Scope and Content Note
The correspondence of the Miles-Cameron families spans the years 1661-1956, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period from 1862 to 1944. The collection consists of letters written primarily to Elizabeth Cameron, J. D. Cameron, Nelson Appleton Miles, and Sherman Miles. Other recipients include members of the extended Miles-Cameron family, such as Simon Cameron and Sherman Miles's wife Yulee. It is not clear if the correspondents in the earliest dated documents have any relationship to the Miles or Cameron families, or if the material was collected merely for historical interest. Some letters are written in either French or Spanish.
The Miles and Camerons were united by marriage, and members of the two families knew many prominent individuals in political, diplomatic and military circles during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The nieces of General William T. Sherman and Ohio Senator John Sherman both married prominent men. In 1878 Elizabeth Sherman married Senator J. D. (James Donald) Cameron of Pennsylvania, son of Senator Simon Cameron. Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Cameron became a fixture in the social world of Gilded Age Washington, playing hostess to both American politicians and foreign diplomats. She was also an intimate friend of Secretary of State John Hay and particularly historian Henry Adams, her neighbors on Lafayette Square. Elizabeth Cameron's place on both the national and international stage is reflected in the variety of her correspondents and the foreign legations in which many of them served. Some Cameron family correspondence, however, was received by Mrs. Cameron's husband, J. D. Cameron, and her father-in-law Simon Cameron.
In 1868 Mary Hoyt Sherman married General Nelson Appleton Miles, whose military career began during the Civil War, continued through the Indian Wars of the 1870s-1880s, and eventually led to his appointment as commanding general of the army in 1895. Due to Nelson Appleby Miles's key commands during the Indian Wars, the collection includes many letters that comment on conditions in the West and military campaigns waged by the military against Native American tribes. Researchers should pay special attention to documents written in the 1870s and 1880s. The content of General Miles's correspondence also reflects his desire for military promotions and his efforts to further his ambitions.
The most extensive correspondence within the Miles-Cameron papers belong to John Sherman and his brother William T. Sherman, both of whom wrote to their nieces and their respective husbands. Some of the correspondence includes family matters, but professional subjects also appear, especially in the correspondence from General Sherman to General Miles. J. D. Cameron and John Sherman served together in the United States Senate from 1877 to 1897, and William T. Sherman served as commanding general of the army (1869-1883) while Nelson A. Miles participated in the Indian Wars and advanced in his military career. The collection also offers a substantial number of letters written by author Edith Wharton.
Material written after 1925 is addressed primarily to General Sherman Miles, the son of Nelson and Mary Hoyt Miles, or to Sherman Miles's first wife Yulee. Sherman Miles followed his father into the army, and during his own career became acquainted with well-known military officers, such as Omar Nelson Bradley, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and George S. Patton (1885-1945).
With the exception of correspondence from John Sherman, William T. Sherman, and Edith Wharton, most of the correspondents in the collection are represented by either a single letter or at most a handful of items. The content of these documents is often devoted to mundane topics, such as brief congratulatory letters for promotions received, or the correspondent's ability to attend a social function. In these cases, the historical value of the document is the significance of the sender rather than the intellectual content of the letter.
The collection is organized into two sets. Set I represents the more substantive correspondence of the two groups of documents. The Simon Cameron file in this set includes official documents relating to his appointment as the American minister to Russia in 1862, following his service as President Abraham Lincoln's first secretary of war. Buffalo Bill wrote on stationery from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Company, and commented on the Native Americans in his troupe. The John J. Crittenden file contains July 1861 resolutions written in Crittenden's own hand. A January 1865 invitation from John Hay inquired if Elizabeth Sherman would accompany Miss Harlan, Robert Todd Lincoln, and himself to the opera, and an 1887 letter from Hay to Nelson Miles requested a Civil War-era photograph, which now resides in the Hay album in the James Wadsworth Family Papers. Correspondence from Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) touches on the “embalmed beef” scandal during the Spanish-American War. This set also includes the letters written by John Sherman, William T. Sherman, and Edith Wharton.
Set II contains more documents devoted to everyday subjects of less historical interest, especially those briefly noting attendance at social functions.