Daily Archives: July 22, 2009

A new addition to the Manuscripts collection of WKU’s Special Collections Library is an 1844 letter from John C. Easton, a Taylorsville, Spencer County, Kentucky lawyer, to his brother James. He discusses the forthcoming presidential election, including the possibility that the “Locos” (short for Locofocos, a radical wing of the Democratic Party) might nominate former vice president and Kentucky native Richard Mentor Johnson. Opponents had criticized Johnson for his relationship with a mulatto slave with whom he had two children, and Easton refers to Johnson’s “colored” wife in his letter. A finding aid and transcription of the letter can be accessed here.