Creator: Berrien, John MacPherson, 1781-1856.
Collection number: 63
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Abstract: Lawyer, U.S. senator from Georgia, and U.S. attorney general. Includes legal papers relative to the Florida-Georgia boundary controversy, 1851-1856; financial papers of a rice plantation and farm near Savannah and Clarksville, Ga., respectively; and correspondence (1830-1852) with men prominent in the Jackson administration and in Georgia politics. Also includes papers (1778-1786) relating to the military service during the Revolution of Berrien’s father, John Berrien; Civil War letters from Robert Falligant in Virginia and Phil Falligant in Georgia; letter books; a receipt book; and a ledger. Correspondents include John Quincy Adams, George Edmund Badger, Thomas Hart Benton, Francis Preston Blair, Henry Clay, Howell Cobb, George W. Crawford, Hamilton Fish, Richard W. Habersham, James Hamilton, Jr., S. D. Ingram, Andrew Jackson, Alexander H. Stephens, George M. Troup, John Tyler, Daniel Webster, Thurlow Weed, and Richard Henry Wilde.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Correspondence includes a discussion of the rights of “free persons of color” under the Constitution (1820). Microfilm available. There are several documents relating to slavery: the last will and testament of Hannah Gibbons of Chatham County, GA, 28 April 1798, bequeaths enslaved woman named Phoebe and her daughter Charlotte to her children, while offering choice of manumission to two other slaves, a “Negro” man named summer and ” a wench” named Charlotte; In April 1805, a bill of sale from Walter Rose to John Berrien for ” a negro wench named Prudence” for $270.00; an April 1825 judment for a sheriff to retain fees for maintaining “negros” to be sold at estate sale.