Hundreds of Historic Manuscripts. Thousands More Being Digitized.

1933 was a dark year for Germany and the world at large. In January of that year, Adolf Hitler became the chancellor. By April 1st, the government officially boycotted Jewish businesses and shortly thereafter, passed the Civil Service Law, which removed Jewish public service professionals, including judges, lawyers, professors, and teachers, from their jobs. It was around this juncture that Albert Einstein resigned his academic position in Berlin, renounced his German citizenship, and emigrated to the United States. Fascism was moving at breakneck speed.

President Herbert Hoover, addressing a Lincoln biographer, suggests that Lincoln's greatness was not in winning a war, but in his conduct and attitude in victory.

In this autographed sentiment signed, Herbert Hoover describes himself as "once of Washington D.C., now, fortunately elsewhere."

Former President Herbert Hoover expresses his preference for typewritten letters for the sake of efficiency, but since "the typewriter is a poor method of conveying emotion," he handwrites this letter in order to "convey more than usual wishes of a happy and prosperous New Year."

Herbert Hoover knew the value of his handwritten letters, as he himself was a collector of autographs. Amongst his collection was Mark Twain, Queen Victoria, and, most valuable, according to Hoover, a letter of Bayard Taylor – the poet, travel writer, and great chronicler of Palestine and the Levant.

Writing to a minister's wife who was horrified by the 1929 anti-Jewish Hebron massacre in Palestine, President Herbert Hoover responds coolly to her "interesting observations."

Former President Herbert Hoover congratulates F.A. Seiberling - the founder of Goodyear Tire - on his ninetieth birthday, and hopes that he, too, will be as fortunate to make it to ninety.

One of six or seven autographed handwritten letters by Herbert Hoover as President. Here, he is conscious of the rarity of his letters, and playfully writes this one, his quota for the year, he jokes.

Herbert Hoover explains that important men neither have the time to write letters by longhand, nor do they like the "trafficking" of their letters.