Some Civil War Library Items Will Go To Union League
By Deborah Fitts
December 2003

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. - The legal settlement over the fate of the Civil War Library & Museum will add thousands of books and documents to the collection owned by the Union League, making its planned Center for Civil War Studies "arguably the finest special-collection library and research center" of its kind in the North.

The Union League's Jim Straw said it would likely be a year and a half before the items come to the new center, which will be housed in the League's 1865 brick-and-brownstone building on Broad Street. A $3 million fundraising drive has been under way for more than a year to create the facility.

Straw is chair of the League's nonprofit Abraham Lincoln Foundation, which will oversee the center. He noted that the legal settlement over the Library "is sort of a second coming" of an initiative launched by the Union League in 1999.

That year the foundation approached the Library, which was known to be struggling with personnel and funding, and whose Pine Street home was felt to be in a backwater, to propose joint stewardship of the Library collection. The Union League was prepared to purchase a commercial building adjacent to its Broad Street home and create a new museum, combining the League's collection with the Library's.

Negotiations fell through, however, generating "a lot of hard feelings on both sides," Straw said. The League withdrew its offer, allowed the neighboring building go back on the market, and "decided to create our own archival center."

Under the settlement agreement now awaiting approval in Philadelphia court, the Union League will get 60 percent of the Library's paper collection, which is estimated at about 10,000 books and numerous maps and documents.

That will be added to the Union League's own collection, which numbers 2,500 books, including many regimentals, plus numerous manuscripts and letters. The collection is housed at present in cramped quarters, out of the way. Straw said the new center would comprise 15,000 square feet on the ground floor of the Broad Street building.

Meanwhile, an inventory of the Library's holdings "could take nearly a year," he said. "It's like Auntie's attic - it's just boxes and boxes, much of which has never been looked at."

The Library's relics and the rest of the papers will eventually go to the planned Philadelphia Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum, in accordance with the settlement.

The Union League was founded in 1862 as a patriotic organization. Hundreds of such clubs sprang up nationwide during the war, but today only three remain, in Philadelphia, New York and Chicago. According to Straw, the Library and the League share a common ancestry, because Union League members who were also members of MOLLUS created the Library in 1886.

Straw said he was "thrilled" with the outcome.

"It's wonderful for the League," which will gain a research facility of national importance. As for the Library, "This has given life to what was a moribund organization. It's also precipitated a lot of interest here in mid-19th century history. It's good for the community, for the Civil War, and the Philadelphia region."

Jim Mundy, director and curator of the Union League's library and historical collections, said the League's archival collection and that of the Library were highly complementary, and the combined collection will benefit from the strengths of each. "To me it's like putting a hand in a glove. It makes so much sense."

Until now, Mundy noted, Philadelphia has focused on the Revolutionary era. But with the new Civil War museum, and the League's new archival center, "This will put the Civil War on the map."