these years than any others, and we beg our friends who may have material which would throw light upon this part of the war to send it promptly forward to our office. We have not been in condition to purchase documents or MSS., but we have been highly gratified at the cheerful alacrity with which our patriotic people have given us material which no money could purchase. We have the promise of many MSS., documents, &c., of value, and we beg our freinds not to delay sending them forward, lest some mishap befall them ere they reach our shelves. We would also gladly receive as a loan anything which persons may not be willing to give us, and would hold it strictly subject to the wishes of the owner.
PUBLICATIONS.
The Committee indicated in their last report their earnest desire to make a monthly publication, which should at the same time keep up interest in our work, preserve valuable MSS. from the risk of being lost, and aid students of our history in their researches. We had fully decided that it would be better for us to do our own publishing, than to form an alliance with any existing magazine, but the condition of our treasury made us hesitate to assume liabilities which we might not be able to discharge. Just after our annual meeting, however, our Vice-President for the District of Columbia, W. W. Corcoran, Esq., whose princely liberality to every good work has given him a world-wide reputation, made us a donation which determined us to try the experiment of a monthly publication. Accordingly we issued in January last the first number of our "Southern Historical Society Papers." This publication has proved a decided success. Although the depressed condition of the country, the excitement of a heated Presidential canvass, and other causes have combined to make this an exceedingly unfavorable year for such an enterprise, our monthly has fully met the cost of its publication, and would have more than done so but for the extra expense of our numbers on the "Treatment of Prisoners" (which we scattered broadcast in this country and in Europe), the cost of reissuing several of the numbers which ran out, and the cost of stereotyping. These three items alone amount to $1,568. Our present experience would have enabled us to avoid the whole of this extra expense.
As to the interest and value of these "Papers," we have testimony from every quarter, as well as the steady increase of our subscrip-
