The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-07-31

the books being completed, this board
was dissolved by the Secretary of War,
and the unfinished volumes handed over
to army officer again.
From 1881 to 1898 more than one hun
dred persons were employees in the War
Records office. 1t has been a gigantic
undertaking, but after all has repaid its
cost. It is largely by means of this vast
Government publication, involving such
enormous OUTLAWS and so many years of
painstaking labor, that the true great
ness and patriotism of the people on both
sides of the line are now more fully I'M
derstood and appreciated, and the ami
mosities of the war days greatly allayed.
The first series, with a set of maps, of
which there are thousands, deals prin-
cipally with the battles and campaigns,
and includes official reports, orders, re-
turns, letters and Geographic dispatches
on every conceivable subject relating
thereto. The second series embodies the
same sort of documents relating to pris-
oners of war and State. The third series
embodies the official calls for troops and
the documents covering the history of
the drafts, organization of armies and
related subjects on the Union side The
fourth series embodies similar matters on
the Confederate side. There is a copious
index with each book, besides which there
10 " ne the general 1nQeX TO the whole.
Congress provided for the issue of an
edition of 1000 copies of each separate
volume the greater number of which
were distributed through designations
made by Senators and Representatives.
The beneficiaries have been receiving the
BOOKS for twenty years at an average
rate of about six volumes per annum.
AS more than 1850, 900 books in the aggre-
gate have been printed and thus dis
tributed, large force has been constant
ly required for the mailing service alone
ever since 1880, work which has been
done in the War Department A certain
portion were reserved for sale at cost,
and each executive department of the
Government also received a complement
| All the sets of free distribution were
| long ago exhausted, but the public press
ure for the work still continues. Con-
gresS has already been importuned to re-
print the entire set, but it will hardly dc
| so. Nearly every public library in the
| country of any consequence has been
supplied with a set of the Rebellion rec
| ords
, Many people suppose the records are a
running history of the Civil War; written
by competent historians appointed by the
| Government. They are nothing of the
sort. Not line was written by the
compilers, other than footnotes or head
| ings, explanatory of the documents The
War Records so-called are collection OF
all the accessible official documents
whether reports, returns, letters, tele-
1 grams, or what not, relating to the re-
bellion, arranged in chronological order
in the sequence of events.
They are printed exactly as written
| the compilers merely correcting bad
spelling and subjecting them to general
| rule of punctuation and address. They
were not otherwise edited. Occasionally
a foot note is ventured to explain some
obscurity, or reference which otherwise
would not be understood. The work 5
great feature is that the documents re-
| lating to a given event like Gettysburg,
for instance, are all brought together. II
is therefore a work of enormous value tc
the historian of today and for all time
as well as to the country, but it is not g
history in itself in the common accepta,
ton of the term, otherwise than as the
documents themselves tell the story OF
great events which in fact they don
Y. Sun.