the Official Records." This project of selection and publication had been inaugurated in 1864, carried on with indifferent success until 1866, and then permitted to languish until 1874. In that year a fund was provided by an act of June 23 (18 Stat. 222), for its continuance under the control of the Secretary of War, and a special clerical force was set up to carry on the work. This force at first was nominally under the direction of the Chief Clerk of the War Department, but the Adjutant General exercised a good deal of control over it, since he had charge of the records upon which much of the compilation was based. On May 3, 1875, and again on July 25, 1876, attempts were made to reorganize the work by placing it under specific civilian clerks who were to act as "superintendents. Since these men, however, were expected to supervise the compilation in addition to their regular duties and without extra pay, the results were superficial and unsatisfactory. During this period the group working on the project apparently had no consistent title, although it is referred to at least once in correspondence as the "Rebellion Records Division." The last of the civilian "superintendents" resigned on Dec. 8, 1877. On Dec. 14, 1877, Capt. Robert N. Scott was detailed to take charge of the editing and compilation, and he established a definite organization directly responsible to the Secretary of War. This was called at first the Publication Office, War Records, but was later and more generally known as the War Records Office. In 1880 some attempt was made to centralize control of the original records being used in the compilation, but it does not appear that the War Department's Archive Office, which had custody of the Confederate records, was ever actually transferred to or merged with the War Records Office. The latter continued under a single head until, by an act of Mar. 2, 1889 (25 Stat. 970), the work came to "be conducted, under the Secretary of War, by a board of three persons, an Army officer and two civilians. The board was dissolved, however, in 1898; by an act of Feb. 24, 1899 (30 Stat. 871), the War Records Office was merged in the Record and Pension Office, effective July 1 of that year. It continued thereafter as the Publication Branch. Although the last volume of the Official Records was published in 1901, the Publication Branch existed for several years afterward. Its interest, however, was not confined to its former work, and the use of the office mark of the War Records Office appears to have been discontinued after 1903. The War of the Rebellion; a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, 1881-1901. 130 "serials" comprising 70 vols., general index, and atlas); reports of the volumes published, in the annual reports of the Secretary of War, 1877-1902 (referred to by different headings and after 1899 printed with the report of the Record and Pension Office). The published Official Records (available also on microfilm as National Archives Microcopy 262) are organized in orders, reports and returns of the respondence, orders, reports and Record Group 94. --Systematic filing and indexing of correspondence of the War Records Office did not begin until the reorganization of the agency in 1877, although some letter books were kept earlier. Thereafter, several improvements in recordkeeping were made, such as the inauguration of a subject card index in 1894 (now missing except for letters A-Ch and R-Sn) and the separation, about 1882, of the papers pertaining to the sale and distribution of the Official Records from those pertaining to its preparation and publication. These files as finally organized consist primarily of manuscript copies of letters sent, 1875-82 (2 vols.), with additional press copies, 1878-94 (17 vols.); and letters received, 1877-94 (5 ft.). This correspondence was with officials, including former officials, of the Federal Government and of State governments, the Southern Historical Society, and private individuals; it relates to the assembling and selection of documents for publication. There is a separate series of press copies of letters sent, 1892-95, regarding the Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies; and an indexed file of general correspondence, 1894-1903 (1 1/2 ft.), which after 1899 concerns the correction of errors in the published volumes of Official Records and the preparation of the general index. Also in separate series are letters received from Union officers, 1875-77 (3 in.), in reply to War Department requests for reports missing from the files. As distinguished from records created by the War Records Office, there are also in the Office's files documents that originated elsewhere in the War Department. Some of these were borrowed for the publication and not returned; others were sent co the Office for its retention. (There is a 2-volume index of letters received by the Secretary of War, 1862-65, that were forwarded to the Office.) The Confederate records were made available to the War Records Office by the Archive Office and were all returned; but many of the other borrowed documents were retained and some were intermingled with documents contributed from private sources. These retained records include the "Union battle reports, " 1861-65 (50 ft.), consisting of both those published in the Official Records and those not; selections from the original records of most of the 25 Army corps, 1861-65 (6 ft.); selections from the original records of many geographical military commands, 1861-65 (31 ft.); and "miscellaneous war records, " 1861-65 (2 ft.), containing papers relating to the command of Brig. Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys. Also among the records are photographic prints and photolithographs of military installations in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, annotated for publication in the Atlas; manuscript maps from which plates were prepared for the Atlas; and related materials. Records of the distribution and sale of the Official Records comprise a register of letters received, 1893-94; a register and papers relating to distribution of the published volumes, 1895-97; papers relating to distribution to Members of the 56th and 57th Congresses, 1903-4 (3 in.); reports on or letters about official transactions concerning sales and distribution; and card records of remittances received, 1895-98 (3 in.). Earlier records of the distribution, commenced in 1882, were kept by the War Department Library but do not appear to be extant. The extant administrative records of the War Records Office comprise attendance records of employees, 1883-90; payrolls, 1887-94; and account books. National Archives, Preliminary Inventory [No. 17] of the Records of the Adjutant General's Office, comp. by Lucille H. Pendell and Elizabeth Bethel, p. 132-138 (Washington, 1949). RECORD AND PENSION OFFICE By orders of the Secretary of War of July 3 and 16, 1889, the divisions of the Adjutant General's Office that kept the muster rolls and other military records of volunteers were consolidated with the Record and Pension Division of the Surgeon General's Office. Since 1886 this Division, under Capt. and Asst. Surg. Fred C. Ainsworth, had been using a new "indexrecord card system" to solve the problem presented by the dilapidation of Civil War medical records through use in adjudicating claims and to speed up such work. The hospital records transcribed on index-record cards consisted of "more than twenty thousand registers, each pertaining to some particular hospital or command, and all of them together containing more than ten million separate and distinct entries." Because each card to which information was transcribed not merely indexed a certain record but was itself a reproduction of at least part of the record, the term index-record card was aptly chosen. The new office organized under Ainsworth in 1899 was the Record and Pension Division of the Office of the Secretary of War. Its work embraced "subjects of every conceivable nature relating to the service of organizations, officers, and enlisted men, including inquiries for information from records dating from the earliest history of the Government," and its operations in the first year required 75 rooms on 4 floors of the State, War, and Navy Building. In 1890, after the carding of the medical records was virtually completed, the application of the same system to other military records was begun. Histories of volunteers were compiled from company muster rolls (normally made out ever 2 months), company and regimental monthly returns, company morning report books, company and regimental descriptive books, and other records. Since the rolls and returns were frail and torn after 25 years of constant use, measures to prevent their further deterioration were imperative. "From a purely business standpoint," Ainsworth wrote in his fiscal year 1890 report, and aside from all sentimental considerations, these records are simply invaluable, and the child is not yet born who will live to see the day when reference to them will no longer be necessary." The "only feasible method" for preservation and ready use, he believed, was to copy each entry on every record on a separate slip or card, then to arrange these cards by regiment, next by individual name, and finally in chronological order. All the cards relating to a soldier would thus fall together and would show his history from "muster in" to termination of service. This activity was established permanently as the Record and Pension Office of the War Department by an act of May 9, 1892 (27 Stat. 27). The Office was organized in two distinct branches. One of these, concerned with current business, had 12 divisions; the other, the "Tenth Street Branch," in the old Ford's Theater, had 4 divisions and was concerned with reproducing the records of volunteer troops by the index-record card system. The "Ford's Theater disaster" of June 9, 1893 (the collapse of parts of the floors of the second and third stories, resulting in 22 deaths), interrupted the carding; and in 1894 the 16 divisions of the Office were reduced to 7, including the restored "Tenth Street Branch" and the "Seventeenth Street Branch," for repairing and consolidating records. An order of the Secretary of War, May 15, 1894, transferred to the Record and Pension Office the general returns of the Army relating wholly or in part to the volunteer forces; records relating to the appointment, commissioning, and personnel of general and staff officers of these forces; and "all records, files, books, manuscripts, orders, returns, or correspondence in any Bureau that pertain exclusively or principally to the volunteer forces of any war or the officers and enlisted men thereof." Upon receipt of these records steps were taken to apply to them the index-record card system adopted for