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[Kei>rimed from The Amekhian Historilal Review, Vol. XI., No. 4, July, 1906. J 
 
 E n5 
 
 GAPS IN THE PL:UL1SHED RECORDS OF UNITED 
 STATES HISTORY! 
 
 In the spring of 1902 the Queen of the Netherlands issued a man- 
 date to some ten of the foremost historical scholars of her kingdom, 
 constituting them a Commission of Advice for National Historical 
 Publications. Meeting from time to time, and proceeding with 
 proper Dutch deliberation, the commission elaborated a valuable and 
 suggestive report, which was presented nearly two years later.- In 
 this they take up in a methodical manner the general aspects and the 
 various subdivisions of the national history, and discuss carefully 
 under each head the state of the original materials requisite for thor- 
 ough knowledge and the question what portions of that materia! have 
 been made accessible in print and what portions still remain that 
 ought to be published. The whole proceeding was eminently Dutch, 
 characteristic of a cautious and prudent nation, that can atTord the 
 time to do things on a right plan. Great as is the mass of published 
 material for the history of the Netherlands, the government itself had 
 in the last seventy years done much less of this work than several 
 of the other European governments. There was a general feeling 
 that more should be done. Fuit those who had the matter most at 
 heart had no mind that the government should proceed haphazard, 
 printing this or that body of documentary material because it had 
 been often talked of, or because some enthusiast, having for the first 
 time made its acquaintance, had conceived an exaggerated notion of 
 its importance and had persuaded some facile official to let him print 
 it at government expense after some mode of editing dictated by his 
 own fancy. ( )n the contrary, the most expert intelligence available 
 by the nation was first to consider with deliberate care the question 
 what most needed to be done, and was then to devise a general and 
 relatively permanent plan for doing it. The immediate result was a 
 hi.rjhly interesting survey, exhibiting clearly the relative documenta- 
 tion of the different parts or phases of Dutch history. The future 
 result will be a well-ordered system of volumes and series, bv which 
 gaps will be filled and existing collections supplemented, so that in the 
 
 ' A paper read before the Columbian Historical Society of Washington. D. C. 
 
 - Commissie van Adz-ies voor 's Rijks Gcschicdkundige Publicati'en, Oversicht 
 '■an de door Bninnenpublicalie aan tc 'ullcn Lccmtcn dcr Nederlandsche Geschied- 
 kcnnis (Hague, Nijhoff, 1904. pp. ix, 108). 
 
 (817) 
 
 
<S 1 8 J. P. Jameson 
 
 end the original sources for the national history may be evenly 
 presented. 
 
 In reading- such a survey, it was impossible not to be struck with 
 the thought, how largely the method followed was applicable to the 
 United States. For our briefer history, though the national govern- 
 ment has done relatively little, much documentary material has 
 already been published. I kit much yet remains to be done, and we 
 are proceeding to do it without system or order. Executive depart- 
 ments of the federal government, or clerks of Congressional com- 
 mittees, conceive and execute documentary compilations ; but all is 
 casual and miscellaneous. More than half the state governments are 
 publishing or have published historical materials ; and no two have 
 followed the same plan. Historical societies are prone to publish 
 what seems at the mciment most interesting or most available, pro- 
 vided of course it is of date anterior to 1783, at which date for most 
 of them American history comes to an end ; certainly they seldom pay 
 an}- regard to what other historical societies are doing. Many 
 zealous individuals have added and are adding to the mass of valuable 
 documentary print ; but still in a casual manner. The result is chaos. 
 Some parts of our history are relatively oversupplied with original 
 nialerial, while others are in this regard neglected, and therefore 
 remain unwritten, or are left a prey to those writers who do not need 
 documentary material in order to compose historical volumes. 
 Figuratively speaking, we have bought enormous quantities of sup- 
 plies for our excavations, we have engaged our workers, we have 
 dug deeply here and there ; but we have " made the dirt My " licfore 
 we have niapped our isthmus. Or. to varv the metaplKir but still 
 keep near to the earth, one great region of our national domain, the 
 historical region, is still, so far as i)rin-iary labors are concerned, 
 largely an unsurveycd tract, subject to squatter settlenient and 
 squatter .sovereignty. Would it not be more rational to take a lesson 
 from the methodical procedure of the Dutch? 
 
