Important archive of primary material relating to Isaac Ingalls Stevens, a leading figure in the history of Washington Territory and the Pacific Northwest and a hero in the American Civil War, and his son Hazard Stevens, who was also significant in military and political affairs and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The archive includes signed presidential military commissions, manuscript letters, official appointments and commendations, authentic Native American artifacts collected by the Stevenses, personal copies of books with notes and annotations, and many other items. A complete inventory is available on request, but among the more significant items: Isaac Ingalls Stevens' commissions as Second and First Lieutenant, each signed by President Martin Van Buren. * I.I. Stevens' appointments as Brevet Captain and Brevet Major, each signed by President James K. Polk and Secretary of War William L. Marcy. * I.I. Stevens' commission as Brigadier General in the U.S. Volunteers, signed by President Abraham Lincoln. * Three letters written by I.I. Stevens from Mexico during the Mexican War, describing battles and army life at the front. * Letters from I.I. Stevens describing life in Washington Territory during the 1850's. * I.I. Stevens' personal copies of Volume XII, Parts 1 & 2, of the Pacific Railroad Reports, which he authored, describing the exploration under his direction of the northern route for a proposed transcontinental railroad, with numerous lithographic illustrations. These copies, in the original bindings with his name in gilt on the spines, have extensive manuscript notes and annotations by Hazard Stevens, and were used by him when writing his biography of his father. * Hazard Stevens' appointments as Captain and Major, serving as Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers, each signed by President Abraham Lincoln. * Hazard Stevens' appointments as Brevet Lt. Colonel, Brevet Colonel, and Brevet Brigadier General, each signed by President Andrew Johnson. * Hazard Stevens' appointment as Collector of Internal Revenue for District of Washington Territory signed by President Andrew Johnson. * Hand-written manuscript account of the Battle of Chantilly, Virginia and the death of his father, Governor Isaac Stevens while leading his forces in battle. * Native American made burden-carrying bag with tump-line. * And many more, approx. 110 items in all. The documents and letters are archivally encased, the collection set into archival boxes.

Highly significant collection of original documents, manuscripts, letters and accompanying material tracing the professional, military and personal life of two of the major figures in the exploration, settlement and political development of the Pacific Northwest. Isaac Ingalls Stevens, 1818-1862, a New Englander whose ancestors settled in Massachusetts around 1640, graduated first in his class at West Point in 1839, and served with distinction on General Winfield Scott's staff in the Mexican War. Following the war, still in the army, he was appointed executive assistant in the United States Coast Survey in Washington, D.C. During his four years with the Survey, he developed and demonstrated exceptional administrative and political skills, and in the words of historian Hubert Howe Bancroft, the experience "gave him the further training which was to make his name prominent in connection with the survey for the Northern Pacific Railroad - the historic road of the continent." Ingalls' support for Franklin Pierce in the presidential elections of 1852 secured for him the office of the first governor of Washington Territory, and he resigned from the army in March of 1853 to accept the post. Soon after, following the passage of the law providing for the four-pronged survey of the American West for the purpose of establishing a route for a proposed railroad across the western half of the United States to the Pacific Ocean, he sought the post of and was appointed director of exploration for the northern route. The lands surveyed under his direction, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Washington, the lands first crossed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark a half a century earlier, received their most thorough examination to date. The topography, geography, flora, fauna, and mineral resources were painstakingly catalogued. Artists on the expedition made hundreds of pictures, in most cases the first renderings of the areas traversed, to be published in color lithography in the two massive volumes that resulted from the investigations. The native inhabitants of the region were also reported upon. The survey under Stevens' command was a prime instrument in opening the lands of the Northwest to settlement by White Americans, which for the next twenty years and beyond was to cause violent conflict between the Indians and the Whites. Isaac Ingalls Stevens' tenure as Governor of Washington Territory was of perhaps even greater historical import than his direction of the railroad survey. As the first governor, he was instrumental in organizing the territorial government and laying the groundwork for settlement and economic development. His proposals for the rapid