{"value"=>"<p>This subseries incorporates alphabetical correspondence files maintained in Schlesinger's apartment and in separate home and City University of New York offices, and are arranged by correspondent. Individual names predominate, but there are some organizational correspondents as well. As a result of the combination of files, there is some degree of alphabetical overlap across folders. In the case of folders representing spans of letters, the folders have been alphabetized by the first letter or cluster of letters (e.g., Bor-Bri precedes Boy-Bra). Researchers seeking a particular correspondent may need to check more than one folder. Although most of the correspondence is arranged by name within the general alphabetical files, Schlesinger would occasionally maintain separate files for particular correspondents. However, a separate file for an individual does not preclude the presence of letters from that person in the broader alphabetical files. With few exceptions, the original order within each folder has been retained. The majority of the alphabetical correspondence dates from the 1960s onward, but there is a significant amount from the 1940s and 1950s as well.</p> <p>While many correspondents are represented by only a letter or two, there are some whose exchanges with Schlesinger continued over decades. Noted economist John Kenneth Galbraith, for example, was one of Schlesinger's closest friends, dating back to their meeting at Harvard in the 1930s, and they kept in close touch through the years, even after they were no longer neighbors in Massachusetts. Another Harvard friendship bloomed with Felix Frankfurter, and Schlesinger's correspondence with him continued through Frankfurter's time on the Supreme Court.</p> <p>Other long-term friends corresponding with Schlesinger included columnist Joseph Alsop, civil libertarian and lawyer Joseph Rauh, and Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel. As with many of Schlesinger's friends in the intellectual and political realms, they were all closely allied with liberal politics at the time. As a founding member of the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), Schlesinger developed many lasting friendships with liberal, though staunchly anti-Communist, politicians and intellectuals like himself. Reinhold Niebuhr, the influential theologian who combined a liberal political viewpoint with deeply held religious convictions, was another founding member of the ADA, and Schlesinger corresponded with him often, considering Niebuhr one of the great minds of the century.</p> <p>Although Schlesinger's ties to liberal politics and the Democratic Party kept him in regular contact with people who shared his opinions, he had friends and acquaintances who had vastly different world views. Conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. was a longtime friend whose correspondence with Schlesinger refers not just to their occasional public appearances together in debates or on television, but also to their social relationship.</p> <p>In some cases, an individual's correspondence with Schlesinger shows a change in their relationship over time. Hubert Humphrey, the liberal senator noted for his legislative success, was a close associate of Schlesinger's, pursuing many of the same political goals in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1960s, however, when the two drifted apart as a result of Humphrey's positions while serving as Vice President and Schlesinger's support of other candidates against him, their correspondence vividly illustrates the split. In contrast, Schlesinger's relationship with author Rebecca West began with a heated exchange of insulting letters about a published comment of his, and then matured into a close friendship between the two writers and their families.</p> <p>Other frequent and significant correspondents in this subseries include Max Ascoli, Isaiah Berlin, McGeorge Bundy, Bernard DeVoto, Averell Harriman, Mary McCarthy, George McGovern, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Richard Rovere, Gilbert Seldes, Theodore Sorensen, Marietta Tree, Sacha Volman, James Wechsler, Morton White, and Charles Wintour.</p>"}