At Gettysburg cemetery, where thousands of hastily buried men were being reinterred in proper graves, Lincoln’s task was no less than to remind the nation that its very existence was at stake, a cause for which hundreds of thousands of men were fighting and dying. Although his surprisingly brief speech seemed to have no immediate impact, and even Lincoln himself doubted the effectiveness of his address, the power of his concise and graceful prose gradually marked a turning point in public consciousness that confirmed Lincoln’s faith in the prospects of democracy. He redefined the war, making it an inspiring quest for liberty and equality.

The Articles of Confederation, sometimes called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was the first constitution of the United States and the American colonies’ first successful attempt to form a unified government. The colonies’ different interests and Great Britain’s hesitance to see a unified colonial structure had sabotaged previous attempts for union. The Declaration of Independence made it imperative that some type of union be created, not only to coordinate the Revolutionary War but also to create a single state to deal with foreign nations whose assistance the country needed.

The Articles of Confederation set up a government that united the states through a confederate legislature—the Congress of the Confederation (the successor to the Second Continental Congress). The Confederation, however, had only certain powers given to it; all other powers were reserved for the states. Individual colonies wanted to retain their sovereignty and looked suspiciously at a continental government that could possibly usurp their powers. As a result, the Articles formed a confederation in which each state retained its own power over its citizens, transport, industries, and so forth, and the Confederation government was given only certain specific powers such as foreign affairs. This created a loose federal organization of states in perpetual alliance with one another.

President-elect Obama has quoted or paraphrased Lincoln a number of times. So let us compare and contrast the two leaders. There are some surprisingly similarities in their backgrounds.

Both lost parents at an early age–Lincoln his mother, and Obama his father–and both were raised by single parents for a time. Both had parents who were restless souls and moved around a lot–Lincoln’s father to Indiana and then to Ohio, and Obama’s mother literally all over the planet. Both rose from humble backgrounds to join the legal profession–although Lincoln, in the custom of the time, simply trained with an established lawyer, while Obama graduated from one of the best law schools in the country. Both have shown that they are gifted writers. Both have advocated the values of the Enlightenment, the pursuit of reason, and the use of the intellect to solve political problems.

Lincoln did not always transcend the values of his time, however. He was against interracial marriage and said so during the debates with Douglas. He advocated “colonization,” that is, the voluntary exile of the black population, which most people rejected as deeply inhumane and hopelessly impractical.

But Lincoln had a flexibility and a capacity for growth, and these qualities were evident during his presidency. Obama has this and more. He seems to have a stable, even temperament and does not appear to suffer from depression as Lincoln did.

For all these reasons, I think Lincoln would be proud of the choice made by the American people this November. He identified with working people from ordinary circumstances, and he thought the United States the most egalitarian society in the world, although he understood that the country does not always live up to its noble principles. Obama’s election brings us closer to fulfilling the ideals Lincoln articulated: a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Joan E. Cashin received her doctorate from Harvard University, and she is an associate professor of American history at Ohio State University.  She is the author of A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier (1991) and First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis’s Civil War (2006) and the editor of Our Common Affairs: Texts from Women in the Old South (1996) and The War Was You and Me: Civilians in the American Civil War (2002).  She is currently working on a book on the civilian population in the South during the Civil War.

The American Presidents Blog on the history of political cartoons and their influence on presidential elections

The A. Lincoln Blog on a Lincoln photography exhibit in Washington, D.C.

The World History Blog on the discovery of a 3,000-year-old Hebrew text

The A. Lincoln Blog on a letter written by Lincoln aboard the steamboat Lebanon

Very few presidential elections change America. The elections of 1800, 1828, 1860, and 1932 come to mind as the most obvious examples of elections that truly transformed the nation. They put four important presidents into office—Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. They also altered the shape of politics for a generation. Important, but not as transformative, were the victories of McKinley (1896), Kennedy (1960), and Reagan (1980). These elections did not fundamentally alter politics, and they were not as long lasting in their impact. Kennedy’s was important mostly because his election finally broke the religious barrier that prevented Catholics from reaching the White House.

To this list of important elections, we can now add 2008.

