Ainsworth Rand Spofford (September 12, 1825 – August 11, 1908) was the sixth librarian of Congress. He oversaw the expansion of the Library of Congress (LOC) into a national library and placed it in charge of the national copyright system, allowing it to receive a copy of all works copyrighted in the US. He also oversaw the lengthy construction and move to the Thomas Jefferson Building, allowing the LOC to leave its severely overcrowded space in the United States Capitol.
Born to a Presbyterian minister in New Hampshire, he spent much of his childhood on the island of Martha's Vineyard, where he apprenticed for a local bookbinder. He was tutored at home due to poor health. He left the island in 1845, settling in Cincinnati, Ohio, and finding work as a bookstore clerk. He was inspired by the works of transcendentalists and became connected to local radicals and abolitionists, founding the Literary Club of Cincinnati in 1849. He became a business partner of the store, and was able to attract Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker as lecturers there. After beginning work as a journalist, he served as a war correspondent in Washington, D.C after the outbreak of the American Civil War.
While in Washington, Spofford became acquainted with the librarian of Congress, physician John Gould Stephenson, who was a brother to a fellow Literary Club member. He appointed Spofford as his assistant librarian, who served as the library's de facto director for most of the war. Stephenson resigned in 1864 and Abraham Lincoln appointed Spofford as librarian of Congress in December. He began a rapid expansion plan, tripling the library's shelf space and acquiring major collections. Copyright management, which he pushed for the LOC to take over, occupied much of his tenure.
The growing collection acquired through copyright laws led to the library exhausting its shelf space, and Spofford pushed for a new building. Although an architectural plan was selected in 1873, debate on its location and features continued through the 1880s. Construction of the new building began in earnest in the 1890s. Congressional hearings on the reorganization of the LOC were held in conjunction with the move to the new building. The American Library Association saw Spofford as unsuitable for managing the growing national library. He became the chief assistant to his successor, John Russell Young, in 1897. He continued serving under Young's successor Herbert Putnam until his death in 1908.
Early life and career Ainsworth Rand Spofford was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, on September 12, 1825. He was the sixth child of Reverend Luke Ainsworth Spofford, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife Greta Rand Spofford. Ainsworth's father transferred between various other congregations during his youth. He spent much of his childhood at his father's parish in Chilmark, Massachusetts, on the island of Martha's Vineyard. While on Martha's Vineyard, he briefly worked as an apprentice for a local bookbinder. While his father barred him from secular books, he read them in secret; he later recounted that the first money he ever earned was spent on purchasing a copy of Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers and a volume of Shakespeare's works. He briefly attended Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts, in training as a Presbyterian minister. His father and older brother Henry were both graduates of Amherst College, but Ainsworth himself was unable to attend due to "weak eyes and lungs", and was instead tutored at home by his brothers.
Cincinnati In 1843, an outbreak of tuberculosis hit the Spofford family, killing two. They left the island in 1845, moving to Newburgh, New York. Henry and Ainsworth moved out at this time, with the latter settling in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was employed as a bookstore clerk for publisher Elizabeth D. Truman. Spofford read frequently while working in Cincinnati, and was introduced to the works of New England transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Truman's store became a gathering place for young radicals in Cincinnati; Spofford became a staunch abolitionist and Free Soiler, and alienated his father through his transcendentalist and unitarian spiritual views. In October 1849, Spofford and a group of friends founded the Literary Club of Cincinnati, with Spofford as its first president. He became close acquaintances with club members Reuben H. Stephenson and Rutherford B. Hayes. Other prominent members during Spofford's time as president included activist Henry B. Blackwell, politician and jurist Salmon P. Chase, philosopher Moncure Conway, attorney Stanley Matthews, poet Thomas Buchanan Read, academic John Stallo, and jurist Alphonso Taft. Spofford stayed a member of the club for twelve years, later calling it the "most valuable part of my education".
In 1851, Spofford became a business partner of the bookstore, which was renamed Truman & Spofford. The firm published 15 books and pamphlets between 1851 and 1859. Twice a year, Spofford made trips to Boston to purchase books and meet with other publishers; he took this opportunity to attend lectures by Emerson and Theodore Parker. In April 1850, Spofford convinced Emerson through a petition to come to Cincinnati as part of a literary tour. Over the following years, he arranged tours for a number of other noteworthy lecturers, including Parker and Bronson Alcott. Spofford married Sarah Partridge, a schoolteacher from Franklin, Massachusetts, on September 15, 1852.
Truman & Spofford made its first publication, an anonymous pamphlet titled The Higher Law Tried by Reason and Authority: An Argument Pro and Con in 1851. This consisted of a speech made by Spofford to the Literary Club and a rebuttal from several months later. In his section of the book, Spofford argues that the human conscience has a duty to go against unjust written laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act. Shortly afterward, an edition featuring only Spofford's essay was published in New York City. Emerson enjoyed Spofford's work, writing that he could not write his own views on the subject without making the "most unblushing plagiarisms" of the essay.
