over. When the Senate was able to muster a quorum on April 6, 1789, it appointed Charles Thomson to notify George Washington of its unanimous choice for President. His letter of April 24, 1789, reporting the delivery of the certificate to the President was the last official act of Secretary Thomson, whose service had begun on September 5, 1774. It must have been with his approval, and very likely with his advice, that Congress resolved on July 6 that a "correct copy" of the Constitution be prefixed to the laws. Meanwhile the pattern of the new government was taking shape. The election of Samuel A. Otis as Secretary of the Senate on April 8, preceded by the election of John Beckley as Clerk of the House of Representatives on April 1, showed that Congress intended to be self-contained as a legislative organ, without chancery functions. Thomson's custodial functions as "keeper of the records and papers of the late said Congress" were remitted for disposition to a joint committee of which three members were appointed by the Senate on April 13 and three by the House of Representatives on April 29. On July 23, 1789, Charles Thomson sent his resignation as Secretary of Congress to President Washington. On July 24 the President accepted it and directed 10 that his deputy, Roger Alden of Connecticut, receive from Charles Thomson the records of the United States in Congress assembled.

Another secretariat of the United States in Congress assembled was transferred to the new regime. Foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation were handled by committee until a Department of Foreign Affairs was created by a resolution of January 10, 1781, over which Robert R. Livingston took charge on October 20. Regulations adopted February 22, 1782, designated him "Secretary to the United States of America, for the department of foreign affairs," thus making the office distinct from that of Secretary of Congress. John Jay succeeded to the office on December 21, 1784, and like Secretary Thomson continued in office after March 2, 1789. The office was carried over by the act of July 27, 1789 (1 Stat. 28), which established "an Executive department, to be denominated the Department of Foreign Affairs," defined its functions, and stipulated that the Secretary for the Department, when appointed, shall forthwith “be entitled to have the custody and charge of all records, books and papers in the office of the Secretary for the Department of Foreign Affairs, heretofore established by the United States in Congress assembled." John Jay continued in office without appointment or commission.

10 Washington wrote to Thomson:

"You will be pleased, Sir, to deliver the Books, Records and Papers of the late Congress, the Great Seal of the Federal Union, and the Seal of the Admiralty, to Mr. Roger Alden, the late Deputy Secretary of Congress; who is requested to take charge of them until further directions shall be given." 30 The Writings of George Washington, 359. Thomson's resignation and Alden's receipt are in Papers of the Continental Congress, No. 49, 215, 223.

TRANSFER OF THE RECORDS

The functions which Thomson had adumbrated in his letter to Morris and which were those considered by the joint committee appointed April 13 and 29 were lodged in the Department of Foreign Affairs, renamed significantly the Department of State by the act of September 15, 1789, entitled “an act to provide for the safe-keeping of the acts, records and seal of the United States, and for other purposes" (1 Stat. 68). By denominating the ranking Executive department the Department of State and its principal officer the Secretary of State, this law assigned to it the ministerial functions of Federal relations with the States and created a channel of communication for the President with them, including affixing of the Great Seal to the important papers of the United States. (The States individually in their sphere of action now have Secretaries of State with corresponding duties.) The law provided in detail for the Secretary of State receiving and publishing laws of Congress, distributing them in printed form and preserving the originals. A further resolution of September 23, 1789, instructed the Secretary of State to collect and maintain the statutes of the States. The Great Seal of the United States in Congress assembled, which was adopted on June 30, 1782, on Thomson's design, became the Great Seal of the United States in the custody of the Secretary of State, to be struck only with the special warrant of the President. The Department was assigned a seal of its own, which would authenticate copies of any government document.

With respect to the transfer of the records with which this study is concerned, the act of September 15, 1789, provided

That the said Secretary shall forthwith after his appointment be entitled to have the custody and charge of the said seal of the United States, and also of all books, records and papers, remaining in the office of the late Secretary of the United States in Congress assembled; and such of the said books, records and papers as may appertain to the Treasury department, or War department, shall be delivered over to the principal officers in the said departments respectively, as the President of the United States shall direct.

