or as part of an imperial system. Among the many subjects need-. ing investigation are: the various provincial financial systems; the systems of land grants; the financial relations of the colonies to the mother country; the rise of manufactures; and many questions connected with the slave trade. More closely connected with imperial history are such questions as the relation between attempts to develop Scottish commerce and the Union of 1707; the effect of confining enumerated colonial exports to the mother country, in the light of the conditions actually prevailing in business life; the political history of the laws of trade and navigation; the English fiscal system in its relation to colonial commerce; and intra-imperial financial relations.

Professor Charles M. Andrews of Johns Hopkins University discussed the documentary records of British colonial administration. He took up first the material accumulated by the Privy Council, then the papers of the secretaries of state and the departmental records, and finally the various miscellaneous collections in the Public Record Office. He attempted to point out not only the significance of these records as helping to solve many of the problems mentioned by Professor Osgood and Dr. Beer, but also their importance in throwing light upon the actual working of the British machinery of control in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesa subject largely neglected by students of colonial history. He explained, as far as is possible at the present time, the nature of the changes now being made in the classification of the Home Office and Colonial Office papers, and showed the relation of these changes to the old system of reference. He also mentioned many undertakings, in the way of compiling series and lists, that might well gain the attention of American students.

Professor Charles H. Hull of Cornell University called attention to the fact that the same sort of governmental and commercial problems were presented in the West Indian colonies as in the American colonies. The West Indies should be intimately associated with the history of the American colonies in making any comprehensive study of the British colonial system. The islands were on the route of commerce between the colonies and the mother country, and such products as sugar, cotton and tobacco were a great source of revenue; they had a vigorous political life, and most of the controversies and questions which came up in the American colonies-such as the struggle between the governors

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and the anti-royal party, and commercial difficulties-also came up in the West Indies.

Professor Claude H. Van Tyne of the University of Michigan discussed the work which the general historian would wish to have done in the field of the Revolutionary War. The military and personal history is the most completely done, though studies of the activities of a number of members of the Continental Congress are needed. The finances of states and the financial relations of Congress with them need much investigation, and the industrial history is almost untouched. Other worthy subjects of study are: the administration of governors and the factional politics within the states; the relations of the governors and legislatures of states with Congress; state constitutional conventions and the conflicting forces. therein; interstate quarrels; the policy of Congress as to the use of Indians, and the work of a number of its committees. The social history of the Revolutionary period is an especially unworked field, wherein the religious changes, the results of the changes in land tenure, the amelioration of the criminal code, are much in need of study.

The conference on research in Southern History was presided over by President Lyon G. Tyler of the College of William and Mary. Mr. Douglas S. Freeman of the Southern Historical Manuscripts Commission spoke on the official materials for the history of the Confederacy, the destruction or recovery of records and documents, and the nature and scope of the collections now known. Professor C. H. Ambler read a paper on Political Conditions in Virginia on the Eve of Secession. After some discussion of the efforts made in educational, religious and economic matters, during the years immediately preceding secession, to unite all Virginia in the cause of slavery and of Southern solidarity, Mr. Ambler showed by a detailed description of the political contests of 1859 and 1860, the struggles of Henry A. Wise and R. M. T. Hunter, how the sectional interests of eastern and western Virginia made it impossible to hold the state permanently to united action.

Miss Julia A. Flisch of the University of Wisconsin, in a paper on the Common People of the Old South, deprecated the habit of magnifying unduly the influence of aristocracy in the South, and advocated a fuller attention to the influence and power of the democratic masses, a body of population having greater persistence and a stronger reserved force than the higher classes. It did not follow blindly the leadership of the latter but on the contrary deter

mined in great measure the limits and conditions to which the leaders must conform.

In the discussion which followed the reading of these papers, Mr. Thomas M. Owen of Montgomery spoke of the work of Southern historical societies and departments, Professor Turner of the need of deeper study of the social, religious and industrial history. of the Old South, President Tyler and Mr. C. G. Chamberlayne of the value of county and church records respectively.

Doubtless the most interesting session was that of the last evening, when, in the presence of a large audience, including many Confederate veterans of the Civil War, one of the great Virginia campaigns of that war was discussed from three different points of view-that of a Confederate brigadier-general, chief of ordnance in Longstreet's corps, that of a retired colonel in the United States. Army, Westpointer of 1865, and that of a major in the present General Staff and lecturer in the Army War College. The arrangement was that Grant's Conduct of the Wilderness Campaign should be discussed by General Edward P. Alexander, C.S.A., Lee's Conduct of the Wilderness Campaign by Colonel William R. Livermore, U. S. A. retired, and the Wilderness Campaign from our Present Point of View by Major Eben Swift, U. S. A. The occasion was not without dramatic interest. When the American Historical Association was founded, few would have thought that in twenty-five years, and when the Wilderness Campaign was only forty-five years in the past, it would have been possible for an audience of Northern and Southern scholars, in the capital of the Confederacy, to join in listening to such a discussion without a trace of mutual embarrassment or even the sense of strangeness.

