[2-13-1861] Vance, Zebulon. To the citizens of the eighth Congressional district of North Carolina. Explaining that the Cotton States have “gladly seized upon the election of Lincoln as the occasion, rather than the cause for breaking up the Union”; they have labored “for disunion for thrity years, inflamed with magnificent and visionary conceptions of a great Southern Republic… to conquer and annex all the countries seated in the basin of the Gulf of Mexico” and Cuba as well. 7 pp. (Pm, # 54)

Original letters, broadsides, pamphlets, printed materials and books documenting the political and cultural relationships between the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, Cuba, Spain, and Portugal, beginning with the heyday of nation formation from 1776 to 1815 and ending with the building of the Panama Canal in the early twentieth century. Many of the documents are original government publications such as constitutions, decrees, or presidential and congressional messages, and broadsides and pamphlets serving as public statements regarding the political and social events of the time. Other items of note include George F. Dunham's "A Journey to Brazil on the Good Ship Montpelier," an 1853 first hand description of slavery and plantation life in Brazil, and the first Mexico City printing (1821) of Augustin de Iturbide's Plan de Iguala.