Journalism Spofford continued writing while working at the bookstore, publishing an essay on the works of Victor Hugo in an 1855 issue of the literary magazine North American Review and a series of anonymous articles on Ohio politics for the New York Evening Post in 1858. The Panic of 1857 greatly disrupted his business; Truman & Spofford became a wholesale supplier of textbooks and stationery, but closed in early 1859. In January 1859, Spofford was hired as an associate editor and chief editorial writer for the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, a local Republican paper which had previously republished his articles for the Evening Post. Through the Literary Club, Spofford was friends with Murat Halstead, the paper's editor-in-chief. At this time, the paper had the highest circulation of any in the Ohio Valley.
Spofford frequently wrote on literary topics for the Daily Commercial. His first editorial after joining the paper criticized the city librarian for poor book-purchasing habits. Other editorials in his first month at the paper touched on political parties, abolitionism, lecturing, copyright systems, and literary style. He also frequently wrote on libraries, discussing laws for school libraries and best practices for selecting books for inclusion. In one February 1860 column, he discussed the British library movement alongside the text of the Public Libraries Act 1855, advocating for similar legislation in Ohio. He criticized writers such as Walt Whitman, whom he wrote had an "utter contempt for expression" and "gross and obtrusive animalism which disgusts all intellectual men". Spofford also wrote partisan editorials, condemning figures such as the secessionist Texan senator Louis Wigfall.
Spofford traveled to Washington, D.C., in 1861 to report on the presidential inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. In the first week after his arrival on January 16, Spofford wrote six dispatches and five long-form letters to the Daily Commercial, all under his pseudonym of "Sigma". He was strongly partisan in his coverage, praising Lincoln and the abolitionist movement while attacking the Democrats. On his return to Cincinnati after the inauguration, the Battle of Fort Sumter and the outbreak of the Civil War prompted the Literary Club to form an infantry company and Spofford to return to Washington as a war correspondent after about three months. His columns expressed increasing frustration with the Union Army's inaction during the first months of the war. He was caught up in the First Battle of Bull Run while reporting and had to run to safety.
Assistant librarian
While working as a war correspondent in 1861, Spofford had begun to make frequent trips to the Library of Congress (LOC) at the United States Capitol. After the Battle of Bull Run, he initially planned to stay in Cincinnati, but reconsidered after he was offered the position of assistant librarian by John Gould Stephenson, the newly-appointed librarian of Congress and the brother of Literary Club member Reuben Stephenson. Stephenson was an Indiana physician with little interest in library duties; Spofford described him in 1862 as a "thorough good fellow" with "no special knowledge of books". Lincoln had made him the librarian of Congress in a politically-motivated appointment at the encouragement of Senator Henry S. Lane.
Spofford had written about the library for the Daily Commercial, upset at what he saw as a very neglected institution. He was unsure whether to take the offered post; in an August 1861 letter to his wife, he listed nine reasons that he should decline the offer, and seventeen that he should accept. After a visit to Cincinnati, Spofford accepted Stephenson's offer and began looking for a home to rent in Washington. He published his last daily dispatch for the Daily Commercial on September 22, and around this time took up his duties as Stephenson's assistant librarian. Stephenson took a two-month leave from his duties as librarian the following day. He delegated most library work to Spofford, and instead served in various medical roles in the Union Army, and later as an aide-de-camp to a Union commander.
Service
Spofford served as the library's de facto director for most of the war. On December 16, 1861, an unsigned report to the Congressional Joint Committee on the Library was filed. Library historian John Y. Cole suggested that it may have been written by Spofford. This report was highly critical of the current condition of the library: it described "remarkable deficiencies in the collection", a lack of up-to-date encyclopedias and newspapers, large quantities of dust, and many books needing repairs or binding. The author also suggested that the interior of the library be redesigned, advocating that its dusty carpet be replaced with marble flooring. The new flooring was installed in 1863, and the library's ventilation system was expanded.
As assistant librarian, Spofford went on book-buying trips to various bookstores and publishers in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, purchasing new books at a rate significantly cheaper than the previous average. He also worked privately as a book-purchasing agent for several Ohio congressmen he was friends with: Rutherford B. Hayes, Salmon P. Chase, James A. Garfield, and John Sherman. He compiled a new catalog for the library in 1864, arranging it alphabetically by author as opposed to the subject-based classification used by previous catalogs. From 1861 to 1864, the library collections grew from 63,000 to 82,000 volumes. Due to his large-scale purchases of new books, finding space for the collection began to pose a problem. He was upset at the presence of what he deemed "rubbish" among the collection, and sought permission to auction off unneeded books to finance new purchases.