Cambridge to the rescue only ten days before a draft, Civil War recruitment broadside, Boston: F.A. Searle, 1862. Catalog record
The American Antiquarian Society’s collection of American broadsides printed before 1877 is one of the most extensive in existence. It is made up of over thirty thousand items, ranging in date from 1667 to 1900.
In 1872, AAS librarian Samuel F. Haven presented a useful definition of these materials in a report to the Society. "Broadsides," he stated, "are the legitimate representatives of the most ephemeral literature, the least likely
to escape destruction, and yet they are the most vivid exhibitions of the manners, arts, and daily life of communities and nations. They imply a vast deal more than they literally express and disclose visions of interior conditions of society such as cannot be found in formal narratives."
The broadsides’ diverse subject matter ranges from official government proclamations and regulations, tax bills, and reports of town meetings to accounts of events in the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the Civil War. The collection contains numerous confessions of convicted criminals, reports of natural disasters, theater playbills, publishers' prospectuses, advertisements, newspaper carriers' addresses, patriotic and popular songs, and poems. AAS founder Isaiah Thomas preserved many of his own and other printers' most ephemeral pieces.
Access
The collection is fully cataloged online in the General Catalog. Researchers may find materials through a wide variety of access points, including "Genre/Form" searches for terms such as broadsides, poems, proclamations, prospectuses, playbills, and advertisements.
Many broadsides in the collection are also digitally available in Readex's America's Historical Imprints and American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I . These resources are available onsite at AAS and via subscription from Readex.