completion of roads from Puget Sound to Walla Walla, the Columbia, and up the coast to Bellingham enhanced the internal integration of the state. His revoking of the trading rights of the Hudson's Bay Company lessened external influences among the Indians. His changes in the laws regarding land ownership, allowing land to be acquired easily and inexpensively by residents of the territory spurred the development of agriculture. His insistence that single women be placed on the same footing as married women established a tenor of civil rights and liberties for Washington that is maintained to this day. But the most consequential of his actions as governor was the negotiation of numerous treaties with the Indians, opening up some 100,000 square miles to settlement. The restiveness this caused among the various tribes led to a series of widespread and desolating wars. There was disagreement between Stevens and General John Wool, commander of the army on the Pacific, over the conduct of the fighting, and Stevens went so far as to declare martial law, and was himself arrested for contempt of court. Despite these troubles, and criticism from both within and without Washington Territory, Stevens was elected as the lone territorial delegate to Congress for the term beginning March 4, 1857. He urged the ratification of the various Indian treaties he had made, and won out despite the opposition of Wool's friends and backers. He served as the delegate from Washington for four years, and at the outbreak of the Civil War volunteered for military service. Isaac Stevens's short but meritorious service in the War between the Sates was to win him further renown, and a hero's death. Granted the colonelcy of the 79th Regiment of New York Volunteers, known as "The Highlanders," he was soon promoted to brigadier, and then major, general. With his son Hazard at his side, he commanded his troops at the Battle of Chantilly. Dismounting, he led the charge at Ox Hill, under murderous rebel fire. Five times the regimental color-bearers fell, the flag to be raised once more by eager replacements. The sixth time Stevens himself grasped the pendant, and mindless of his own fate he spurred his men onward. The enemy collapsed in disorder, but at the moment of victory Stevens was stuck in the temple by a bullet, and fell to the ground, dead. It was September 1, 1862. Hazard Stevens's life and career, though often in the shadow of his famous father, carries on where Isaac's left off, and gained an importance of its own. Remembered today primarily as the biographer of his father, he was a military hero in the Civil War, a winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, and rose to become a general before he was 25 years old. Born in 1842, he was involved in his father's career from an early age. In 1855, at 13 years of age, he accompanied his father on a journey from Walla Walla to the Blackfoot Council in Montana. (A 13-page typed, signed account of that trip is present in the archive.) During the Civil War he served under his father in the 79th New York Volunteers, before the latter fell at the Battle of Chantilly. Hazard continued in the service following his father's death, three times breveted for meritorious conduct, winding up a Brevet Brigadier General by war's end. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for distinguished gallantry at Fort Huger, Virginia, on April 19, 1863. Following the war, Stevens returned to the West Coast, and was appointed Collector of Internal Revenue for Washington Territory in 1868, still a very young man. Around 1875 he moved to Massachusetts, acquired a law degree, and participated in state politics in the succeeding years. His attachment to the Pacific Northwest remained, however, and he made occasional contributions to historical societies relating the experiences of his youth. His greatest literary achievement, the two-volume biography of his father published in 1901, reveals an intimate study of events in Washington Territory during the 1850's. Hazard Stevens' continued relationship with the Pacific Northwest, even if primarily intellectual, is further evidenced by the small but captivating collection of Native American artifacts which were saved during his early years in Washington. The Indian culture of the Puget Sound regions comes alive through the hand-made knives, beaded pouches, fishhooks, and a marvelous woven burden-bag with its original tump-line. The thirty-odd books, booklets and pamphlets in the collection, many about Washington and the Northwest, also present a significant slice of history, accented by their marvelous provenance. Already mentioned are Isaac Stevens' personal copies of Volume XII, Parts 1 & 2, of the Pacific Railroad Reports, with Hazard Stevens's manuscript notes. There is also Frank Gilbert's Historic Sketches of Walla Walla, Whitman, Columbia, and Garfield Counties, Washington Territory, Portland, 1882, with Hazard Stevens' notes and corrections; Clarence Bagley's In the Beginning: A Sketch of Some Early Events in Western Washington While It Was Still a Part of "Old Oregon", Seattle, 1905; Myron Eells' A Reply To Professor Bourne's "The Whitman Legend", Walla Walla, 1902; and many others.