This act provided for the consolidation of the old records in the new Government and added to the duties of the Department of State a series of functions involving Federal-State relations. The organization of departments to succeed to committees of the old Congress enabled President Washington to appoint a Secretary of the Treasury (Alexander Hamilton) on September 11, 1789; a Secretary of War (Henry Knox) on September 12; and Attorney General (Edmund Randolph) and a Postmaster General (Samuel Osgood) on September 26. The books, records and papers pertaining to these departments could therefore be distributed from the files of the late Secretary of Congress who, it may be remarked, had developed the methods and procedures of his

office virtually on his own initiative and without instructions.

Transfer of the "books, records and papers remaining in the office of the late secretary of the United States in Congress assembled" provided for in the act of September 15, 1789, occurred when the Department of State was without an official head. After the Department of Foreign Affairs was established by the act of July 27, 1789, John Jay served as Secretary without appointment or commission. Jay was commissioned the first Chief Justice and Thomas Jefferson the first Secretary of State on September 26, 1789; but Jefferson was then in France and did not take the oath of office until March 22, 1790. Meanwhile Jay looked after affairs. He defined his status in a letter of October 7, 1789," to the Spanish chargé d'affaires: "Circumstances having rendered it necessary that I should continue, though not officially, to superintend the Department of foreign affairs.' Both Washington and Jay were aware of the importance of the records, for Washington in notifying Jefferson of his appointment wrote on October 13, 1789: "Those Papers which more properly appertain to the Office of ForeignAffairs are under the superintendence of Mr. Jay, who has been so obliging as to continue his good-offices, and they are in the immediate charge of Mr. Remson." 12

Under the "superintendence" of John Jay, the books, records and papers remaining in the office of the late Secretary of Congress were transferred to the new Government by a personnel arrangement. Henry Remsen, Jr. of New York, who had been elected Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs by the old Congress on March 2, 1784, went over with John Jay as chief clerk in the Department of Foreign Affairs, the place being established by Sec. 2 of the act of July 27, 1789. In accepting Charles Thomson's resignation as Secretary of Congress, President Washington directed his deputy, Roger Alden of Connecticut, to receive from him the records of the old Congress. According to the act, when there was a vacancy in the office of Secretary-and Jay never officially held that office-the chief clerk "shall during such vacancy have the charge and custody of all records, books and papers appertaining to the said department." Roger Alden by the President's direction of July 25, 1789,

11 Cited in Hunter Miller, Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, I, 189.

12 30 The Writings of George Washington, 447. In the same letter the President spoke for the transfer of Alden to the Department of State:

"Unwilling as I am to interfere in the direction of your choice of Assistants, I shall only take the liberty of observing to you that, from warm recommendations which I have received in behalf of Roger Alden, Esqur., Assistant Secretary to the late Congress, I have placed all the Papers thereunto belonging under his care."

Alden's appointment to the Department of State, involving the deposit of the papers, antedated Jefferson's assumption of office as Secretary of State, which he hesitated to take on account of the "principal mass of domestic administration” it entailed. The President seems to have satisfied him on that point by his letter of Jan. 21, 1790, ibid., 509.

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had custody of the material to be transferred to the department by the act of September 15. Toward the close of the year 1789 Remsen resigned as chief clerk, taking over as chief of the Foreign Division and by January 1, 1790, Roger Alden bore the title and was acting as chief clerk. Alden's custodianship of the old papers thus coincided with his custody of those already in the Department of State. He resigned on July 25, 1790, leaving the files in his charge in the Department. Remsen resumed the office of chief clerk at least by September 10, 1790. "All books, records and papers remaining in the office of the late Secretary of the United States in Congress assembled" were in the Department of State as the act of September 15, 1789, said they should be.

One addition was made. On March 19, 1796, Secretary of State Timothy Pickering gave President Washington a receipt for the papers of the Federal Convention which on September 17, 1787, had directed him as President of the Convention "to retain the Journal and other papers, subject to the order of Congress, if ever formed under the Constitution."

