Temporary record

As a boy growing up in Iowa during the Civil War, John Irwin Griffith appears to have imbibed his father's copperhead sentiments and his vehement opposition to Abraham Lincoln. He became a life-long Democrat and sometime politician. Griffith moved first to Belmont, Nev., in the 1870s, where he practiced as an attorney and judge, and secondly, in 1884, to Snohomish, Wash., where, in 1886, he was elected as chair of the state Democratic Convention and as a Democratic representative to the state Constitutional Convention in 1889.

Scope and contents:

Throughout his life, John Irwin Griffith had active interests in history and journalism. This collection contains two of his manuscript histories of the Civil War -- a 1,200 pp. manuscript of the war up to Gettysburg, and a 700 pp. politcally-focussed manuscript entitled "The Political Triangle." Both are illustrated with caricatures of personages, maps, and political cartoons drawn by Griffith in a crude, but effective style, and the text reflects his copperhead upbringing.

The remainder of the collection consists of an odd newspaper-like manuscript from 1872, "The Reservator," including political commentary on history and current events; an memoir of his Iowa boyhood during the war (also made up to look like a newspaper); another newspaper-like manuscript, entitled "Monthly Notings" written while in the Washington Territory, 1886; two notebooks, a scrapbook, and an album of cartes de visite and tintypes of family and friends.

M-2751

Iowa--History--Civil War, 1861-1865
Journalism
United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865
Washington (Territory)--Description and travel

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