With the election of Barack Obama, America is forever changed. The change is not about politics in the normal sense. The Democrats solidified their control of Congress, but that is not earthshaking. The “in party” is now the “out party” in the White House. That has happened before and will do so again. But the fact that Obama is African American is transformative. There is no other way to understand the stunning rise of Barack Obama. Four years ago he was virtually unknown. At the Democratic National Convention in 2004 he gave a spectacular speech, which put him on the national stage. That speech illustrated the power of rhetoric and the importance of both performance and substance in American politics. Four years later, against all odds, he was elected president.

When Obama was born in 1961, segregation was still legal in a third of the nation. The majority of blacks lived in the South, where few could vote; almost none went to integrated schools, and they were barred from public facilities, restaurants, hotels, theaters, amusement parks, public parks, and just about everywhere else. No black had ever served on the Supreme Court, in a president’s cabinet, or as the elected governor of a state. None had been in the Senate since Reconstruction.
The bloodiest battles of the civil rights movement had yet to be fought, and the civil rights martyrs of the decade—Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr., were still alive. So, too, were the three young men who would be murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi (Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney); Viola Liuzzo, a mother from Detroit, who would be murdered in Selma, Alabama; and the four young girls who would be blown up in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

The America that Barack Obama was born into was a deeply segregated place. His black father and white mother could not even have lived in the same house in 1961 in about eighteen states. Anyone predicting that the son of this union would one day be president would have risked being committed to a mental hospital. The idea of a black president was not just remote; it was impossible to conceive. Only in a science fiction story about an alternative universe could the parents of the baby Barack Obama have thought he would one day be president of the Harvard Law Review, a member of the U.S. Senate, and eventually the primary resident of the White House.

Welcome to the alternative universe of 2008.

Obama’s victory was in part a function of his ability to communicate his ideas. He also communicated a sense of hope for the nation and a vision of a future that would be better than the present. His buzz word was change, but his method was inspiration. Millions who had never been involved with politics gave money and time to support a new candidate—and to support a candidate who is black.

An Obama presidency will not end racism. It may, in fact, lead to some increase in overt racist talk, as those who don’t like his policies will blame them on race. But in other ways, an Obama presidency will change the nature of race relations. Whites who said they would never vote for a black man in the end did just that. The Republican Party, which played the race card so effectively with Willie Horton in 1988, was unable to do so this time. John McCain and his supporters offered up offensive and nasty racist characterizations of Obama, including distributing handbills that looked like food stamps with Obama on them. In a last desperate effort, the McCain campaign focused on Obama’s former preacher, the Reverend Wright. But a radical minister is no Willie Horton, and no one seemed to be much affected by the effort.

Even as he became the first black president, Obama transcended race. His earliest support did not come from the black community but instead from upper-middle-class Americans of all races, who were charmed by his intelligence and thoughtfulness and anxious to find a new political leader in the new century. Obama campaigned on economics, foreign policy, health care, and jobs. He rarely spoke of inequality or civil rights, not because he is not concerned about them but because he understood that they were not the central issues of the election. Furthermore, he understood that inequality in health care and job opportunity cannot be overcome until we all have health care and the economy is no longer in freefall. Thus, Obama campaigned on issues that affect all Americans, without regard to race, geography, or class.

Indeed, in the end, Obama is not America’s first black president—he is America’s first president who happens to be black. The difference is huge.

Paul Finkelman is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy and Senior Fellow, Government Law Center, at Albany Law School. He is the executive editor of the “Milestone Documents” series published by Schlager Group. A specialist in American legal history, race, and the law, Finkelman is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles and more than twenty books.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled—Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of red states and blue states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It’s the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Sen. McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he’s fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Gov. Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the vice-president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation’s next first lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House. And while she’s no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager, David Plouffe; my chief strategist, David Axelrod; and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics—you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you’ve sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to—it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington—it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this earth. This is your victory.

I know you didn’t do this just to win an election, and I know you didn’t do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime—two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor’s bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year, or even one term, but America—I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you: We as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years—block by block, brick by brick, callused hand by callused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek—it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers. In this country, we rise or fall as one nation—as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House—a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, “We are not enemies, but friends… Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” And, to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world—our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight, we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America—that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election, except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons—because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America—the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes, we can.

At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes, we can.

