Scope and Content Note for Additions to the Collection
Additions to the papers of James Monroe (1758-1831) are organized as Series 4, Addenda. They include correspondence, photocopies and typescripts of correspondence, property and financial records, and miscellaneous documents dated from 1778 to 1831 and arranged in subseries by the year the addition was processed.
The 1979-1985 addition is arranged in four parts. Part A includes original letters from Monroe to William Benton, James Bowdoin, Henry Dearborn, Lord Thomas Erskine, Richard H. Henderson, David Humphreys, Thomas Law, John Francis Mercer, Edmund Randolph, Spencer Roane, and others. A letter from William Wirt is the only letter written to Monroe in this portion. Part B contains photocopies of correspondence, a diary, and miscellaneous documents. The bulk of the photocopied correspondence consists of negative copies of manuscripts owned by the United States Military Academy at West Point. Part D, Miscellany, includes index cards that, in conjunction with a State Department pamphlet, form a calendar to the Monroe papers in the collection of Mary Digges Lee Gouverneur.
The 1996 addition includes a letter to Andrew Jackson and property and financial notes arranged by type of material.
The 2014 addition consists of a pardon for Nancy Swann, an African American woman, who had been convicted of petty larceny and fined and imprisoned in the District of Columbia. She had been in the Washington jail over twelve months because she was unable to pay the fine. The pardon is signed by President James Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Two microfilms of original manuscripts owned by Laurence Gouverneur Hoes have also been placed in the 2014 addition.