{"value"=>"<p>The Correspondence series contains letters dating from 1839-1876, with a single letter from 1910. Correspondence is almost exclusively professional in nature, though a few letters refer to Pierrepont's financial affairs, including railroad investments and properties owned. Pierrepont's real estate holdings are more thoroughly documented in Series IV. Real Estate Files. Not all letters are to or from Pierrepont; many are to his colleagues, or to parties concerned with cases in which Pierrepont participated either as a lawyer or judge. Correspondence relevant to specific cases may also be found in Series II. Legal Files.</p> <p>Most letters to Pierrepont dating from the 1850s are from James and P. B. Wilcox, his Ohio law partners. Letters dating from the 1860s often relate to Pierrepont's work on President Lincoln's commission for cases involving state prisoners in the custody of military authorities during the Civil War. Notable are letters between Secretary of State William H. Seward and others discussing possible espionage perpetrated by Bank of the Republic president James T. Soutter, and two 1864 letters from Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to Major General Edward R. S. Canby regarding the conveyance of cotton grown \"within the rebel lines\" to the United States. The difficulties of Reconstruction are described in a partial telegram from Secretary of War John Aaron Rawlins (1869), and in a letter from Mississippi attorney George T. Swann (1875). The Rawlins telegram discusses the apprehension in New York City of John H. Pratt, a Major in the Confederate States Army charged with murder and treason (\"the Stockade Case\") in Jefferson, Texas. Swann's letter to Hon. J. P. Bradley states that \"nothing short of an immediate display of a strong U. S. Military force, under a cool man … can give us quiet, or any possibility of a free ballot in our fall election.\"</p> <p>Pierrepont's efforts as Attorney General to thwart the Whiskey Ring in 1875 are not substantively represented here; however, there are several letters dating from 1868-1870 documenting an earlier whiskey fraud, wherein whiskey and tobacco were seized by the Internal Revenue Service from various New York distillers for tax delinquency. Additional material pertaining to these seizures can be found in Series II. Legal Files. Two letters from 1870 address a possible silk smuggling ring operated out of the New York Customs House by a member of the Guatemalan Consulate.</p> <p>Notable correspondents present in this series include fellow lawyers, jurists, and statesmen such as Charles O'Conor, F. A. Conkling, Henry G. Sebbins, E. Delafield Smith, Noah Haynes Swayne, and others. One letter from 1910 is addressed to Pierrepont's granddaughter, Margaretta Beckwith. Correspondence is arranged chronologically.</p>"}