Scope and Content Note
The papers of Richard Lathers (1820-1903) span the years 1826-1901, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1848-1887. The collection consists of correspondence, speeches, writings, circulars, clippings, and other printed matter. Born in Georgetown South Carolina, Lathers became a merchant, banker, and president of the Great Western Insurance Company after moving to New York in 1848. He opposed secession, and contained in the papers is documentation of his efforts traveling through the South days before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 addressing Southern leaders, including Jefferson Davis, in order to dissuade them from seceding from the Union. Included also are writings by Lather on the outcome of the Geneva Arbitration Tribunal (1871-1872) that decided American claims against Great Britain for attacks on Union merchant ships by Confederate raiders during the conflict. Lather had been unsuccessful in securing for the Great Western Insurance Company a financial settlement based on the so-called Alabama claims cases.
Other material in the papers concerns tariff reforms, charters and prospectuses of the Great Western Insurance Company, the development of railroads, Reconstruction, and Lathers’s extrapolations of the history of South Carolina, particularly of Georgetown, and of New York state and city. Also reflected are Lathers's social, philanthropic, and religious activities, and his collection of letters of John C. Calhoun and John A. Dix (1798-1879). Among local events featured is the Charleston, South Carolina, earthquake of 1886 and the charitable response to it.