General Alexander opened his narrative at the time when Grant took the aggressive in his campaign against Lee. Commenting upon the division of Grant's army, a part of which, the Army of the Potomac, was under Meade, and a part, the Ninth Corps, under Burnside, and upon the familiar evils of division, General Alexander declared his belief that, but for the delays resulting from an organization thus defective, Grant would have gone beyond the fields. both of the Wilderness and of Spottsylvania into the open country. In that case, there would have been no battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania but probably a battle on a line behind the North Anna. Grant virtually lost the first battle by his faulty organization; Lee won it by bringing Longstreet into the action just in the nick of time. It is a little surprising that Grant, having the initiative

and the greater force of artillery, did not make a greater effort to get himself clear of the Wilderness before he encountered Lee's army. Finding it where he did, he at once took the aggressive with such vigor that had he had sufficient daylight he would have made Lee regret his mistake in locating his supporting infantry under Longstreet behind his left flank instead of behind his right. General Alexander commented particularly on the fighting on the morning of May 12 in which the Union generals Cutler and Griffen reported their men to have been engaged for three or four hours. Comparison of some official reports that have been printed, and the strange absence of others, leads to the conjecture that the engagement was one of Union troops against Union troops.

Colonel Livermore, after a sketch of the general situation at the opening of the campaign, and a review of the combatants, Union and Confederate, whose force he estimated in the proportion of 100 to 60, entered upon a detailed account of the campaign, impossible to summarize briefly. The chief flaw which he found in Lee's brilliant strategy lay in the acceptance of the sharp salient at Spottsylvania Court House. That he fought chiefly behind intrenchments was indeed a great advantage, but it was an advantage due to his own superior skill. Lee's campaign was a most masterly one, and few campaigns of any commander afford a more profitable field of study for the military historian.

Major Swift illuminated his paper with many instructive comparisons. The battles of the present day are fought by soldiers. who shoot five times faster, five times farther, and five times more often than the soldiers who fought in the Wilderness Campaign. Grant's line of battle may be estimated, in the battle of the Wilderness, at thirteen men to each yard of front, Lee's at nine, while at Liao Yang the Japanese attacked with a front of about three and a half men to the yard. In length of duration and in the percentage of men killed the comparison is more nearly equal. The speaker showed how a modern campaign in such a terrain would probably be conducted. Of Lee's generalship, he declared that Lee stood alone as a general of Napoleonic type, and that his originality was especially shown in this campaign, when he sought battle in a forest. "None of the great soldiers before him probably encountered as dangerous an adversary as Grant, and none of them, except Hannibal, and Napoleon in the last two years, were opposed to soldiers as good as their own. The odds of numbers were greater against Lee in the Wilderness Campaign than they were

against Napoleon in the Waterloo campaign.

But Lee had his

army at the end and Napoleon's disaster was complete.”

It remains to speak of the business meeting of the Association, in which its various activities were reported upon. It having been already agreed that the annual meeting of December, 1909, shall be held in New York, in conjunction with the American Economic Association, the American Political Science Association and the American Sociological Society, it was now voted, on recommendation of the Council, that the meeting of December, 1910, should be held in Indianapolis. Upon the retirement of Mr. A. Howard. Clark from the office of secretary, resolutions were passed expressive of gratitude for his generous services as assistant secretary from 1889 to 1900 and as secretary from 1900 to 1908. The constitution was so amended that hereafter, instead of secretary and corresponding secretary, the two secretaries will be respectively entitled secretary and secretary of the council, the secretary being charged to care for the general correspondence and the roll of membership, to see the Annual Reports through the press and to distribute them to members, the secretary of the council to perform the functions implied in his title.

The policy of issuing at the cost of the Association, in a series. of volumes outside the Annual Reports, the essays to which the Winsor and Adams prizes are awarded, was definitely adopted. Contestants are advised that the standing committees on those prizes. will soon introduce into the rules of award some modifications appropriate to the new departure. The first volume to be issued. will be Dr. Edward B. Krehbiel's essay on The Interdict under Innocent III., the second, that of Professor Clarence E. Carter of Illinois College on Great Britain and the Illinois Country, 17631774. The latter was awarded the Justin Winsor prize at the present meeting; honorable mention was given to the essay of Dr. Charles H. Ambler of Randolph-Macon College, on Sectionalism. in Virginia, 1776–1861.

The acting secretary reported a total membership of 2052, exclusive of those delinquent in the payment of dues. The treasurer's report showed net receipts of $8038, net expenditures of $6878, an increase of $1160 in the funds of the Association, and total assets of $26,084.

Brief reports were made on behalf of the Pacific Coast Branch, the Historical Manuscripts Commission (on the diplomatic archives of the Republic of Texas), the Board of Editors of this journal, the