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William Short papers

ments as seemed to have historical or autographic value were selected, and these are now in process of being delivered to the Library from time to time as the classification and re-jacketing progresses in the Clerk's office. Eight lots have been receipted for, comprising 269 separate groups, the papers ranging in date from the time of the Revolution (being documents filed in various proceedings before Congress) to 1860, and embracing a great variety of subjectsthe question of the removal of General Washington's remains; the relief of his body servant, John Cary; letters of Robert Fulton; inventories of the contents of the White House; petitions against slavery; petitions against war with England in 1812; memorials on colonization of free persons of color; petitions against Sunday mails; papers concerning polar explorations; papers concerning the Seminole war; concerning the invulnerable steam battery invented by Clinton Roosevelt; concerning the bodily attack on Charles Sumner, etc.

Further accessions of especial importance are:

The William Short papers.-William Short was born in Virginia, September 30, 1759, and died in Philadelphia, December 5, 1849. He was appointed secretary of legation at Paris in August, 1785, when Jefferson was minister; left in charge of the legation September 26, 1789; and commissioned chargé d'affaires April 20, 1790. January 16, 1792, he became minister resident at The Hague, and March 18 of the same year was sent to Spain as joint commissioner plenipotentiary with William Carmichael to make a treaty concerning the free navigation of the Mississippi, boundaries, and commerce, becoming sole plenipotentiary when the treaty was signed, October 27, 1795. He had the management of the public debt in France, and in 1790 was commissioned to negotiate a loan for the United States under the funding acts of August 4 and 12. His correspondence with Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, on

financial questions, is full and important, especially because the records of the Treasury Department covering the period were destroyed by fire many years since. He was the confidential friend of many American and European public characters, who wrote him confidential political letters, his correspondents including Brissot, Thomas Paine, Paul Jones, James Madison (who sent him a letter from the Constitutional Convention of 1787), James Monroe, Gouverneur Morris, and Lafayette. He preserved nearly all the letters he received, and the press copies or rough drafts of his replies, and the total number of documents acquired by the Library. numbers upwards of 3,000. After his death, as he was unmarried, his brother inherited the papers, and they remained in the possession of the Short family until they passed to the Library, never having been accessible to students until the present time.

In recent years, from time to time, by auction and at pri- Gerry papers vate sale, the papers of Elbridge Gerry, collected by his biographer, Austin, have been disposed of in separate and detached portions at prices which precluded their passing into the Library's possession-a misfortune, indeed, as their historical value has been greatly diminished by their being scattered. The Library was so fortunate as to obtain one lot of these papers, which includes drafts of his letters and diplomatic memoranda made between the years 1797-1801, when he was on his special mission to France.

A part of the correspondence of Theodore Dwight Weld, Weld papers the anti-slavery lecturer, reformer, and author (born, 1803, died, 1895), and his wife, Angelina Emily Grimké, has been acquired. It includes letters on the subject of abolition of slavery from Beriah Green, Gerrit Smith, Joshua R. Giddings, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Wilson, Wendell Phillips, and Sarah M. Grimké.

William Owner's diary

William Owner's diary, kept in Washington from 1860 to William 1867, is in nine volumes, and gives the most important events of the Civil War chronicled as they occurred.

British transcripts

MSS:
Calendars

The copying of manuscript material in the English archives, relative to the American colonies, is an undertaking described in the report for 1905 (pp. 56-58). It progresses steadily, the total number of folios having now reached upward of 85,000.

The publication; by the Carnegie Institution, of the "Guide to the manuscript material for the history of the United States in the British Museum, in minor London archives, and in the Libraries of Oxford and Cambridge," by Prof. Charles M. Andrews and Miss Frances G. Davenport, has facilitated the selection of the archives in these collections which should be copied; and when the promised Guide to the Public Record Office Archives shall have been published the selection of documents in that depository will be comparatively a simple matter. Throughout the prosecution of this undertaking the Library has had the benefit of Professor Andrews's expert advice, voluntarily given, in selecting the archives to be copied.

The transcripts are now so numerous, and the period which they cover is so extensive, that it seems desirable that a bulletin describing their scope and that of the Stevens Catalogue Index of Manuscripts in the Archives of England, France, Holland, and Spain, relating to America, and the Stevens Facsimiles and Transcripts, acquired by the Library in 1906, should be issued for the benefit of students-the publication to be merely preliminary and not to preclude the preparation of a more detailed calendar at a future date, when the transcribing of the British material shall have been concluded. (Notes toward such a bulletin accompany the lists in Appendix III, pp. 171-176.)

On July 1, Mr. J. C. Fitzpatrick completed his monumental calendar of the Military correspondence of George Washington during the Revolution (1775-1783). It comprises over 25,000 cards, and includes all the military documents in the Washington collection, the Papers of the Continental

Congress, and the other collections in the Manuscripts Division. It is now in press.

The calendar of the Van Buren papers, begun by Mr. Worthington C. Ford when he was in the Library, has been completed by Miss Elizabeth H. West, and the proof is being read. This is the collection which was given to the Library in 1904 and 1905 by Mrs. Smith Thompson Van Buren and Dr. Stuyvesant Fish Morris.

Work on the calendar of New Mexico papers has made substantial progress, and to the calendar of the Johnson papers some cards have been added.

the Continental

Of the Journals of the Continental Congress, for 1780, The Journals of three volumes, XVI, XVII, and XVIII, have been printed Congress and issued, and editorial work on the volumes for 1781 is

under way.

The Chief of the Division attended the International International Congress of Archivists Congress of Archivists (and Librarians) at Brussels, August 27-31, 1910, as delegate of our government and as a contributor to the programme. His trip in behalf of the Library extended to various other European cities—as far east as Vienna-in search of material and in the examination of archives.

DIVISION OF DOCUMENTS

(From the report of the Chief, Mr. Thompson)

Accessions

During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1910, the accessions DOCUMENTS: to the Library through the Division of Documents were as follows:

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In addition to the above, 24,054 maps and charts and 10 atlases have been received by official donation.

Comparison with the statistics of previous years shows that the number of volumes and pamphlets received during the fiscal year in this Division is greater than ever before and that for each of the last three years the document accessions exceeded 40,000. The growth of the work of the Division of Documents since its organization ten years ago is strikingly shown by the following table giving the receipts by three-year periods and the annual averages:

Accessions

1901-4

1904-7

1907-10

Foreign docu

ments

Total for three years.

Annual average.

56, 818 81, 885 130, 381 18, 939 27, 295

43, 460

Although the amount of material handled annually has more than doubled during the past decade, no increase in the force has been provided by law since the Division was established.

In continuation of the efforts made in previous years to complete the sets of foreign documents received in part through international exchange, revised or supplementary want lists have been sent to the following countries: Argen

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