I. GENERAL RECORDS OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT The National Archives, following the pattern established by the Department of State, maintains as a separate group certain records that relate to the activities of the Government as a whole. These include statutes, Presidential proclamations, Executive orders, international treaties and related papers, Indian treaties, and records relating to the ratification of the Constitution. Some records of the Civil War period are, of course, in that record group. As he had done since 1789 (1 Stat. 29, 68), the Secretary of State continued during the war to preserve and publish the acts and resolutions of Congress and to hold in safekeeping all treaties and Presidential proclamations. An act of Apr. 20, 1818 (3 Stat. 439), had required the Secretary to publish amendments to the Constitution when they were ratified and to certify that they had become part of the Constitution. Record Group 11. --In the series of laws of the United States, the original enrolled public laws, private laws, and resolutions of the 37th and 38th Congresses (1861-65) are arranged chronologically in 10 large volumes. The statutes were published in newspapers currently as they were enacted and at the end of each session they were printed in pamphlet form. Volumes containing all the statutes for the Civil War period (12 and 13 Stat. ) were published in 1863 and 1866 by Little, Brown, and Co. of Boston under a contract authorized by a joint resolution of Mar. 3, 1845 (5 Stat. 798). The substance of many wartime laws is discussed elsewhere in this Guide in connection with the departmental or bureau activities that they affected. Proclamations were signed by the President and countersigned by the Secretary of State, and they bore the imprint of the Great Seal of the United States, which the Secretary was authorized to keep. Executive orders were signed by the President but rarely bore the countersignature of the Secretary or the imprint of the seal. Proclamations were issued in connection with matters of more general interest than those treated in Executive orders. The manuscript proclamations are preserved in bound volumes; those of 1861-65 (proclamations numbered 80-148) are in 3 volumes. Proolamations issued in connection with treaties are filed with the treaties. A card index to the proclamations, with subject and numerical sections, is a useful tool. During the war many important proclamations were issued on such subjects as amnesty, the blockade of Southern ports, pardons, calls for volunteers, the reconstruction of the States that had seceded, and, of course, emancipation. Some Executive orders were also war-related, but 1 because they concerned largely matters under the cognizance of other departments the texts did not find their way into the files of the Department of State. The file of Executive orders in that Department's records begins in 1862 and contains only nine orders through 1865. A register lists the orders chronologically; 3 index volumes provide a subject approach by the first letter of the alphabet only. More useful is the card index containing both subject and numerical sections. Proclamations were printed currently in newspapers or as broadsides, and so were Executive orders. The texts of most proclamations and Executive orders of the war years are published in the Statutes at Large, vols. 12 and 13; in James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897, vols. 5 and 6 (H. Misc. Doc. 210, 53 Cong., 2 sess., Serial 3265; Washington, 1896-99. 10 vols.); and in Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States. During the Great Rebellion. p. 261-307 (Washington, 1865). A list of the numbered Executive orders is in Historical Records Survey, New York City, Presidential Executive Orders, Numbered 1-8030, 1862-1938, ed. by Clifford L. Lord, Joseph E. Vaughan, and Charles E. Baker (New York, 1944); and a list of unnumbered Executive orders compiled from numerous sources is in Historical Records Survey, New Jersey, List and Index of Presidential Executive Orders (Unnumbered Series), 1789-1941, p. 26-36 (Newark, N. J., 1943). Other unlisted and unpublished Executive orders can undoubtedly be found in the records of the various departments. Information on the manuscript and printed versions of the Emancipation Proclamation is in Charles Eberstadt, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (New York, 1950). See also J. M. Edelstein, "Early Editions of the Emancipation Proclamation," Library of Congress, Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions, 16:169-179 (Aug. 1959). Treaties and other international agreements negotiated during the war, including unperfected treaties, Indian treaties, and postal conventions, were preserved by the Department of State. The treaties are filed numerically, and each treaty file includes the original signed treaty, the attested resolution of the Senate, the duplicate United States instrument of ratification, the exchanged instrument of ratification of the other party, the original of the certificate of protocol or procès-verbal of exchange of ratification, and the original proclamation of the treaty by the President, and sometimes drafts of treaties, full powers, memoranda, correspondence, and maps. Of the 22 treaties perfected during the war none appears to be directly warrelated. The file of unperfected treaties contains instruments that were signed by the United States and the representatives of the other parties but were not subsequently ratified; consequently the documentation for a particular treaty would include some but not all of the papers mentioned. There are nine unperfected treaties for the period of the war, and two of them-that of Aug. 12, 1861, with Russia concerning the rights of neutrals and that of Dec. 15, 1863, with the Netherlands concerning the emigration of freedmen to Surinam--bear some relationship to the war. Bilateral postal conventions are concluded by the U. S. Postmaster General and foreign postal authorities and are not submitted to the Senate for ratification. The documents are usually kept by the Post Office Department, and those of the Civil War period are described under that Department elsewhere in this Guide. One convention with Mexico, Dec. 11, 1861, however, which was submitted to the Senate, is in the Department of State treaty series (no. 211), and in the same series (erroneously filed) is an unperfected postal convention signed with Mexico on July 31, 1861. One other postal convention, signed with Costa Rica on June 9, 1862, is in the unperfected