Scope and Content Note
The papers of Edward Lee Plumb (1827-1912) span the years 1825-1903, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1857-1875. The collection consists of correspondence, dispatches, journals, reports, board minutes and financial records, printed matter, and other papers and documents in English and Spanish. The collection is organized by type of material, with the bound correspondence that comprises the largest part of the papers arranged chronologically.
The papers reflect mainly on Plumb’s official negotiations with the Mexican government on behalf of the United States and American investors in the Mexican railway system. Included are copies of official reports and dispatches to William Henry Seward, secretary of state, on diplomatic and political affairs in Mexico, and letters to William Hunter, Charles Dana, R. S. Chilton, Robert S. Chew, Thomas C. Cox, and Edgar Conkling. Other material consists of an official publication by the Mexican government on forced loans in Mexico, 1838-1839; letters from Havana to Hamilton Fish on Cuban affairs; an account of a voyage from New York to Rio de Janeiro and then San Francisco by way of Cape Horn, in 1849; and miscellaneous printed matter relating to steam communications, railroads, and cotton manufacturing in the American West and Mexico. Papers from the Mexican War period include copies of letters of Henry Clay.
Letters of Robert Grant and Sir C. Lennox Wyke in 1861 concern the rupture of relations between England, France, and Mexico, while later correspondence, 1876-1877, to Hamilton Fish, reflects on conditions and events in Mexico and the policy to be adopted by the United States toward Porfirio Díaz (1830-1915) and other insurrectionists in Mexico. Other topics after 1860 include the affairs of the Mexican International Railroad and a proposed Tehuantepec canal and railway. A series of letters by Plumb to Charles Sumner from New Orleans in 1867 describes his impressions of attitudes in the South during the period.
Other correspondents in the collection include Nathaniel Prentiss Banks, Lewis, D. Campbell, Caleb Cushing, William Pitt Fessenden, Baron von Geralt, David Hoadley, Benito Juárez, Matías Romero, J. Edgar Thomson, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, and Manuel Murillo Toro. Among the printed items are copies of Diario Oficial, 1868, and El Sinapismo, 1877.