 It would be both futile and presum]_ituous for an individual stu- 
 dent to attemjit, in any length of time, to make for his countrv so 
 well-rounded a survey as that which has resulted from the joint 
 labors of the Dutch commission. \'et it has seemed possible that, 
 without attempting a detailed survey of the field, one might bv a 
 hasty sketch contriljute to the evening's entertainnient of a historical 
 society, and perhaps suggest some thoughts that others might at a 
 later time elaborate and even execute. It should be fully understood 
 that in this sketch there is no thought of general histories or of mono- 
 graphs, of the (|uestion whetlur on this or that subject a historical 
 
Gaps in Ihtblishcd Records of L 'uitcd States History S19 
 
 work has nr lias nut been written. 'I"1k' sole thouglit is of that |)rior 
 and more funthinicntal question, what niati-rials exist and are avail- 
 able for the treatment of the suliject. assumiiin- that some one shcuild 
 wish to write upon it, or that, if already dealt with, it has not been 
 treated in the lig-ht of all the evidence procurable. Suppose that 
 notliing- had \et been written on American history; in what state are 
 the materials for attackin.c; it? In order to have any practical 
 ntilit\. such an in(|uiry, it should also be observed, presupiioses that 
 we confine ourselves to materials which, however difficult of access 
 or of use, still do exist. An absolutely even documentation of 
 American historv is not to be lioped for. W'e will limit ourselves to 
 the consideration of the problem, how to do the best possible with 
 that which the ravage's of time, of war, of paper-makers, and of 
 housewives liave spared to us. 
 
 Xor can there be any thon,<;ht of ilealinp; with all the periods and 
 subdivisions of American history. Onh' an illustrati\'e selection can 
 lie attemiited. If that selection is made mainh- in the field of con- 
 stitutional and political history, let no one make it a matter of re- 
 proach. Tt may well be that the historical writers of the next genera- 
 tion will la\' all their emphasis on social and economic histor\'. In 
 France and Germany the tendency is already strong in this direction, 
 and among us one sees the pendulum lieginning to swing that wav. 
 Each age has its own fashion in the writing of history. " Historical 
 writing", said ]Mark Pattison, "is one of the most ephemeral forms 
 of literary composition." But even after the tide has set in the 
 direction of economic and social history strongly, even violentlv. as is 
 the manner of American currents, even in that socialistic millenniinn 
 toward which we are no doubt advancing, it is to be ho])ed that 
 students, however fascinated with the narrative and the theorv of 
 social movement, however penetrated with the conviction that eco- 
 nomic forces have controlled all human destinies, will \et reiuemlier 
 that for the last four hundred years the actual form in which human 
 life has mainly run its course has been that of the nation. Perhaps 
 we are approaching a period in which the leading organization of 
 mankind shall lie the industrial, when the uni<jn of unions or the war 
 of trusts shall be more important than the union of states or the 
 conllict of nations. lUit the whole course of American histor\ thus 
 far has lain in the era of nations, during which the most potent and 
 visible unity of human affairs was the political. It seems then need- 
 less to apologize if, in a discussion of the materials for American 
 history, printed and unprirted, one speaks pri^i arily of those which 
 
820 J. F. Ja))icsoii 
 
 relate to the constitutional and political history of the L'nited States 
 and of the colonies out of which they grew. 
 
 Beginning with the colonial period, it is first of all to be observed, 
 how far from adequate is our supply of published materials for the 
 history of British control and administration. First in logical order 
 stand the King and the Privy Council, and first perhaps among the 
 desiderata is a properly edited series into which shall be drawn off 
 from the manuscript records in Loudon all those acts of the I'riv\- 
 Council, or orders of the King in Council, and accompanying papers, 
 which relate in any way to the British colonies in America. The 
 Acts of the Prizy Council have been for some time in process of 
 publication liy the British government. But now that the series is 
 a])proaching the accession of James T. and the period when it wotild 
 be useful to students of American history, we are told that it will 
 not be extended beyond the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. All 
 the more reason why the American entries in the subsequent period 
 should be drawn off and published, that we may have a complete 
 and C(insecuti\e record of the doings of what was once the highest 
 administrative and in most matters the highest judicial body of our 
 government. Such a scries is not limited, by the phrase used above, 
 to the thirteen colonies of the mainland, and it should not be so lim- 
 ited. There is no more fruitful source of error, or at least of incom- 
 plete understanding, in respect to the British colonial administration 
 in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, than the habit of con- 
 fining attention to those thirteen colonies which finally established 
 their independence. The only rational mode is to consider that 
 administration as a whole, as a system embracing sometimes colonies 
 to the northward and always a gro\ip of insular colonies to the south- 
 ward, some of them usually more regarded, as elements in the svs- 
 tem, than most of the colonies on the mainland. Accordingly our 
 proposed series of A'cts and Papers of the King in Council relating 
 to America should not fail to include those entries in the registers 
 of the Privy Council which refer to the West-Indian and other col- 
 onics of Great Britain as well as those which have to do with the 
 affairs of the "' ( )ld Thirteen ". Nor should the series stop with 
 1776, nor even with 1783, when the thirteen colonies were acknowl- 
 edged to be outside of llritish colonial jurisdiction. On the con- 
 trary, it should be continued to 181 5, for in those thirty years (;f 
 warfare with France many Orders in Council besides those most 
 famous orders of November, 1807, were of moment to American his- 
 tory. Also, it should of course embrace the relevant acts of the 
 Council of State under the Commouwealth. 
 
