Brief guide to manuscripts collections
Subject index to the James H. Campbell Papers
Brief guide to manuscripts collections
| William L. Clements Library The University of Michigan James H. Campbell Papers |
Campbell, James Hepburn, 1820-1895 Rank: Maj.; Lt. Col. Regiment: Capitol Guard (1861)
25th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment (1861) 39th Pennsylvania Militia Regiment (1863)Service: 1861 May 18-August 6; 1863 July 4-August 2
James Hepburn Campbell, born in Williamsport, Pa., was a successful lawyer, politician, and diplomat who had a long and distinguished record of public service. His marriage in 1842 to Juliet H. Lewis, daughter of Chief Justice Ellis Lewis, of Pennsylvania, helped situate Campbell squarely in an influential position both in law and politics. In 1855, he took a seat in Congress as a Whig, serving for one term, and was returned as a Republican in both 1859 and 1861. By the 1860s, Campbell had established a reputation as an able leader through his work on the Pacific Railroad Bill.
With the political crisis of the spring of 1861, Campbell chose to leave home to join in the defense of Washington, D. C. Traveling by train through mobs rioting in Baltimore, he arrived in the capital on April 19th and immediately enlisted as a Private in Major Cassius M. Clay's short-lived Capital Guard. The following month he was elected major of the 25th Pennsylvania Infantry, a three months regiment. He returned to active duty during Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863, recruiting a regiment of 1,100 men -- the 39th Pennsylvania Infantry Militia -- which served for one month. In the following year, Lincoln appointed Campbell as United States minister to Sweden and Norway, where he served for three years.
After 1867 Campbell returned to a private legal practice in Philadelphia, where he remained until retirement on his estate near Wayne, Pa. He died in Wayne on April 12, 1895, and is buried in Philadelphia.
The bulk of the James Hepburn Campbell Papers were written between April and August of 1861, when Campbell, then a member of the House of Representatives, rushed to Washington to help defend the capital. Traveling by train, he arrived in the city on April 19, having passed through Baltimore at the height of the riots. Once in Washington, he entered into almost daily correspondence with his wife until his departure for Pennsylvania on August 3. This tightly-knit set of letters covers the initial panic in the District of Columbia when war broke out, the opening of Congress in July amid the crisis, early attempts of Clement Vallandigham to disrupt the Union, the death of the celebrated Colonel Ellsworth, and the fiasco at First Bull Run.
A series of ten letters written in 1862 and 1863 relate separate interviews with President Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, and give an account of a regiment hastily formed in the abortive attempt to cut off Lee's escape from Pennsylvania following Gettysburg. Eight letters and documents are extant from Campbell's years as Minister to Sweden and Norway, including diplomatic correspondence re Lee's surrender and Lincoln's assassination.
Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 3, 455.
Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1927, p. 782.
Gift of James S. Schoff, 1975
Brief guide to manuscripts collections
Subject index to the James H. Campbell Papers
Brief guide to manuscripts collections
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