Scope and Content Note
The papers of Justin Smith Morrill (1810-1898) cover the period 1825-1923, with the bulk from 1854 to 1898, while he was United States representative and senator from Vermont. A Republican, Morrill served in the House as chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, and as senator, he was prominent as chairman of the Committee on Public Buildings and Committee on Finance. The collection is organized in three series: General Correspondence and Related Papers , Speeches and Writings , and Miscellany .
Included with the large volume of correspondence in the collection are Senate and House reports and documents, speeches, remarks, and writings, invitations, financial and legal documents, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, scrapbooks, and record books containing demographic and other data relating to Vermont.
Much of the correspondence relates to Morrill's efforts as a congressional representative in behalf of the protective tariff act that bears his name and to his sponsorship of the Morrill Land Grant College Act. Other papers and documents reflect his positions on post-Civil War economic issues and Reconstruction.
Prominent correspondents include James Gillespie Blaine, Salmon P. Chase, L. E. Chittenden, Schuyler Colfax, Charles Dewey, Hamilton Fish (1808-1893), Horace Greeley, Jedediah. H. Harris, Charles Marsh, George Ward Nichols, Carroll Smalley Page, Henry Stephens Randall, A. N. Swain, Stephen Thomas, Adin B. Underwood, and Joseph Wharton.