When there was despair in the Dust Bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes, we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes, we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that “We Shall Overcome.” Yes, we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes, we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves: If our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time—to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

My friends, we have come to the end of a long journey. The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly. A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Sen. Barack Obama—to congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.

In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans, who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president, is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.

This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.

I’ve always believed that America offers opportunities to all who have the industry and will to seize it. Sen. Obama believes that, too. But we both recognize that though we have come a long way from the old injustices that once stained our nation’s reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still had the power to wound.

A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation of Booker T. Washington to visit—to dine at the White House—was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.

Sen. Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day—though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her Creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise.

Sen. Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain. These are difficult times for our country, and I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together, to find the necessary compromises, to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.

It is natural tonight to feel some disappointment, but tomorrow we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again. We fought—we fought as hard as we could.

And though we fell short, the failure is mine, not yours.

I am so deeply grateful to all of you for the great honor of your support and for all you have done for me. I wish the outcome had been different, my friends. The road was a difficult one from the outset. But your support and friendship never wavered. I cannot adequately express how deeply indebted I am to you.

I am especially grateful to my wife, Cindy, my children, my dear mother and all my family and to the many old and dear friends who have stood by my side through the many ups and downs of this long campaign. I have always been a fortunate man, and never more so for the love and encouragement you have given me.

You know, campaigns are often harder on a candidate’s family than on the candidate, and that’s been true in this campaign. All I can offer in compensation is my love and gratitude, and the promise of more peaceful years ahead.

I am also, of course, very thankful to Gov. Sarah Palin, one of the best campaigners I have ever seen and an impressive new voice in our party for reform and the principles that have always been our greatest strength. Her husband, Todd, and their five beautiful children, with their tireless dedication to our cause, and the courage and grace they showed in the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign. We can all look forward with great interest to her future service to Alaska, the Republican Party and our country.

To all my campaign comrades, from Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter, to every last volunteer who fought so hard and valiantly month after month in what at times seemed to be the most challenged campaign in modern times—thank you so much. A lost election will never mean more to me than the privilege of your faith and friendship.

I don’t know what more we could have done to try to win this election. I’ll leave that to others to determine. Every candidate makes mistakes, and I’m sure I made my share of them. But I won’t spend a moment of the future regretting what might have been.

This campaign was and will remain the great honor of my life. And my heart is filled with nothing but gratitude for the experience and to the American people for giving me a fair hearing before deciding that Sen. Obama and my old friend, Sen. Joe Biden, should have the honor of leading us for the next four years.

I would not be an American worthy of the name, should I regret a fate that has allowed me the extraordinary privilege of serving this country for a half a century. Today, I was a candidate for the highest office in the country I love so much. And tonight, I remain her servant. That is blessing enough for anyone and I thank the people of Arizona for it.

Tonight—tonight, more than any night, I hold in my heart nothing but love for this country and for all its citizens, whether they supported me or Sen. Obama, I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president.

And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties but to believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.

Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history. Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America.

Among the most intriguing artifacts were the gold doubloons, recovered from the broken hulks of Spanish treasures ships. Yet they could just as easily have been washed up on the beach by violent storms, to lie there until, after being buried in the sand they were discovered by a beach comber or a treasure hunter equipped with metal detecting equipment. The thing about doubloons on the beach is that they can be found only by those who know their appearance–individuals who recognize the hidden gold coin under the incrustations of coral, sea-salt, and sand.

It struck me that legal historians are beachcombers by another name, and that at the earliest stages of my career I had spent a great deal of time searching out the doubloons of American colonial legal history. Those doubloons are ancient documents that can escape detection as easily as the scruffy looking rocks that conceal golden Spanish doubloons. Now I was not a natural at treasure hunting or finding colonial documents, but early influences and scholarly necessity drove me into this activity.

During my career as a night session student at New York Law School, I met Professor Paul M. Hamlin, who at the time was badly crippled by arthritis, which had terminated his active career as a “manuscript grubber.” He had just published an edition of the earliest minutes of the New York Supreme Court of Judicature, dating from 1691 to 1704. And he told me a fascinating story of how he discovered them. He had been spending a day doing research in Albany, and as he drove home to the New York City area the following day, he recalled that he had handled a filthy old manuscript volume at the New York State Library. He had put it aside in an off-hand manner, but as he was driving, he had a hunch that it was a very early minute book of the colonial Supreme Court. Not until he was behind the wheel of his car driving south did he realize that the volume may have contained those long-lost records dating from the 1691 establishment of the Court.