Ga/>s in Piiblis/icd Rcconts of L 'nitcd States History S2 i 
 
 Similarly, we should have a scries of the royal proclamations 
 relating' to the colonies. 1 lere. it n)a\ he said, we are on a some- 
 what (litterent groimd. heeause r(i\al ])roclamations were printed. 
 I'ut thev were printed in so small a numher of copies that it would 
 prohahlv be utterly impossible for even the richest and most deter- 
 mined collector to possess himself df a cnniplete set of those useful 
 to American history. Sr.ch print stands for our present purposes on 
 the same basis as manuscript. It may he said that from 1666, when 
 the London Gazette he.ijan, we are in a better position, since ])r()ela- 
 mations were printed in its pat^es and do m.it have tn be se|iarately 
 sought for: but apparenth' only one American library contains a 
 perfect file of that peridclical. 
 
 Xext perhaps in I(\L;ical order to the records of the Privy Ciumcil 
 stand the journals of the Uoard of Trade. The records of this 
 advisory board, indispensable toward an imderstandinjj of colonial 
 p()Iicy, must some time he printed. I'or the present it is less neces- 
 sary than some other tasks, because by the public-spirited action of 
 certain friends of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania that society 
 has been provided with an excellent transcript of the wlnde JDurnal, 
 in several scores of volumes of manuscript, wdiieh can always be con- 
 sulted in Philadelphia. Ultimately however printing' must he con- 
 templated, though it is always more difficult in America to fiml the 
 means for publishing documentary material that relates to all the 
 colonies than that which relates to onlv one. 
 
 Parliamentary legislation for the col(inies, as distinguished from 
 administrative regulation, is, it is true, already all in print, and sets 
 of the British statutes at large are not rare. Yet it would be verv 
 convenient if we had, separated from the mass and brought together 
 in one Ijook, all the acts of Parliament relating to America. The 
 same is true of the relevant ])ortions of the Journals of the House 
 of Lords and of the House of Commons, sets of which are few in 
 the L'nited States, and of the reports of the debates on American 
 sul)jects. It is perhai)S commonly sup]iose<l that all of this last ma- 
 terial is in the earlier volumes of Hansard's Pclmtcs. lUit without 
 going into the complicated bibliography of the pre-Hansardian Par- 
 liamentary rei)orts, it ma)' l)e saiil that this is far from lieing the ease. 
 
 Let us pass now from the general matters of P>ritish colonial 
 polie\' to the establishment and government of [particular colonies. 
 It would probably lie su])posed b\- a foreigner who saw our activity 
 in historical printing that there must surelv Ije no lack of printed 
 collections into which had been gathered all the fundamental docu- 
 ments of that government, the grants of soil and jurisdiction, the 
 
82 2 J. F. Jaii/eson 
 
 constitutions on which tlie right to govern rested. But this is by no 
 n'cans true. The charter governments are indeed better provided, 
 for it is an easier task to present their fundamental ducunieuts: yet 
 rniire is not complete, and Miss Farnham's clab(n"ate compilation 
 covers but a part of the area. After all, too, what we need is a com- 
 ])lete collection of all letters-patent from the crown conveying either 
 snil or jurisdiction, either in continental America or in the islands, 
 both those which founded important colonies and those which proved 
 abortive; fur it is only when the whole series is studied in chrono- 
 logical order, not five letters-patent iir thirteen but twoscore or more, 
 that the nature and development of the colonial grant are fully seen. 
 The grant of .Avalon explains the grant of Maryland ; the charters 
 for Guiana and the Isle of Providence illustrate that of Massachu- 
 setts Bay. 
 
