As will be seen from another portion of this report, the records of individual military service and medical treatment of the Spanish war volunteers have been reproduced by the index-record card system applied to the records of all other classes of disbanded volunteers, and the work of carding the records of the more recently disbanded regiments is now in progress.

It may be of interest to state that the records of the Spanish war volunteers include those of 6 regiments and 9 independent companies of cavalry; 1 regiment, 6 battalions, and 22 independent batteries of artillery; 3 regiments of engineers; 163 regiments, 2 battalions and 2 independent companies of infantry, and 19 companies of the signal corps. The disbanded volunteer organizations recently in service in the Philippine Islands numbered 1 regiment of cavalry and 24 regiments of infantry. The Porto Rican regiment or battalion numbered 8 companies, 4 of which were mounted.

No statistics showing the number of volunteer troops in service during the Spanish war and the Philippine insurrection have yet been prepared by this office.

INDEX-RECORD CARD WORK.

The work of reproducing, by the index-record card system, the records of individual military service and medical and surgical treatment and the objects for which that work was undertaken have been fully de scribed in previous reports. At the date of the last annual report the. carding of the records of the Revolutionary war and subsequent wars to the beginning of the war with Spain had been virtually completed, and the work of carding the records of the Spanish war volunteers was well advanced.

During the last fiscal year the work was continued with such of the clerical force of the office as was available for the purpose, with the result that at the close of the year, on the 30th of June last, all of the individual military and medical records of Spanish war volunteers had been reproduced, with the exception of such fragmentary records of medical treatment as had not then been received. These delayed records are being carded as fast as they reach the office, and it is hoped that the card records of the Spanish war will soon be complete.

Toward the end of the fiscal year the records of some of the volunteer regiments organized for service in the Philippine Islands were received, and the work of carding the medical records was at once begun. This work is now well under way, and preparations are in progress for carding the military records of these recently disbanded regiments.

The index-record card work for the fiscal year included the preparation of 765,819 military cards and 192,094 medical cards, making, with the number prepared in previous years, a total of 42,381,907 of the former and 7,560,444 of the latter class, aggregating 49,942,351 indexrecord cards prepared up to and including June 30, 1901.

In addition to the index-record cards, 3,178 reference cards were made from miscellaneous records of the Revolutionary war. These records are of such a character that they can not well be reproduced in the ordinary form of index-record cards, but by the system adopted any name, however incidentally appearing therein, can readily be found.

RECORDS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR AND WAR OF 1812.

By an act of Congress approved July 27, 1892, it was provided that the military records of the American Revolution and of the war of 1812." then preserved in the Interior and Treasury Departments," should be transferred to the War Department, to be "preserved in the Record and Pension Division [Office] of the Department,” and that they should be properly indexed and arranged for use;" and by an act approved August 18, 1894, it was further provided that "all military records, such as muster and pay rolls, orders, and reports relating to the personnel or the operations of the armies of the Revolutionary war and the war of eighteen hundred and twelve," then filed in any of the Executive Departments, should be transferred to the War Department, to be preserved, indexed, and prepared for pub

lication.

As a result of this legislation a large mass of records has been received from the State, Treasury, and Interior Departments, and these records have been reproduced by the index-record card system previously adopted for the records of the civil war, thus complying with the statute requirement that they be "properly indexed and arranged for use."

It is proper to remark, however, that the collection of records of the Revolutionary war filed in this office is very far from complete, and that there is no complete collection of such records in existence anywhere. It is hoped that the War Department collection will be largely augmented by the loan of such Revolutionary records as are now in the custody of the authorities of the several States and of historical societies. Such records have been loaned by the States of Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, and the originals, after having been copied, have been returned to their former custodians. It is expected that this example will be followed by the authorities of other States and by the historical societies having such collections, and that the collection in this Department will thus be made as nearly complete as it is possible to make it after the long lapse of time since the Revolutionary armies were disbanded. The efforts of the War Department to complete its collection have, however, been interrupted by the pressure brought to bear upon this office by the increased correspondence and other work resulting from the war with Spain and the Philippine insurrection, including the carding of the records of the volunteer forces engaged therein, which was essential to the prompt transaction of the current business of the office in the thousands of cases in which a reference to such records becomes necessary.

