Sometime after 1839, Samuel D. Langtree, a Washington, D.C., publisher, gathered an eclectic group of almost 900 speeches, annual reports, state and federal documents, sermons, travel accounts, single issues of periodicals, and essays on every subject imaginable and cased them in a serviceable half calf binding. Some volumes contain only four or five pamphlets, while others include as many as twenty-three or four. The earliest of the collected items date from the late eighteenth century and continue through the early nineteenth with the latest publication date being 1838.

This collection contains useful source material on such diverse subjects as internal improvements, cholera epidemics, schools, slavery and the American Colonization Society, agriculture, notorious trials, the tariff, Native Americans, foreign affairs, and the labor movement.

Little is known about the compiler of the American Pamphlets, Samuel Langtree, except that he was in partnership in Washington with one O'Sullivan and that their firm flourished from 1837 to the late 1840's. For a time they were appointed official printers for the United States government. Langtree and his partner published at least two newspapers, including the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. Some of the pamphlets Langtree collected and bound up were presented to him by the author or publisher. The collection appears as part of the holdings of the South Carolina College Library in the 1849 catalogue.