These archives,13 though used in the Department of State, long remained in disorder. Between 1789 and 1816 the Department of State occupied 12 buildings, 1 in New York, 5 in Philadelphia (with three removals to Trenton, N.J., from August to November to avoid yellow fever), and 6 in Washington. In 1810 they were kept in four garret rooms and in 1814 were evacuated to Leesburg, Va., when the British occupied Washington. By the 1820's they were being transcribed for such compilations as Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution by Jared Sparks. In 1835 the Department prepared a catalog in 194 subject items, of which No. I covers 39 volumes of the "rough" Journals, 1774-89. this form as the Papers of the Continental Congress they were transferred to the Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, by Executive Order of May 23, 1906, and to the National Archives in 1952, with additions.

In

No formal transmission of the text of the Constitution of the United States of America from the United States in Congress assembled was made, if it not be accepted that Roger Alden's inclusion of the record book, "Ratifications of the Constitution" in his transfer of papers pursuant to the act of September 15, 1789, is so regarded. That transfer did include the ratifications of the Constitution, except Rhode Island's which was not given until May 29, 1790, and which was entered in the record book while Alden was chief clerk of the Department of State.

13 See "The Continental Congress Papers: Their History, 1789–1952” by Carl L. Lokke, National Archives Accessions, No. 51, June 1954, 1-19.

COPIES AVAILABLE TO CONGRESS

Congress itself saw to it that the United States of America had an authenticated text of the Constitution under which it exstied. The matter must have seemed both obvious and incidental at the time. The Congress of the United States was very definitely the successor in the state, and extensively in its personnel, to the Congress of the Articles of Confederation which had brought the new Constitution into effect. Charles Thomson, Secretary of Congress, had printed on September 29 and October 3, 1787, 200 copies of the text of the Constitution for submission to the States for ratification and for working copies. Of that print—the one here reproduced-probably all of the old Congress had personal copies, and there were 16 Senators in 1789 who were in that Congress and 31 Congressmen, or 47 members out of a then total of 83.14 Very likely the other 36 members of Congress had copies also, if the supply held out.

Members of Congress also had the "Ratifications of the Constitution", pages 1 to 179, up to the resolution of September 13, 1788, in book form. The Continental Congress by resolution of April 29, 1785, provided for publication and distribution of its printed Journals, 4 copies of which went to the Department of Foreign Affairs. Volume XIII of the Journals of the United States in Congress Assembled, November 5, 1787-November 3, 1788, of which 447 copies were bound in March 1789, contained that part of "Ratifications of the Constitution" as an appendix. A motion of the House of Representatives on May 28, 1789, concurred in by the Senate on June 8 provided that members “not yet furnished with a set of Journals of the late Congress, shall, on application to the keeper of the records and papers of the said late Congress, be entitled to receive a complete set of such journals.' Volume XIII contained, editorially as an Appendix, untitled, to the resolution of September 13, 1788, at the end in 94 printed pages a copy of the manuscript volume "Ratifications of the Constitution,' pages I to 179, that is, up to that resolution. These four documents are at pages xxxi-xlvi. The Journals were regarded as the official record of proceedings in both the old and new Congresses, and the distribution of Volume XIII under the resolution of May 28/June 8, 1789, may well have been considered by Charles Thomson as "keeper of the records and papers of the late said Congress" to have been a formal communication to the existing Congress of its

14 North Carolina and Rhode Island were not yet represented.

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15 1 Annals of Congress, col. 46. The first act of Congress was approved June 1, 1789, and its existence as a statute directed attention to authentication and publication of acts of Congress. On June 2 Congress provided for printing the acts and journals and their distribution to officers of the Government and the States and on June 4 for the printing within 10 days of certified copies of laws and their distribution to the "supreme Executives in the several States." The resolution of May 28/June 8 evidently was intended to complete this impartment of action.