Well, he made a U-turn on the Old Storm King Highway; that he wasn’t killed was as much due to divine intervention as was his revelation concerning the identity of the minute book. Arriving back at Albany, he returned to the State Library and, to his amazement, discovered that the volume was indeed the lost Supreme Court minutes. The rest was a matter of bibliographic historical record. Several years later, he and Charles E. Baker of the New-York Historical Society edited and published a three volume annotated edition of those Supreme Court records. His intriguing story was my introduction to manuscript “grubbing,” an avocation I have followed, albeit intermittently, for nearly five decades.

Since then I have spent a great deal of time, using guile, subterfuge, and threats of litigation, to locate documents that have become my personal doubloons in legal history. The failures have been many, for large numbers of them have been destroyed, and they still are being destroyed. In the past half century there has been a concerted effort, at federal, state, and local levels, to preserve court records and other legal documentation, and the American Society for Legal History since 1970 has encouraged those efforts through its Committee on the Preservation of Court Records. Other positive factors in preserving extant court records include funding available from the National Historical Publications and Records Administration, a subdivision of the National Archives, and the professional support and guidance of the Society of American Archivists. Yet manuscript materials once lost are difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct from extraneous sources.

Successes in document searching are both inspiring and baffling. One of my best examples exemplifies the value of alertness while searching through records. It involves the pre-Revolutionary vice-admiralty case involving the brig New York, which was libeled by the British Navy and customs officials for violation of the Navigation Act of 1663. In addition to the admiralty proceedings there were related actions in the New York Supreme Court of Judicature demanding damages for false arrest and wrongful seizure of the vessel and her cargo. My coauthor, David Syrett, helped me by researching in the High Court of Admiralty records located in London at the Public Records Office, but the real treasure was awaiting us in New York City. While examining a bundle of filed papers concerning the case, I found a packet of letters between John Tabor Kemp, the attorney general prosecuting the vice admiralty case, and the British naval officer who had seized the ship on the charge of smuggling. Before that discovery we didn’t know that these papers existed, even though we had searched diligently in the monumental collection of Kemp’s papers at the New-York Historical Society. Who would expect to find attorney-client correspondence filed in court records? Clearly Kemp had mistakenly rolled this correspondence up in a bundle of papers he had filed along with the judgment roll of the Supreme Court case. We had found them by conducting what should have been a routine examination of formal pleadings in the case. Luck does play a role in finding unexpected source materials; documents are not always where you expect them to be, and finding them when they are out of place is a matter of being alert to the possibilities of every manuscript you examine.

On occasion a friend gives you a gift of valuable information. One day in 1966 I walked into the manuscript room of the New-York Historical Society, and Arthur Breton, then assistant curator of manuscripts, told me about a recent acquisition, and he was curious whether it was important for New York legal history. It was a beautiful manuscript, complete with a large wax wafer seal that proved to be the great seal of the royal Province of New York. Its first page would have made an impressive manuscript for framing, but the following pages revealed it to be one of the most exciting documents a legal historian would ever expect to find. It was a notarized statement of the events that transpired when a notary public attempted to argue a case before the New York Supreme Court of Judicature in 1764. This is the only record of that confrontation that survives. The moral of this story is that manuscript curators, court clerks, and librarians, can be very helpful, and that they can be good friends to historical researchers.

At times it is difficult to gain access to records, and even after they are located it may be impossible to use the materials immediately. That was true of my need to examine the manuscript court records of the Prerogative Court of colonial New York, which had been used and cited by early twentieth century historians, but since that time had seemed to disappear. There were transcribed copies of the wills and inventories, and a substantial number of them are in printed volumes of the New-York Historical Society Collections. However, I needed to see the filed copies of these documents to examine handwriting and determine if John Jay had written them; it also was essential that I examine the court clerks’ endorsements of the filed papers to establish the substantive and procedural law of probate in colonial New York. Scholarly footnotes indicated that these original documents were deposited in the Surrogate’s Court of New York County, yet the clerks of that Court in 1964 were insistent that they had no records prior to 1854, and they also were adamant that there was no such thing as the Prerogative Court of New York.