 So much for the charter colonies. But still greater is the need 
 of the fundamental documents in the case of the unchartered colon- 
 ies, or royal provinces. Indeed the very difficulty of finding and 
 studying their constitutions, in comparison with the ease with which 
 charters may in most cases be found and studied, has led to some 
 nf the strangest distortions in our colonial history. In reading the 
 pages of many writers one would sujipose that the charter govern- 
 ment was nearly the universal type of colonial constitution, whereas, 
 when one sto]is to think, only five of the thirteen cr)lonies were living 
 under charters in 1775. For the others, the royal provinces, the 
 fundamental documents of the constitution were the roi,-al commis- 
 sions and instructions to the governors. Comparatively few of the 
 commissions have been printed, still fewer of the instructions, and 
 those that have been printed are widely scattered. Yet without 
 thorough study and comjiarison of them it is impossible to under- 
 stand that intricate coiii1)inatiou of the written ;uid the unwritten, 
 of the British and the colonial, wdiich formed the typical constitution 
 of the chief class of American colonies, and to which we look for 
 the genesis of the main features of the subsec|ueut state constitutions. 
 
 lUit we must not forget that our origins, even our constitutional 
 and ])olitical origins, are not all English. Of forty-five states, nianv 
 have known b'rench or .S]5anish domination, and the scribe of docu- 
 ments playi'd at least as large a part under the b'reuch regime, and 
 under the S])anish colonial system a much larger part, than under 
 the Fngiish. The archives of old I-"rance and of Xew h'rance, those 
 of Madrid and Simancas, ;in(l most of all the Archi\'es of the Indies 
 at Seville, contain the luatu'ials for many documentary series which 
 are needed for the understan;!ing of the historv (if Illinois and Louis- 
 
Gaps in Publislicd Records of United States History S23 
 
 iana. nf I'lorida and Texas. 'Flu- ailmiiiistrativc systems nf France 
 and Spain differed widely from that of iMiLjiand, the ci>lc.)nies had 
 ninch less autonomy, and there are com]:)Hcations due to the snhor- 
 (Unation of the colonies now l.\ing within the borders of the L'nited 
 States to superior authorities like those of the viceroyalty of Xew 
 Spain or the captain-generalcy of l"ul)a. Under these Latin regimes 
 we cannot so readily draw the line between what is constitutional 
 and what is merely administrative regulation. Yet it is not too 
 much to hope that we may some time have a complete collection of 
 edicts of the l""rench crown touching Louisiana and the Illinois re- 
 gion, similar to Moreau de St. ?\Iery's Lo'ix ct Constitutions, or for 
 the Spanish rule a series of the orders and warrants of the crown for 
 the colonies (real ordciics and ccdulas), or of the proceedings, de- 
 crees, and despatches icoiisiiltiu. dccrctos, and dcspaclws) of the 
 audiencias and of the Council of the Indies. 
 
 To propose such clefinite and homogeneous series from foreign 
 archives is to propose an unusual course of procedure. The com- 
 iniin plan has been for a state government or a historical society, on 
 hearing that in a foreign archive there was a group of volumes con- 
 taining interesting materials for the history of their locality, to send 
 at once and have them copied, and pruceed tn print, regardless of 
 the miscellaneous character of what they fnuml or of the question 
 whether all had been found. For such a haphazard and piecemeal 
 policy there was some excuse in the past, but there will be none in 
 the futiu'e. The great European archives are no longer disordered 
 masses, from the surface of which one had better pluck up what he 
 could while he saw it, lest it never emerge to the surface again. 
 Thev can be exhaustively explored ; an<l b\' the plans which the 
 Department of Historical Research in the Carnegie Institution is 
 following, all the important materials that they contain f<ir the his- 
 tnrv of the L'nited States or any part thereof wdll within a few years 
 be discovered, listed, and descril:)e<l. It will then be possible to select 
 and print what is needed in order to make up a relatively complete 
 chronological series of homogeneous documents of any given type. 
 
 Doulitless the political history of the colonies lends itself less per- 
 fectly than the constitutional to the composition of such methodical 
 series. Yet here also some order can be introduced, in the gathering 
 of spoils from European archives. If we ask ourselves, in the English 
 case, what political series ma}- claim for itself the foremost place, it is 
 likely that the choice would fall on the letters which colonial gov- 
 ernors wrote to the authorities in London, a series of documents fre- 
 quent and continuous throughout the whole period, composed under 
 
824 J. F. Jameson 
 
 official responsibility and by men wlio, tlmugli SDnictimes prcjudiccil, 
 were in an excellent ])osition for oliservation of the events of colonial 
 liistorv. lUit large numbers of these letters have already been 
 printed, more or less systematically, especially in the case of New 
 Hampshire, Xew ^'ork, and North Carolina. an<l of snme individual 
 governors, such as Sharpe, .Spotswood, and Dinwiddle. For this 
 reason it might be a better plan to take in liand the almost untouched 
 series in the Hritish archives of letters and despatches from the mili- 
 tary and naval commanders in America, or the papers of the com- 
 missioners of customs for the colonies, full of new information re- 
 specting the plantation trade, the importance of which is now better 
 appreciate<l than e\'er before, as the commercial causes for the Amer- 
 ican Revolution are assuming greater and greater prominence in the 
 minds of historical writers. 
 
