Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882), William Maxwell Evarts, Cyrus W. Field, Stephen Johnson Field, Hamilton Fish, James A. Garfield, Henry George, Jay Gould, Horace Greeley, Edward Everett Hale, Joseph R. Hawley, John T. Hoffman, William Dean Howells, Francis Lieber, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hugh McCulloch, Louis Mallet, Manton Marble, Charles Nordhoff, William Orton, Robert Dale Owen, John Meredith Read, Whitelaw Reid, Mahlon Sands, Carl Schurz, Samuel J. Tilden, Henry Villard, Andrew Dickson White, Horace White, and John Russell Young.