Since I was reasonably sure that the records were still in the Surrogate Court’s records, I decided to do so research concerning them. The American Historical Association’s Public Records Commission had in 1900 examined the records and issued a short report concerning them; and in 1799 a New York state statute transferred possession of the Prerogative Court records to the Surrogate’s Court of New York County. Armed with these bits of information, and after an interview with the senior Surrogate of New York County, I again contacted the clerk, suggesting that if he did not give me access to the files, I would obtain a mandamus writ instructing him to do so. Faced with the possibility of litigation, he “remembered” a cache of manuscripts on a musty mezzanine floor of the courthouse records. where he left me to examine the neglected records of the Prerogative Court. It did not take me long to do so. The first bundle I tried to open began to crumble in my hands, and it became apparent that if I persisted, this priceless set of documents would suffer irreparable damage. It was not until years later that the original filed papers were humidified, opened, and silked by the Historical Documents Collection at Queens College, that I was able to examine the run of records for the entire colonial period from 1686 through 1776. They were subsequently transferred to the possession of the newly established New York State Archives in Albany.

A similar unpleasant surprise occurred when I was collecting materials to document John Marshall’s career before he was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1801. Since Marshall was careless in maintaining his personal and professional papers, there were little original documents available to the editors of Marshall’s papers. In addition, when the city of Richmond was burned during the Civil War, most of the higher court records were destroyed, leaving only country court and district court records that had not be centralized in the Virginia capital for “protection.” We had already realized that one source of early Virginia records were the manuscripts of the Anglo-American Joint Commission to adjust debts under the terms of the 1794 Jay treaty with Britain. One of the fundamental issues between the two nations had been that state courts and legislatures had obstructed the collection of pre-Revolutionary War debts by British mercantile firms, so court records would form an important source of evidence to be submitted to the Commissioners. There was a microfilm edition of the Treasury 79 records prepared by the Library of Congress before 1941, and we had used those copies extensively, but there was a need to examine the original manuscripts and perhaps obtain photocopies of John Marshall’s documents. Unfortunately, during World War II the British authorities had deposited this group of manuscripts in a salt mine for safekeeping, leaving them in a fragile state of near decomposition. Again it was necessary to defer a careful examination until such a time as the Public Record Office might rehabilitate the manuscripts and make them again available for scholarly use.

Increasingly, historians work with printed documentary collections, photocopies, or digitized transcripts. There are some inherent dangers in being deprived of access to original materials. Scholars are at the mercy of photographers who at times make poor decisions concerning the importance of endorsements or enclosed materials. Original documents bear physical proof of their authenticity, but scholars who cannot gain access cannot rely upon these characteristics. Transcriptions, no matter how carefully done, are inadequate assurance of the accuracy of the original text. On the other hand, the loss of valuable manuscript through extensive handling is substantial, and the cost of providing surveillance against theft by readers is becoming prohibitive. The historical profession, in conjunction with archivists and librarians, needs to address these issues in the years ahead. In the meantime, we who once enjoyed the thrill of “manuscript grubbing” regret the passing of an exciting part of historical research.

Herb Johnson is Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of South Carolina. He holds degrees from Columbia University (A.B., M.A., and Ph.D.) and New York Law School (LL.B.), and for ten years was editor of The Papers of John Marshall at the Institute of Early American History and Culture. His most recent publications are The Chief Justiceship of John Marshall, 1801-1835 (1997) and Wingless Eagle: U.S. Army Aviation through World War I (2001). A specialist in early American legal and constitutional history, he is currently working on a manuscript tracing the diverging constitutional systems of England and the English North American colonies. He served as president of the American Society for Legal History from 1974 through 1975.

The American Presidents Blog on Eisenhower’s political TV ads on the famous LBJ “Daisy” ad

The Edge of the American West on the Lend-Lease Act

The History Channel on Martin Luther’s 95 theses

The Edge of the American West on the National Organization for Women’s Statement of Principle

The American Presidents Blog on a letter from William Howard Taft to his daughter