It will b observed that the act of August 18, 1894, referred to above, contemplated the publication of the records of the Revolutionary war and the war of 1812, though it does not specifically authorize it. Congress will doubtless make the necessary appropriation for the publication at the proper time, but it is clearly not advisable to undertake the publication of any portion of the records of the Revolutionary war until the War Department collection is made as nearly complete as it is possible to make it. It will readily be seen that there are many difficulties in the way of obtaining missing records, and that progress in this direction must necessarily be slow. The date of the contemplated publication is therefore uncertain and is probably somewhat

remote.

PUBLICATION OF THE OFFICIAL RECORDS OF THE UNION AND CON

FEDERATE ARMIES.

The fiscal year ended June 30, 1901, was a notable one in the history of the Record and Pension Office in that it witnessed the practical completion of the work, for many years in progress, of the publication of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.

At the date of the last annual report the work had been completed with the exception of the general index, the preparation of which, the final volume of the publication, was then in progress. During the last fiscal year the work was prosecuted with such success that it was virtually completed, the final cards, embracing the text of the general index, having been sent to the Public Printer on the 22d of June and the typographical work in preparation for the first proof having been completed on the 29th of the same month.

It is difficult to convey an adequate idea of the labor involved in the preparation of this final volume of the publication. The published records are made up of official reports, correspondence, orders, returns, maps, and other documents, and comprise, excluding the atlas, a total of 125,730 pages of text. In addition to the text, each book contains a full index, so that there are in all 127 book indexes, containing a total of 11,563 pages. To condense these into a single index of a size convenient for handling has been a difficult task, but as finally completed the general index contains the substance of the separate indexes condensed into 1,087 pages, a reduction of 90 per cent in the number of pages of original matter.

At the beginning of the last fiscal year the cards of the proposed general index numbered about 700,000. In the process of elimination, verification, and identification these cards were handled many times, being gradually reduced until the number finally sent to the printer was but little more than 250,000. It is estimated that the total number examined by the compilers during the year, counting each examination as that of a separate card, was 2,200,000.

In a work of the magnitude of the War Records some errors, especially in the names of individuals, were unavoidable, and in the early stages of the publication it was difficult, and at times impossible, for the War Records Office to identify persons mentioned in the text, but as the work progressed and the compilers became more familiar with the records from which the material was selected these difficulties in a great measure disappeared, facilitating the avoidance of further errors and making possible the detection and rectification of those previously made. The corrections of errors and deficiencies discovered in the course of the work have been compiled and are set forth in the "Additions and Corrections," which form a part of the volume containing the general index.

In reporting the completion of the final volume of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, a brief history of the publication seems to be appropriate.

The actual initiative of the project to publish the records of the civil war appears to have been taken by Congress in a joint resolution, approved May 19, 1864, directing the Secretary of War to furnish the superintendent of public printing with copies of correspondence and other documents relating thereto, of every description, in the possession of the War Department subsequent to December 1, 1860. In

accordance with this resolution the work of preparing the records for convenient use was begun by Col. E. D. Townsend, assistant adjutantgeneral, then in charge of the Adjutant-General's Office and subse quently Adjutant-General of the Army, who caused copies to be made of battle reports on file in his office and took some steps toward the collection of missing records.

The first decisive step toward the publication of the records was taken when, by an act approved June 23, 1874, an appropriation was made to enable the Secretary of War to begin the publication of the records of the war of the rebellion, both of the Union and Confederate armies." Under this act the preliminary work was resumed by General Townsend. Subsequently, under ineager appropriations, the work was continued in a somewhat desultory manner by various officials until December 14, 1877, when the Secretary of War, perceiving that the undertaking needed the undivided attention of a single head, detailed Capt. Robert N. Scott, Third United States Artillery (subsequently major and lieutenant-colonel of that regiment), to take charge of the work. This officer devised the scheme of publication subsequently followed to the end of the work. He continued in charge until his death, March 5, 1887, when he was succeeded by Col. H. M. Lazelle, Twenty-third United States Infantry, who remained in control until, under the act of March 2, 1889, the work was placed under a board composed of Maj. George B. Davis, judge-advocate, United States Army (now Judge-Advocate-General), Mr. Leslie J. Perry, and Mr. Joseph W. Kirkley.