treaty file. A card index to the unperfected treaties consists of a chronological section and a section arranged alphabetically by name of country. Document inventories of the treaty series, the unperfected treaty file, and postal conventions, compiled by the National Archives, list all the papers with each instrument and others that should be in these files but are actually filed elsewhere. Treaties were published contemporaneously in newspapers and subsequently in the Statutes at Large. But they can be found more conveniently in William M. Malloy, comp., Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols, and Agreements Between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1776-1909 (S. Doc. 357, 61 Cong., 2 sess., Serials 5646, 5647; Washington, 1910). A chronological list of treaties is in Hunter Miller, ed., Until 1871, following the precedent established by the British Government and the American colonial governments, the United States negotiated treaties with Indian tribes. Indian treaties were ratified by the Senate, but the signatures of the Indians were regarded as their full and final assent; consequently no ratifications were exchanged. The Indian treaty file includes the original treaties, Senate ratifications, Presidential proclamations, and sometimes copies of messages of the President to Congress, copies of letters of instruction to Indian commissioners, and journals and correspondence of the commissioners. The treaties are arranged numerically and chronologically, and a card index is available in three parts: by date, by place of signing, and by name of tribe. The index includes references to pertinent documents in the miscellaneous letters received and the domestic letters of the Department of State (Record Group 59). Indian treaties were promulgated by publication in the session laws and the Statutes at Large. Texts of these treaties are assembled in Charles J. Kappler, comp., Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties (vols. 12, S. Doc. 319, 58 Cong., 2 sess., Serials 4623, 4624; vol. 3, S. Doc. 719, 62 Cong., 2 sess., Serial 6166; Washington, 1904, 1913). A chronological list of such treaties is in National Archives, List of Docu ments Concerning the Negotiation of Ratified Indian Treaties, 18011869, comp. by John H. Martin (Special List No. 6; Washington, 1949). Those negotiated 1861-65 are Nos. 315-351, p. 126-149. This publication lists for each treaty the documents in the Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Record Group 75) and the Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Interior (Record Group 48). The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution are referred to as the Civil War amendments because they dealt with fundamental questions of the war period. In the second session of the 36th Congress an attempt was made to employ the amending process to prevent the outbreak of war, when the proposed "Corwin amendment" was approved by Congress on Mar. 2, 1861. It prohibited any amendment to the Constitution abolishing or interfering with slavery in the States, but the secession movement was too far under way by that time to permit its ratification. Legislation adopted by Congress during the war freed Negro fugitives from the South who were the property of "rebels," abolished slavery in the District of Columbia and the Territories, and repealed the Fugitive Slave Acts. The Emancipation Proclamation was limited in effect, and its legality was disputed. The abolition of slavery by a number of border States, however, including West Virginia, Missouri, Maryland, and Tennessee, indicated that a Constitutional amendment could be ratified. Congress therefore by a joint resolution of Feb. 1, 1865 (13 Stat. 567), referred to the States a proposed amendment by which slavery was abolished in the Nation. When a sufficient number of States had ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, the Secretary of State issued a certificate of ratification on Dec. 18, 1865 (13 Stat. 774). Though at last given his freedom, the Negro did not yet have the rights of citizenship or suffrage. Some Southern States passed acts imposing legal inferiority upon Negroes and establishing a system of labor contracts that was practically slavery. A joint resolution proposing the Fourteenth Amendment, of which the first section guaranteed the rights of citizenship, was adopted by Congress on June 16, 1866 (14 Stat. 358). Its ratification was proclaimed by the Secretary of State on July 28, 1868 (15 Stat. 708). Discriminatory laws restricting Negro suffrage in the South after the war resulted in congressional proposals, from Dec. 1865 onward, for another Constitutional amendment. Finally a joint resolution of Feb. 27, 1869 (15 Stat. 346), proposed an amendment declaring that "The right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." When the Secretary of State issued the certificate of ratification on Mar. 30, 1870 (16 Stat. 1131), the Fifteenth Amendment became a part of the Constitution. The records relating to the ratification of each of the amendments are in separate volumes, in which they are grouped alphabetically by name of State. They include copies of letters from the Secretary of State to the Governors of the States, transmitting the joint resolutions of Congress and requesting action on them by the State legislatures, original letters of acknowledgment from the Governors and letters of transmittal from them with the ratifications in the form of joint resolutions of the State legislatures, and some messages of the Governors to the legislatures. Some of the ratifications are in longhand on ordinary paper, others are engrossed on parchment, and some are printed; all are certified. Rejections take the same varied forms. Communications from the Secretary of State informing Congress of the progress of ratification are also in these volumes. The certificate of ratification by which the amendment was proclaimed to be in effect through publication in newspapers and in the statutes appears not only in the volume for each amendment but in a separate file of certificates. Texts of the joint resolutions of Congress, the resolutions of the State legislatures, the Governors' transmittal letters, and the certificates of ratification issued by the Secretary of State appear in U. s. Department of State, Documentary History of the Constitution of the United States of America, 17861870, comp. by Andrew H. Allen, 2:516-897 (Washington, 1894-1905. 5 vols.). The compilation does not include the ratification of every State. Delaware, for instance, did |