 There is also an internatidual class of histurical docimiL-nts. ol)vi- 
 ouslv of the first importance, a compact collection of which is an 
 undoubted desideratum, and that is the treaties and conventions be- 
 tween European powers which have a bearing on American history. 
 The mass of them is not great. (Jften it is but a small part of a 
 treatv that has reference to American affairs. Old-world diploma- 
 tists might higgle with minute detail over the frontier villages of 
 Flanders or Alsace, and throw away half a transatlantic continent in 
 a phrase. Tint the specific gravity of this material, so to speak, is 
 e-xceptionallv great, as the history of many colonial wars will testify. 
 It is hard, however, for the student to obtain it. Treaties were 
 ]irinted, it is true. Hut they have often not been printed anywhere 
 with perfect accurac}'. and they can now only be found imbedded in 
 great and expensive collectinns, and sometimes not even there. 
 Probably no human being in njo,^ wrote five pages on the cession of 
 I_^ouisiana without mentioning the treaty of San Ildefonso. It is 
 fundamental to a great boundary dispute; but probably not forty 
 histiirical scholars in the I'nited .States have ever seen its full text. 
 (It happens not to be in Alartens's Rcciicil.) The lack of a schol- 
 arly edition of all these treaties and parts of treaties is however 
 being supplied by the appropriate department of the Carnegie Insti- 
 titinn. 
 
 It is time now to pass to the American shores, and to consider 
 what deficiencies are to be noted in the supply of historical material 
 for our individual colonies. The first to be mentioned is one that 
 would seem scarcely credible, in a country where so much historical 
 printing has been done. .Any one would say that among the prime 
 requisites for intelligent work upmi the history of our developnicnt 
 
Gaps hi Published Records of I 'nited States History 825 
 
 during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we should have 
 given a prominent place to the laws of our colonies and to the jour- 
 nals of their legislative assenihlies. TUit first as to the laws. Five 
 states. \'irginia, South Carolina, Massachusetts, New York, and 
 I'enns\lvania, have provided the historical student with good sets of 
 their statutes at large for the colonial period or even to the early 
 dax's of the nineteenth century, and so has Connecticut in a way. 
 Maryland and New Hampshire have begun to fill the gap. But 
 unhappy the man wdio tries to follow the course of legislation in the 
 other colonies. The Public Record Commissioners of New Jersey 
 a few vears ago declared that there did not exist in that common- 
 wealth a complete set of the laws of the colony, province, and state ; 
 and in the case of Delaware and Rhode Island it is no longer pos- 
 sible to make good the deficiency. Authenticated copies of the 
 earlier laws of those two colonies do not exist either in the state 
 capitals or in London. Even in some cases where the laws have 
 all been printed in usable collections, the records of disallowances 
 b\- the English crown are fatall}' incomplete. 
 
 Ijut with the legislative journals of the lower houses of assembly 
 the case is much worse. The student has access to those of New 
 Hampshire and North Carolina in modern editions, fairly complete ; 
 to those of jMarvland to the end of the seventeenth century, to those 
 of New Jersey for seven years, to those of \'irginia fi ir three. For 
 Connecticut and for forty years of the earlier ]>eriod of Massachu- 
 setts historv he has journals of the General Court, or records of the 
 doings of the legislature as a whole, with wdiich he can make shift 
 to content himself. For Rhode Island he has what is little more 
 than a bmlv of extracts. Substantiall)-. then, lie has before him 
 hardl}- more than a third of the record. The rest still exists only in 
 manuscript or in print almost as rare as manuscript. For Delaware 
 nothing exists. A few fortunate liljraries contain the complete sets 
 for New York and Pennsylvania, which printed their assembly jour- 
 nals in goodly volumes. Mrginia has begun the issue of a stately 
 series which will ultimately give us the whole record of the House 
 of Burgesses, the most important of colonial assemblies. Maryland 
 is proceeding with the matter. Georgia is perhaps about to take it 
 up. after a fashion. But Massachusetts, New Jersey, and South 
 Carolina should lose no time in instituting such series, without which 
 large portions of their colonial history are bound to lack definite 
 substance and reality ; Rhode Island should make her series com- 
 l)lete : and New York and Pennsylvania should reprint. 
 
 AM msl'. i< I- v., Vi'l XI. — 54. 
 
