lated by the successive commanders-in-chief on the British side, which are gathered in the Royal Institution, and cited indifferently as the Carleton or Dorchester Papers-the extent of which, there is reason to believe, will be better understood when sundry packing cases in the cellar of that building are examined, and which seem to have been forgotten till recently. The great resource of the Haldimand Papers was acquired by the British Museum too near the end of Sparks' active career for his collection to profit from them; but we owe it to the intelligent action of the Dominion Government, and to the assiduity of the Dominion Archivist, Mr. Brymner, that copies of the Haldimand Papers are now at Ottawa, of which we are given an excellent key in the calendar now in course of publication by that same officer.

It was to the kind interest of Lafayette, and later of his son, that Sparks owed much of his opportunity of access to the archives in Paris, and to the papers of Gérard and Luzerne. Sparks' extracts from the correspondence of the French and Spanish ministry, and his transcripts of the letters of Frederick the Great and his ambassador, touching points connected with the American Revolution, are necessary to complete the survey.

The place next in importance for the study of personal papers is New York, for though they have the Laurens papers in the Long Island Historical Society, it is in the library of the New York Historical Society that we find the papers of Gates, Charles Lee, Steuben, Joseph Reed, Stirling, and Lamb, the New York artillerist. The history of the Stirling manuscripts shows one of the kinds of vicissitude, arising even from an excess of care, to which old papers are subjected. The letters of Washington among the Stirling papers were separated to be placed in a spot of greater security, and then forgotten. Hutchinson also tells us that some papers which he had secreted where he thought no one would find them were forgotten when he took his flight, and they may possibly be the ones which are said to have been found in feather beds, at the time Hutchinson's effects were sold.

Other collections in public institutions are not numerous. There are the papers of Esek Hopkins, gathered during his brief career as a commodore, lodged with others of less importance in the Rhode Island Historical Society; those of Silas Deane, in part at least, in the Connecticut Historical Society; those of Boudinot, Shippen, and some others, in the Pennsylvania Society; those of Benjamin Rush in the Philadelphia library. This enumeration indicates the most important masses of Revolutionary papers, in public institutions, so far as they have been preserved.

The papers in private hands include some of the most important, and those treasured in Massachusetts are the most extensive. Referring to the family muniment building at Quincy, which contains the papers of the Adamses, Dr. Hale has recently said, in the preface to his Franklin in France: "I know of no other collection in the world, where the history of a great nation can be so studied in the biography of one family," comprising, as it does, the youthful observations of John Adams on the French War, and the part played by his grandson, at the other limit, in the conference at Geneva.

The latter gentleman, in editing the papers of John Adams, has said, with probable truth, that the private papers of the first of the Adamses most likely exceed in extent the papers of every other leading actor in the Revolutionary struggle. We have, of course, a representative portion of these papers in the Writings of John Adams; but the collection possesses, beyond what is there given, a mass of correspondence, to the publication of which historical students are looking forward, and with confidence, when we consider the strong historical instincts of the Adamses still among us. I am glad to add that the younger Mr. Charles Francis Adams, who considers his present engrossment with the material interests of the country as but a temporary bar to more genuine service in historical research, has already determined to place the great stores at Quincy in more serviceable condition.

Of the papers of Samuel Adams, the portion which is left is in the hands of Mr. Bancroft, who describes them as very numerous, and as unfolding fully the manner of molding into a system the acts of resistance to Great Britain. We know, however, that much spoliation of these papers took place, both before and after the death of Samuel Adams. John Adams pictures his kinsman as burning his correspondence in winter, and as cutting it into shreds in summer, to scatter it upon the winds, so that by no neglect of his any of his associates could be implicated, if fortune went against the colonies. Even from among such as were not thus destroyed, the friends of unstable patriots were said at a later day to have abstracted the evidences of their weakness.

The papers of James and Mercy Warren are also preserved by a descendant, Mr. Winslow Warren of Dedham, and they have never been used as they should be, though from these and from John Adams' papers, there has been put into print a famous correspondence of John Adams and Mercy Warren.

Of Massachusetts soldiers, the papers of General Lincoln, interlinked with some of the most important events of the war, are still in the family

keeping, as are those of General John Thomas, whose career was cut short too early to allow of their being voluminous.

After Massachusetts, the most important local ownership is in New York, where, still in the hands of descendants, are the papers of Philip Schuyler, John Jay, and Gouverneur Morris. In the migrations of families, and the changes of ownership, we find such personal papers scattered widely through the land. Those of Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress, are in Memphis; those of Sullivan, the New Hampshire general, are in Boston; those of Meschek Weare, the Governor of New Hampshire, are in New York; those of Wilkinson are in Louisville; those of George Rogers Clark are in Wisconsin; while those of Patrick Henry, Charles Carroll, Anthony Wayne, Cæsar Rodney, and George Read are still preserved near their homes.

