Creator: Caruthers, R. L. (Robert Looney), 1800-1882.
Collection number: 1416
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Abstract: Robert Looney Caruthers was a Lebanon, Tenn., lawyer, state legislator, Whig politician, founder and professor of law at Cumberland University, United States Representative, 1841-1843, state supreme court justice, and Confederate governor of Tennessee. The collection pertains to only a part of Caruthers’s political career and consists in bulk of letters received, 1840-1849, and lesser amounts, 1823-1839 and 1866-1870. There are no papers from 1854 to August 1865. The papers chiefly concern Caruthers’s law practice, state and national politics, Cumberland University of Lebanon, Tenn., before and after the Civil War and, after the war, plantation management. Correspondents include Andrew Jackson Donelson, Ephraim Hubbard Foster, Nathan Green, Alexander Peter Steward, and Felix K. Zollicoffer.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Papers discuss hiring free blacks (1865-1867). Microfilm available.