826 J. F. Jameson 
 
 ( )iiL' more desideratum of the colonial period must be mentioned, 
 though its magnitude is such as to cause hesitation. Yet no one can 
 doubt that the social history of the colonial period can never be 
 conveniently studied or adequately known so long as the supply of 
 colonial newspapers lies in its present unsatisfactory shape. There 
 were nearly forty newspapers in the United Colonies in 1775. Of 
 some but a few scattered copies remain, of others there are complete 
 files. There are numerous subjects of our social history in the ante- 
 Revolutionary period which so run through the various colonies that 
 they cannot be treated adequately without full examination of all of 
 this sort of material that has survived. Yet the writer believes that 
 there is but one man who, in the pursuit of any subject, has ever 
 had the requisite determination and ])atience to carry through an 
 examination of newspapers which required journeys to Boston on 
 tlie north and to Savannah on the south, so widely scattered are the 
 files that he must inspect. Moreover, some of the best of these will 
 certainly vanish if steps are not soon taken for their preservation bv 
 reprint. Thirty years ago there were two good files of the J'iri^iiiiii 
 Grt-Ct'/^c' ; now there are none. There is one superb set of the South 
 Carolina Ga::cttc ; as it is not in a fire-proof building, its fate is plain. 
 No doubt it is a great expense to reproduce a file of a colonial news- 
 ])a])er, either by print or by photography. Hut does it seem as if an 
 age that had produced Fads and Fancies could possibly profess in- 
 ability to float an expensive book ? 
 
 lint it is time to turn to the history of the American Revolution, 
 Numberless subjects of colonial history, numerous opportunities for 
 documentary publication, have been passed over in silence. It will 
 perhaps have been observed that nothing has been said of all the 
 process of discovery and exploration, that happy-hunting-ground of 
 the history-writing mind. Let it be attributed to a conviction that 
 here, if anywhere, the suj.iply of original material is relativelv ade- 
 quate. The workl has been raked fine for documents relating to that 
 age of the Argonauts, and nothing would suft'er if we allowed those 
 heroes to rest in their present state of documentation, while we de- 
 voted ourselves to catching tip with other classes of transactions 
 and of luaterial. 
 
 It may well be maintained that much the same is true of the 
 American Revolution. To the mind of the average American legis- 
 lator, for some obscure reason, the words " American history " denote 
 almost always the history of American wars, and especially of the 
 Revolutionary war. Therefore it has been comparatively easy to 
 persuade the assemblies of our states to make appropriations for the 
 
(?iips ill riiblishcd Records of I 'nitcd States Hu^tory S27 
 
 printing' of docnnicnts rclatini;- ti> that interesting contlict. Ne\er- 
 lhck>s what woulil seem to he the most fundamental documentary 
 series, a complete edition of the general orders of Washington as 
 commander-in-chief, remains unexecuted. For the naval warfare, 
 which in certain years at any rate was perhaps as important and as 
 decisive as that which tonk p'ace on land, our supply of material is 
 relativelv scanty, though the naval papers of the Continental Con- 
 gress and the vast unexplored masses of the British Admiralty pajiers 
 would furnish ahundant material for illustrating even a warfare con- 
 sifting so largely <if detached episodes. Probably the huge fragment 
 of Force's Archives ought on some improved plan or other to be 
 ])iece(I out to its coniiiletion. Until little more than a year ago we 
 should ha\'e had to confess that we had only a most incomplete edi- 
 tion of so primar\- a record as the Joiinuils of the Continental i 011- 
 i^ress. But now, thanks to the sujierh ei|uipment and patient labors 
 of r\lr. Wortbington Ford, we are being sup|)lied liy the Lilirary of 
 Congress with what is substantially a perfect edition of that invalu- 
 able body of material. We shall never be able to supplement that 
 journal with th.e debates, as we are accustnmL-d to do in the case of 
 modern congresses. Yet a series has been devised, and is being 
 executed by another agency in this city, which will supplement in a 
 manner almost as vivacious the formal reC'ird of proceedings. It 
 was the habit of many if not most delegates to the Continental Con- 
 gress to send home at frequent intervals to their state executives, or 
 to other local authorities, long letters or reports upon the transactions 
 of the Congress. These are being collected from their official rejiosi- 
 tories in a dozen dit¥erent states and, when all brought together in a 
 chronological series, will illuminate the transactions of each week 
 bv side-lights var\ ing with the individual angle, yet forming in com- 
 bination, it is hoped, a supplementary light of the greatest value. 
 Another desideratum, in the case of several states, is a proper pres- 
 entation of the journals of their constitutional and other conven- 
 tions. Also, for this jieriiid and for those which have followed it, 
 we sorely need a new edition, revised and brijught down to our time, 
 of Poore's Charters and Constitutions. 
 
