Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 06.djvu/257

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Annual Meeting of Southern Historical Society.
247

circulation. We certainly agree with the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, that "no library, public or private, which pretends to historical fulness can afford to be without these volumes."

CONFEDERATE ARCHIVES AT WASHINGTON.

We published in the November number of the Papers so full an account of our relations with the "Archive Bureau," and our efforts to obtain access to the documents, &c., on file there, that little need be said here concerning it. We continue to receive from General Townsend and his subordinates every kindness and courtesy, and our arrangements for the exchange of papers are entirely satisfactory.

It will be readily seen that this access to the "Record Office," while it greatly increases our facilities for obtaining the material for a true history of the war, will impose upon us additional work, and at the same time render it more desirable that our friends should furnish us increased means for copying and publishing the records for the use of the future historian.

FINANCES.

There have been in the whole history of publication enterprises in the South few harder years than this. Besides the general poverty of our people, the yellow fever scourge has cut off a large part of our territory, disarranged our mails, and directed into channels of relief for the needy money which might have otherwise come into our treasury. And yet the following table of receipts will show that the past year has been the most prosperous one which the Society has had:

We received for the year ending in October, 1874... $1,546 02
"""1875... 1,258 80
"""1876... 4,246 30
"""1877... 4,744 45
"""1878... 6,337 41

Thus it will be seen that, in spite of hard times, our receipts have been $1,592.96 more than during any previous year.

And we have so far reduced our expenses that during the past year our receipts have considerably exceeded our current expenditures, and but for the debt with which we begun our fiscal year, we would now be able to report our obligations all met and money in the treasury. But we greatly need more funds to enable us to