The melancholy aspects of the subject are in the losses to be chronicled of some of these personal papers, which would be of the utmost help to us. When we consider the activity of James Otis, and the wide correspondence which he maintained with gentlemen in all the colonies in the period between 1760 and 1770, and how much was owing to him that the preparation was advanced and ripened for the final co-operation of the colonies, we can appreciate what we have lost in the destruction of his papers, when, in one of the unhappy moments of his aberration, he committed his manuscripts to the flames. John Adams tells how a daughter of Otis said to him that she had not a line from her father's pen. What is left of the papers of James Bowdoin is inconsiderable; those of Thomas Cushing were seized by General Gage, and have disappeared, and we know nothing of those of Joseph Hawley-almost the only citizen of consideration in Western Massachusetts who did not deliver his fortunes to the companionship of the Loyalists. The papers of Joseph Warren were consumed in the burning of a barn in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Much as we know of the early formative days of the Revolution in its birth-place, we can but conjecture what we have lost of the history of Massachusetts and her relations to the other colonies at that time, in the disappearance of such collections as these.

Only the scantiest measure remains of the papers of Francis Dana. Those of William Whipple of New Hampshire have in the main disappeared. What there is left of the papers of William Ellery hardly recompenses us for the loss of the letters which his friends destroyed at his request. The papers of Stephen Hopkins were swept away by a flood in 1815, and Rhode Island regrets how her two most eminent citizens in the Senate are without suitable record in this way.

VOL. XVIII.-No. 1.-3

Connecticut is not privileged to treasure the papers of Roger Sherman, which in the main disappeared in a way which no one well understands. Maryland regrets the loss at sea of those of Otho Williams. South Carolina saw the burning of those of Rutledge, and only a small portion of those of Pinckney are still known.

I would suggest in closing a method for the better preserving and making known of what there is still left to us of the historical manuscripts of the country, not in places easily accessible to the student. My purpose must be obvious to all of you who have watched the progress of the work, as evinced in their successive reports, done by the Historical Manuscripts Commission in England; and I need hardly at this time detail their method and results; but I cannot resist the conviction that our Historical Association could do no better deed than to convince the National legislature that something analogous, with such changes in method and organization as the conditions of this country suggest, should be undertaken before it is too late, and I shall be glad if some discussion to that end may be entered upon. I may add, in conclusion, that I am prepared to place in the hands of a committee some details of the workings of their methods, which have been sent to me by Mr. Maxwell Lyte, of the Rolls House, the director of the service of the English Commission.

ONE DAY'S WORK OF A CAPTAIN OF DRAGOONS

AND SOME OF ITS CONSEQUENCES

In the year 1843 the territory west of 100 degrees west longitude, and south of the Arkansas River was recognized as belonging to Mexico; our territory extended on both sides of the river to that degree; but beyond, the Arkansas became our southern and western boundary. Through the great Wilderness, on both sides of the boundary, lay the route of an international commerce-with Santa Fé, New Mexico, for its first objectiveof sufficient importance to become, in that year, the subject of diplomacy; Mexico proposed military escorts; our government assenting, proposed that the escorts should be free to pass the boundary when necessary for protection for the wide uninhabited region was infested by nomadic tribes, Comanches and others, savage and hostile.

The occurrences to be related here were scarcely noticed by the press. That was not the day of correspondents, nor of telegraphy; a remarkable event happening in that remote "desert," as it was then called, would almost certainly escape notice; and there were political motives for the administration to minimize its importance and publicity—if it could not disapprove the action of its military commander, certainly very offensive to Texas; for it was unluckily coincident with eager negotiation for the annexation of that country.

Texas had asserted a claim that the Rio Grande, from mouth to source, was their southern and western boundary. And Van Zant, their minister to Washington, hastened to make bitter complaint of the disarmament of their national force-and as greatly aggravated by its occurrence in their own country (not in Mexico).

The administration saw new light-turned a sharp corner: My instructions recognized the Arkansas as the Mexican boundary; but, a few months after the occurrence, a Court of Inquiry was convened at Fort Leavenworth to inquire whether the Texan force had been disarmed in our territory, or in Texas! and whether their treatment had been "harsh and unbecoming"?

Captain Cooke's regiment of Dragoons was detached from Fort Leavenworth in command of three of its troops, and two mountain howitzers to protect a large caravan, of which the merchants were both American and Mexican; his instructions included a copy of a note from the Secretary of