 For the Constitutional Convention of 1787 we have long liad the 
 primary records in reasonably good shape, on the one hand the 
 Journal and on the other hand ^ladison's incomparable record of the 
 debates ; and lately these have been reprinted in a form which rivals 
 the preciseness and almost exceeds the difficulty of a facsimile text. 
 But Madison's notes have been supplemented from time to time by 
 those of lesser diarists — Yates, King. Pierce, Paterson, Flamilton, 
 
828 J. F. JaincsiVi 
 
 and now ;\IcHenry — and documents have come to light that mark 
 stages in the progress of the convention's work or otlierwise illustrate 
 the making of the Constitution. There is needed a complete and 
 scientific edition of the Records of the Philadelphia Convention, 
 which shall bring together fn.)m their various volumes these frag- 
 mentary sup].)lements to the main narratives and shall arrange all the 
 data, old and new, side by side under the da\s or parts of days or 
 phases of the discussion to which they relate. It is a jileasure to be 
 able to say that this work is being done, and done too in a manner 
 certain to satisfy the needs of scholars. 
 
 The federal government of the United States, from its installa- 
 tion in 1789, has never been seriously remiss in the ])rinting of the 
 annual records of its transactions, w'hether legislative or executive. 
 .•\t times the suspicion has not been lacking that it printed too much. 
 At all events, the task of him who would suggest gaps in the his- 
 torical record of the central governri^ent is lightened when we pass 
 that celebrated year. Nevertheless it has been demonstrated by ex- 
 ceedingly careful examination that the volumes devoted to Foreign 
 Relations in the fnlici series of the .liiicricaii Slate I'af'crs do not 
 embrace more than one-fourth of the material, for the period which 
 they cover, in the diplomatic archives of the Department of State. 
 Here then is a great work which the government should take up, 
 biith for the large amount of fresh material which it will afford to 
 the student of our history, and also for the illumination and guidance 
 which it may give to the conduct of our national relations with other 
 states. .Such a series, however, should not merely eml.)race the fifty 
 years of history covered by the American State Papers, but should 
 be brought down to the outbreak of the Civil \\'ar : for it is well 
 known to all students of our diplomatic history that for the years 
 from 1840 to i860 even those documents which are in ])rint are hard 
 to procure in unbroken series and hard to manage when procured. 
 
 There are also a few great deficiencies in the earliest legislative 
 records which need to be sui)])lied. The .liiiials of r(';/,^')v.M, like the 
 Histoire Parlementaire of the French National Assembly, were ap- 
 parently made U]) from but a few news]iapers. A much better ac- 
 count of the earlier debates, anterior to the founding of the Xational 
 I)itelligeiieer, could probably be supplied by a compilation from a 
 greater number of pajjers. ^Vhat is certain is that, as is doubtless 
 familiar, the earlier debates of the Senate are almost entirely un- 
 reported, h'or the first five years the .Senate of the Cnited States 
 sat with closed doors. l'"or the first two years, to be sure, we have 
 the debates recorded in the diarv of one of the senators. Perhaps 
 
Gaps in Piibiishcd Records of United Slates History 8 29 
 
 we ouglit to be grateful for what he has given us. But prohal)l\- 
 most persons have felt quite as much exasperation as gratitude at the 
 thought that our sole record of those interesting, nuimentous, and 
 formative discussions should come to us from the sullen, mean, and 
 envious mind of Senator William Maclay. " All things look yellow 
 t<i the jaundiced e\c." Discussion of materials that do not exist 
 was from the beginning ruled out of this paper ; but it may be par- 
 donable to express a devout and earnest hope that somewhere there 
 exists another journal of those Senatorial proceedings and that in the 
 future it may he laid liefore the world. It can hardly fail to be a 
 fairer as well as a more generous record. 
 
 In the documentary material for the history of the L'nited States 
 in the nineteenth century, that age of copious print, it would be vain 
 to pretend that there are gaps of the greatest magnitude to be signal- 
 ized. To enumerate a great number of small deficiencies would be 
 tedious. It may suffice to speak hy way of specimen of two or three 
 episodes in our history on which more light might well be shed. For 
 one, and an extremel}- interesting one, there is the history of the 
 striking process by which South Can^lina, from being in the last 
 years of the eighteenth century a Federalist state, came by 1830 to 
 be the leader of the extreme state-rights school and the protagonist 
 of sectional interests. The process remains an obscure one. The 
 theory that Calhoun, disappointed in his ambition for the presidency 
 by reason of his quarrel with Jackson, persuaded his whole state into 
 the new path, is now well seen to be untenable ; for it is plain that 
 South Carolina led Calh<iun rather than Calhoun South Carolina. 
 I'lir the same reason, there is equally little disposition to adopt Mr. 
 Henr\- Adams's view, in accordance with which Calhoun was be- 
 guiled l)y the titful ignis fatuus that rose from the decaying brain of 
 John Randolph as he inflicted his wayward harangues upon the 
 Senate, while the impassive Carolinian sat in the A'ice-president's 
 chair and transmuted the hectic utterances into the cold logic of the 
 nullification theor\'. I'ailing such theories as these, wt are forced to 
 ask for more light, for more ample publication of Carolinian resolves, 
 speeches, editorials, and private correspondence in the years between 
 1790 and 1S30. 
 