This board assumed direction of the publication in July, 1889. On July 1, 1895, Maj. George W. Davis, Eleventh United States Infantry (now brigadier-general, United States Army), relieved Maj. George B. Davis as president of the board, and he was himself relieved, June 1, 1898, by Col. (now Brigadier-General) F. C. Ainsworth, Chief of the Record and Pension Office, War Department. On December 1, 1898, the board of publication was dissolved under the provisions of the sundry civil act of July 1, 1898, and by direction of the Secretary of War the work was continued under the charge of the Chief of the Record and Pension Office. On July 1, 1899, under the provisions of the act of February 24, 1899, making appropriations for the legislative, executive, and judicial expenses of the Government, the War Records Office, which had for many years been in charge of the work of compiling and publishing the records, was merged into the Record and Pension Office.

To compile the official records of the civil war required comprehensive study and laborious effort. The vast bulk of the records and the myriads of documents they contained precluded any definite knowledge of the individual papers themselves. The records filled several capacious buildings and their number was beyond computation, over 2,000,000 telegrams being contained in one file alone, and enormous additions were constantly being received.

The first attempt at arrangement was the placing of the records in chronological order for the convenient detection of duplicates and with a view to the supplying of missing papers. This was followed by a classification by correspondence, telegrams, orders, reports, and returns. Thus arranged, they were put in type, the Union and Confederate documents in separate volumes. Seventy-nine of these volumes were prepared, of each of which 30 copies, subsequently known as "preliminary prints," were printed. No use was made of these "preliminary prints,"

except as printer's copy in the compilation of the later and regular official publication, although the work of compiling and putting them in type continued until a short time prior to the creation of the board of publication in 1889.

In 1878 the Secretary of War decided to omit from the publication: (1) Applications for appointments, arms, contracts, discharges, special exchanges, muster in, etc.

(2) Charges of disloyalty, etc., preferred by private individuals or anonymously against officers, agents, etc.

Claims of all descriptions.

Tenders of troops or personal services by individuals.

(5) Offers of contracts or of inventions.

(6) Ordinary routine business of bureaus and departments.

And in 1880 the Secretary approved of a further plan of publication, as follows:

The first series will embrace the formal reports, both Union and Confederate, of the first seizures of United States property in the Southern States, and of all military operations in the field, with the correspondence, orders, and returns relating specially thereto, and, as proposed, is to be accompanied by an atlas.

In this series the reports will be arranged according to the campaigns and several theaters of operations (in the chronological order of events), and the Union reports of any event will, as a rule, be immediately followed by the Confederate accounts. The correspondence, etc., not embraced in the "reports" proper will follow (first Union and next Confederate) in chronological order.

The second series will contain the correspondence, orders, reports, and returns, Union and Confederate, relating to prisoners of war, and (so far as the military authorities were concerned) to State or political prisoners.

The third series will contain the correspondence, orders, reports, and returns of the Union authorities (embracing their correspondence with the Confederate officials) not relating specially to the subjects of the first and second series. It will set forth the annual and special reports of the Secretary of War, of the general in chief, and of the chiefs of the several staff corps and departments, the calls for troops, and the correspondence between the national and the several State authorities.

The fourth series will exhibit the correspondence, orders, reports, and returns of the Confederate authorities, similar to that indicated for the Union officials, as of the third series, but excluding the correspondence between the Union and Confederate authorities given in that series.

In the final and regular official publication the instructions referred to above were strictly followed.

From the outset of the work there was a great deficiency of Confederate records. During the last year of the war the reports rendered by Confederate officials were generally meager and incomplete, and toward the close of hostilities many papers of great historical value were intentionally destroyed by their holders and a still greater number was concealed. Others were burned with public buildings or were carried off by relic hunters, and in various ways the official Confederate files were depleted.

In view of the distrust with which the Southern people for a while naturally regarded the movements made by the Government with a view to the procurement of the records of the Confederacy, it is not surprising that the efforts of the Department to complete its Confederate files met at first with slight success. Later, however, as the attitude of the Southern people toward the compilation became more cordial, records were brought from their places of concealment and were secured for the publication, either as gifts, loans, or by purchase. Among those who cheerfully gave access to the records in their possession may be mentioned the former president of the Confederacy, and this example was followed by his widow after his death. From

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