DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. 185 



TEXTUAL PUBLICATIONS OF DOCUMENTS. 



Miss Davenport has made ready for publication six more treaties, 

 1670-1675, for the second volume of her ''European Treaties bearing 

 on the history of the United States." She has also worked on the 

 next group, the treaties of 1678-1680, but these are so connected one 

 with another, and in general the diplomatic history of the negotiations 

 against and with Louis XIV is so intricate, that it is difficult to regard 

 work upon any one of the group as finished until all are finished. 



Dr. Burnett has continued work upon the annotation of the later 

 volumes of his ''Letters of Members of the Continental Congress," 

 while seeing volume I through the press. The latter process was 

 delayed by the Director's decision that there ought to be prefixed to 

 each volume an exhibit, as complete as could be made, of the elections 

 to membership in the Congress by the respective States and of the 

 dates of attendance of the individual members. The state of the 

 existing materials for such a conspectus made the composition of it a 

 slow process, but it will unquestionably be helpful to readers. The 

 making of a full preface to volume I, intended as a preface to the 

 whole series, and the making of the index, which was prepared by 

 Mr. Matteson, also took time, but the volume was published in 

 August. It is a book of 638 pages, embracing 762 letters, or relevant 

 parts of letters, written by members of the Continental Congress 

 from the seat of its sessions, from its commencement in September 

 1774 to July 4, 1776, inclusive. A few later letters and documents 

 casting light on mooted questions respecting the signing of the Decla- 

 ration of Independence are added as an appendix. 



The plan of this work was described in a previous report, several 

 years ago. It may here suffice to mention that, since the Continental 

 Congress sat with closed doors, no formal or official record of its de- 

 bates exists, nor any formal record of its proceedings except the official 

 journal kept by its secretary, Charles Thomson, which was not written 

 with the fulness demanded in our time of a legislative journal. There- 

 fore, for the debates and for many transactions our only sources of 

 information, aside from the few diaries which members kept, chiefly 

 in the earliest days of the Congress, are the letters which they wrote 

 during the time of their attendance upon Congress to the governors 

 or other chief authorities of their States, or to relatives and friends 

 at home, and in which, in spite of their collective votes of secrecy, 

 they individually conveyed a great amount of information as to what 

 was going on. The extent of that information was not suspected 

 when the work began. Its collection was a labor of some years, 

 in the course of which all the capitals and chief historical societies of 

 the thirteen original States were visited and copies were secured of all 

 letters falling within the scheme of the proposed publication. Also, 

 many private possessors of letters generously permitted their use, or 

 the use of the parts desired — for it should be remarked that, volu- 