 For a second instance, though the national government has put 
 forth abundantly the documents of its own civil and military history 
 and of the military history of the Confederacy, the stores of docu- 
 mentarv material of the civil government of the Confederacy to 
 which it fell heir at the conclusion of the struggle still for the most 
 part await publication. The Journals of the Confederate Congress 
 
830 J. t. Jameson 
 
 art- imk'Cil bcinc^ laid before lis. Ijut we iieeil to know more of the 
 history of Secretary Benjamin's diplomacy, of the struggle for recog- 
 nition, of the operations of the treasury, and of its relations to the 
 economic life of the seceded states.' 
 
 Lastly, it may be permissible to say a few words respecting pos- 
 sible further publications of the private correspondence of eminent 
 public men. Perhaps we are hardly warranted in speaking of gaps 
 here, at least in the sense in which we can use the phrase when 
 speaking of a governmental ofifice or a legislative body which main- 
 tains a continuous record of its proceedings, so that if any part of it 
 ii not present in the printed series we allege a gap in the literal sensc 
 of the term. Yet there are some statesmen whose position is so im- 
 ])ortant or so peculiar that if we lack their correspondence or memoirs 
 we feel that we lack the key to many of the chief transactions of their 
 age ( )f all the Americans of the earlier period, there are perhaps 
 none whose correspondence we so distinctly need as the two Adamses. 
 From the elder we have a ten-volume edition of his Works. But it 
 contains after all very little of his correspondence, and those letters 
 are so vivacious that they shine out in a formal age, and compel us 
 to wish eagerly for more. Of the younger Adams, while we have the 
 invaluable Memoirs, surely one of the most remarkable of political 
 <liaries, we have almost no letters, though he wrote well and often, 
 during a long and varied public career. In both cases, too, we should 
 find our profit quite as largely in the letters written to the two Presi- 
 dents, and preserved in the same repository, as in the letters which 
 they themselves wrote. 
 
 Aside from John Adams, the chief desideratum for the ])eriod of 
 the Revolution might seem to l)e a new edition of the letters of 
 Richard Henry Lee, for the man was of high abilities and undeniably 
 interesting, while the existing edition of his Life and Correspondence 
 is one of the most ])reposteroi:s, disorderly, and unusable of bonks. 
 In the next period, we really suffer much from the lack of any full 
 b(i(K I if material on the Southern Federalists. We have only Ire- 
 dell, and he was a judicial character. I"or lack of a full disclosure, 
 such as the papers of James A. Bayard might afford us, many have 
 been obliged to persist in the misrepresentation that the I'"ederalist 
 jiartv was an aggregation of Xew-Fnglanders, although it is proli- 
 able lliat, if the whole story were before us, we should perceive that 
 the Aliddle-state and Southern Federalists had fiu-nished the parly 
 with most of that ballast of moderate wisdom which its heady Xorth- 
 
 ' Mr. .1. D. Ricli.nrdsoii's Coin/Dilation of the Mcssngcs and Papers of the Con- 
 federacy ( N'asliville, lyciS) lias now p.Trtly filled this gap. 
 
Gaps in PublisJied Records of Ciiitcd States History S31 
 
 ern leaders so much needed, and witli nuich <.if the momentum which 
 enabled it to do its great work. 
 
 The list might readily l>e carried down to more modern times. It 
 is needless to say with how much delight we shall all greet the publi- 
 cation of the papers of Andrew Jackson ; but of this we are already 
 certain. The papers of A'an I'.uren and Polk are already assured of 
 preservation. Their publication will surely illuminate many obscure 
 places in our political history. In the period of the Civil War it is 
 ehietl\- the papers of the principal Southern leaders, and above all of 
 Davis and Stephens, that we most need in order to complete our 
 materials ; and on the Northern side those of the dissentient radicals 
 like Wade and Thaddeus Stevens and Henry Winter Davis. 
 
 We are not infrecjuently invited to take a gloomy view of the 
 future of the historian. We are told that the economist and the 
 sociologist are steadily plucking away his most valuable feathers, and 
 that our venerable muse is losing the fairest portions of her domain 
 to far vounger sciences, of which Herodotus and Thucydides never 
 heard and to which, indeed, they mig-ht not have felt attracted. But 
 at least it will be clear that in America the purveyor or editor of 
 documentarv materials for history has sufficient occupation for the 
 immediate future, and much opportunity to persevere in the endeavor 
 to secure for his science at least a broad and solid basis. 
 
 T. Fr.vnklin Jameson. 
 
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