the other records of the volunteer forces. The same order transferred the "Confederate archives," which were eventually to be carded also. The work of the Office continued as one of the functions of the Military Secretary's Office, which was established by an act of Apr. 23, 1904 (33 Stat. 262), to consolidate the Adjutant General's Office with the Record and Pension Office. A previous requirement, by an act of Feb. 25, 1903 (32 Stat. 884), for compiling a complete roster of the officers and enlisted men of the Union and Confederate armies intensified the effort to complete the index-record cards for Confederate military service. To supplement the information in muster rolls and other records of Confederate troops and in Federal records of Confederate prisoners of war, arrangements were made with the Governors of former Confederate States to borrow any records of Confederate troops that were in State custody. Historical societies and other custodians were similarly requested to lend appropriate records. Not pertinent to the purpose of this Guide are the circumstances and effects of the transfer to the Record and Pension Office, from elsewhere in the War Department and from other executive departments, of records of wars before the Civil War and those of the Spanish-American War. Annual reports of the Division, the Office, the Military Secretary, and the Adjutant General, to 1912, appended to those of the Secretary of War, especially those for fiscal years 1892 (H. Ex. Doc. 1, pt. 2, 52 Cong., 2 sess., Serial 3077) and 1905 (H. Doc. 2, 58 Cong., 3 sess., Se rial 4781); Siert F. Riepma, "A Soldier-Archivist and His Records; Major General Fred C. Ainsworth," American Archivist, 4:178-187 (July 1941); Mabel E. Deutrich, Struggle for Supremacy; the Career of General Ainsworth (Washington, Public Affairs Press, 1962). Record Group 94. --The principal series of carded Union records--pertaining to individual members of Civil War volunteer organizations (13,268 ft.)--contains information copies from such original records as muster rolls, returns, descriptive books, and morning reports. The arrangement by State, then by arm of service, then numerically by regiment, and then alphabetically by soldier's name, permits the inclusion within each regimental file of a pertinent "record of events." Use of this series is facilitated by a general index, also on cards (1, 027 ft.), arranged by State and thereunder by soldier's name, with separate groups of cards for the following miscellaneous volunteer organizations: U. S. Sharp Shooters; Signal Corps; U. S. Volunteers; Confederate prisoners of war who enlisted in the U. S. service; Capt. Turner's Company of Volunteer Prisoners; Veteran Reserve Corps; Brigade Bands; Departmental Corps; Indian Home Guards; enlisted men of the U. S. Army transferred to the Mississippi Flotilla, Feb. 1862; Pioneer Brigades (Army of the Cumberland); Varner's Battalion of Infantry; and U. S. Colored Troops. Carded medical records for enlisted and noncommissioned men of the Regular Army are in a series beginning in 1821 and ending in 1884 (318 ft.); and those for members of volunteer organizations are in a single series (1, 431 ft.) covering both the Mexican and Civil Wars; these show the treatment of men in hospitals and their disposition after hospitalization. Other series of carded medical records pertain to members of the Marine Corps treated in Army hospitals, 1821-84 (3 in.); the Gunboat and Naval Service, 1861-65 (2 ft.); the Pioneer Corps, 1861-65 (6 in.); and hospital stewards, noncommissioned officers, and musicians, 1821-84 (4 1/2 ft.). There are also carded records relating to Civil War staff officers (35 ft.) and carded service records of hospital attendants, matrons, and nurses, 1861-65 (36 ft.). Related records of the Record and Pension Office, useful in supplementing or substantiating the information carded, include an extensive "document file" of correspondence concerning the military service of volunteer soldiers, with abstracts on record cards and a card index; a record (1 vol.) of books transferred from the Adjutant General's Office to the Record and Pension Office in June 1894; an index to correspondence relating to the correction of rolls and other records; and lists of the records of military organizations carded, including organizations of the Confederate Army. "Ainsworth's Bible," a scrapbook containing general information on the history of the Record and Pension Office, is file 2, 637, 718 in the "document file" of the Adjutant General's Office, 1890-1917. National Archives, Preliminary Inventory [No. 17] of the Records of the Adjutant General's Office, comp. by Lucille H. Pendell and Elizabeth Bethel, p. 97-128 (Washington, 1949). Record Group 109. --Although allocated to this record group because of their relationship to the War Department Collection of Confederate Records, the carded records showing the military, naval, and marine service of Confederate officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted men are also postwar creations of the Record and Pension Office. They are mentioned here, therefore, although they are described in the accompanying Guide to the Archives of the Government of the Confederate States of America. MISCELLANEOUS WAR DEPARTMENT COMMISSIONS Besides the military commissions that acted as courts (see discussion of these under Bureau of Military Justice, above), many special commis |