The Charles Carleton Coffin Papers have been divided into two parts. The first consists of manuscripts of Coffin’s own works, chiefly speeches delivered before various patriotic gatherings in the 1870s and 1880s. The second consists of souvenirs of his reporting days during the Civil War, most particularly papers which he found in the streets of Richmond when it fell on April 3, 1865.

In the first part are thirty-seven patriotic addresses, delivered at different times over the thirty years after the Civil War. In some his skill as a reporter is apparent, when he describes famous battles, but most are optimistic, patriotic pro-Union effusions which express the nineteenth century religion of patriotism, which identified America with the Promised Land.

Some of these addresses may have been written as chapters for books. Certainly intended as part of a book is a notebook with rough retrospective notes on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. There is also an 1869 letter to Coffin with maps of the district of Bayfield, Wisconsin.

Second are the papers which he picked up on his Civil War travels. The Civil War material has been divided into seven parts: military papers, papers of Confederate government agencies, papers from state governments, letters to public men, literary contributions to Southern newspapers, papers on slave sales before the War, a cheerfully patriotic ballad and retrospective material.

The military papers are scrappy. Their first subdivision is papers of military appointments. It contains the appointments of three officers. The second is battle reports. The only engagement covered in depth is the defense of James Island in Charlestown Harbor, 16-20 June 1862. There is a report from Sibley’s Brigade at Amarillo, Texas in November, 1861; a report from Louisiana Batteries at Pensacola, Florida in November, 1861; a report of March 1862 of the Virginia Volunteers at the Battle of Kernstown; General Beauregard’s letter of resignation because of ill health, written at Tupelo, Mississippi in June 1862; sixteen items on the defense of James Island; a report on Morgan’s Brigade written at Cynthiana, Kentucky in July, 1862; and casualty reports from Marmaduke’s raid into Missouri from Arkansas in January, 1863. Following this are letters to Col. Frances Henney Smith, 1812-1890, superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute. These all date from the summer of 1861 and are from worried parents, including Leonidas Polk and proud cadets who suddenly found themselves drilling two hundred men. The next sub-series includes 53 letters sent between Confederate soldiers from Virginia and their families, arranged chronologically. Then there is a sharp exchange of letters between Generals Robert E. Lee and Henry W. Halleck on alleged Union atrocities. Last in this military section is a small packet of material on provisions for prisoners of war in Richmond in 1863.

Following the strictly military material are papers from the Confederate bureaucracy. From the office of the Secretary of War is part of the annual report of 1863; from the War Tax Bureau of the Treasury are observations and reports on loans and treasury notes; from the Treasury Department itself is a letter to the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. There is also a piece of Confederate money, issued by the Sutler’s Bank of Columbus, Kentucky. Finally, there is a letter from the head of the Post Office Department, John H. Reagan concerning a proposed statue of “Stonewall” Jackson.

There is some material from the separate Confederate state governments. Printed laws from Louisiana are not of as much interest as the resolutions passes at a meeting of the citizens of Amelia County, Virginia held on 23 February, 1865 at which they vowed to fight to the finish. There is a lithographed map of the city of Richmond showing the area burned by the Confederates on the day they evacuated.

A section of letters to public men contains letters to Jefferson Davis, his wife and Judah P. Benjamin. The letters to Davis are from Clement Claiborne Clay (1816-1882), Confederate diplomat; Thomas F. Drayton; S. Bassett French, aide to the governor of Virginia; Ambrosio Jose Gonzales, Cuban exile; Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (1809-1877), Confederate senator Christopher Gustavus Memminger (1803-1888), his Secretary of the Treasury; Virginia McLaurine Mosby, mother of John Singleton Mosby, the famous raider and Nathaniel Beverly Tucker (1820-1890), Confederate agent. Drayton and Gonzales asked for military positions commensurate with what they felt to be their abilities. Mrs. Mosby’s letter, written in January 1865, complains vigorously about shirkers in her section of Virginia. The other letters report on their official duties and offer tidbits of gossip. There are also ten official telegrams to Davis. The two letters to Mrs. Davis include one from her husband’s doctor advising her as to his care and one from a widow with four sons in the army, seeking employment for the fifth. There is one brief note by Judah P. Benjamin (1811-1884), Davis’s Secretary of War, and three directed to him, including a copy of one by Jacob Thompson (1810-1885), Confederate secret agent in Canada, detailing some of his problems as the Confederacy crumbled in January, 1865. This series also includes correspondence sent to Edward J. Harden, a Georgia Superior Court Judge, and 345 letters sent to Virginia governors John Letcher (1813-1884) and William Smith (1797-1887).

The fifth section consists of contributions to Confederate newspapers, most to the Richmond Examiner, but also to the Richmond Sentinel and the Savannah Morning News. They are a mixture of bad poetry and letters concerning problems in the army and civilian life. Of particular interest are a group written in 1865 to the Examiner from the unpaid and shoeless soldiers.

This is followed by material on the sale of slaves, including correspondence to Ziba Oakes, a Charleston slaver trader, and an auction announcement from 1860. There is also a stirring ballad (printed) on the Battle of Belmont, written by a solider of an Arkansas regiment which ends, "So Yankees, one and all, there’s one thing to remember: / We can always whip you, either in July or November."