DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH.* 



J. Franklin Jameson, Director. 



The following report, the fourteenth annual report rendered by the 

 present Director, covers the period from November 1, 1918, to October 

 31, 1919. 



Although the armistice was concluded early in the twelvemonth, 

 many of the disturbing effects of warfare continued throughout the 

 year. Taken as a whole, therefore, the year was far from normal, 

 though by the end of it most of the Department's work had come back 

 into the usual channels. The activities of the National Board for 

 Historical Service, the war-time organization into whose action the 

 war-work of the Department has been merged, have now come to an 

 end. Lea\dng those activities to be described at a later time in a 

 special report, the compiler of the present report confines it to those 

 lines of work which lie in the normal field of such a department, in 

 which it was engaged before the war, and from which, it is hoped, it 

 will never again be called upon to depart. 



The staff of the Department has suffered an important loss through 

 the resignation of Miss EHzabeth Donnan, who has accepted an ap- 

 pointment as assistant professor of economics in Mount Holyoke 

 College, and who in the middle of September left our service to enter 

 the faculty of that institution. Her work in the Department, both 

 in respect to the editing of the American Historical Review and in 

 respect to the documentary historical publications of the Institution, 

 had been of a very high order, and her departure could not fail to be 

 regarded with deep regret. It is, however, beheved that, by utilizing 

 college vacations, it will be possible for her to finish the piece of work 

 on which she was chiefly engaged in recent years, her two volumes of 

 documentary materials on the slave-trade to America, illustrating espe- 

 cially the sources and methods of supply. 



Miss Louisa F. Washington has taken the place of Mr. Campbell as 

 the Department's stenographer. 



In September 1918, Professor Dana C. Munro, of Princeton Univer- 

 sity, became chairman of the National Board for Historical Service, and 

 Professor Joseph Schafer, of the University of Oregon, \dce-chairman, 

 with the understanding that the latter should be the active conductor 

 of its work, resident for the time in Washington. In October 1918, 

 Dr. Schafer came to Washington, under appointment as a Research 

 Associate of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and remained 

 here until July. His presence was a source of great pleasure and 

 profit to the Department, and he carried on a variety of useful work 

 for the Board. The chief of these services was the untiring labor he 



♦Address: No. 1140 Woodward Building, Washington, D. C. 



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