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A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875
Journals of the Continental Congress --PREFATORY NOTE
The Congress that convened in New York City, January 11, 1785, did not assemble with any noticeable amount of patriotic enthusiasm. The matters demanding its attention were, largely, legacies of unsettled difficulties bequeathed by the Congress of 1784 and, although these difficulties were examined and threshed over anew, few decisions of moment were made and few important matters settled in 1785.
Many claims of individuals against the general government were settled but many more were postponed, and the large question of the accounts of the States with the United States was advanced very little toward a satisfactory balance.
The important domestic problem of the western territory, its government and the mode of disposing of its western lands, consumed much time, but made slow progress. As these western lands were almost the sole reliance of Congress in its struggle to obtain revenue, the development of this question and the different pressures exerted are worthy of critical analysis.
The prohibition of slavery in the early drafts of the ordinance for the government of the western territory is to be credited to the Congress of 1785, some Indian treaties of importance were negotiated, and the national debt was once again clumsily handled.
It is not quite fair to criticise the Congress sharply, for its difficulties and deficiencies were not always of its own creation and it was far from being an incompetent body. The lack of representation, a matter over which it had no control, was responsible for much of its impotence, though the clogging method of voting by States was its own responsibility.
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In foreign affairs the negotiations with the Barbary Powers and the navigation of the Mississippi stand out as major matters, though the little diplomatic tempest in a tea-pot which arose over Captain Stanhope's correspondence with the Governor of Massachusetts furnishes a refreshing gleam of humor in an otherwise rather drab record of official governmental proceedings.
As the year wore on, the Congress appeared more and more plainly as a board or committee of receivers whose primary duty lay in winding up the affairs of an expiring business. Some of its energy, perhaps too much, was expended upon its own internal affairs and of these the most significant was the regulation of the office of the Secretary of Congress. The inside history of the culmination of this struggle is only partially disclosed in the Journals, and though the basis of the criticism was sound and the complaints against the office well-founded, the ordinance which Congress adopted for the regulation of the Secretary's office did not improve the situation to any noticeable extent.
Because of Secretary Thomson's change of method of keeping the record it was necessary to amend the original editorial plan of printing the Journal, or rest content with publishing only a partial and therefore misleading record of the proceedings of the Congress.
At the end of September, 1779, Secretary Charles Thomson introduced a new plan of record. On the 24th of that month he opened a Despatch Book in which he entered the letters received or submitted to Congress and the boards, offices, or committees to which they were referred. The regular proceedings of Congress, the Journal, even from the beginning, had not been kept by Thomson with that complete attention to detail which we so ardently wish for to-day and this new plan, undoubtedly the result of criticism by some of the Delegates, while it added greatly to the completeness of the
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record, enabled the Secretary to curtail the entries of the regular proceedings in the Journal.
By the first of January, 1781, Thomson seems to have been completely converted to the advantage of supplemental records and on that day he inaugurated another record called the Committee Book. In this he entered, day by day, all the matters referred to committees and government departments, gave the personnel of the committees and, more often than not, noted the date on which reports were rendered. At the same time he continued the Despatch Book record.
It is impossible to understand the Journal without recourse to these two additional records. Also the Resolve Book and the Secretary's Reports Book must be used. The entries are as much a part of the official record of the proceedings of Congress as the Journal itself, but the form in which these additional books were kept makes it difficult to introduce their information smoothly into the Journal text.
With this year 1785 close attention is paid, for the first time, to every one of the additional record books of the Secretary and the result has been decidedly gratifying. The text of the Journal proper, with the footnotes, gives the absolute and complete record of each legislative day in so far as it is possible to reconstruct it.
The principal departures in this year of 1785 from the former editorial plan are: (1) The printing of the committee and other reports on the days they were first read in Congress and following them through to the final adoptions, instead of printing, as heretofore, the adopted action only and endeavoring to explain the legislative development in a footnote; in many cases this was impossible. (2) The inclusion of the complete record of the Committee and other books under their proper dates.
Another departure from the former editorial plan has been to state briefly, in the footnotes, the subject of the paper there referred to.
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The text of the Journal is continued with type and indentations as heretofore. The committee and other record-book entries of legislative action are entered in the footnotes and, as far as it is mechanically possible, the entries for each day are kept below the text of the Journal for that date. These various committee-book entries should, properly, have been entered by Thomson on the Journal itself and his keeping the record in the form he did was one of the causes of dissatisfaction which gave rise to the ordinance for the regulation of his office. By printing these record-book entries in the form devised as the best possible way of reproducing a complicated manuscript record in type, it is now possible to follow every piece of legislative business step by step as it progressed through Congress.
In a few instances, in the early part of 1785 it has been necessary to include matter that properly belonged in 1784 but was not there printed under the former editorial plan of entry under the date of the final action. An example of this will be seen under March 7, 1785, in the return of Benjamin Franklin to America, and under July 12 in lined type will be found an illustrative example of the way in which Thomson carried his Committee Book record.
Some discretion was used in printing the texts of communications read in Congress. Where such communications were mere letters of transmittal or of distinctly minor character a description of them was considered sufficient.
In nearly every case in the bibliographic notes it will be found helpful to refer to the Journal of those dates.
The lists of committees have not been deemed necessary or advantageous as the committees of the week are noted on the dates of their appointment, and all other committees are duly entered as they were created.
This renewal of the publication of the Journals, after a lapse of some years, was made possible by the patriotic
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generosity of Mr. William Evarts Benjamin, who, in addition to the Benjamin endowment, arranged a subvention for the editorial and other work necessary for the preparation of copy for the printer. The proofs have been read by Dr. J. Franklin Jameson of the Benjamin Chair of American History in the Library of Congress, and Chief of the Manuscript Division, and the index has been prepared by that Division.
John C. Fitzpatrick.
Herbert Putnam
Librarian of Congress
February, 1933.
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