John Boyd Thacher was a wealthy nineteenth-century American industrialist who had the money, time, and interest to indulge in both politics and the collecting of books, manuscripts, and autographs. His social and political positions helped place him in roles that reflected and encouraged his collecting interests. He lived in an era when extensive and quality collecting of early European and American rare books and manuscripts was popular and possible. He collected not only as an avocation but also, in part, in order to write histories of major world events such as the European discovery of the Americas and the French Revolution. His extensive collections included many rarities of research and were of great monetary value. After his death the fate of several of his collections, as determined by his wife, Emma Treadwell Thacher, continued Thacher's legacy in a manner that was consistent with Thacher's public-service career. To the...