Those of us who are constitutional conservatives are never surprised when government [especially feds] start something and don't finish it! Way back when Andy "by God" Jackson was president the gov't started the American Archives series. Naturally since it was a gov't project they started in the kiddle, publishing series 4 and most of series 5, covering 1775 and part of 1776. Then it stopped. Since the 1830s billions of pages of gobbly-de-gook have come out of the Goiv't Printing Office, but never any more of the American Archives. A great tragedy! Col. Robert Gardner introduced me to this set [not my profs in the obligatory scope and method class as a grad student]. He found some gunsmiths, but barely touched the surface. What a great treasure lies somewhere in the National Archives! Much of my published material before 1850 came ffrom various state archives, such as PA Archives [128 vols, 9 series & Colonial Records] or Browne's Archives of MD. Such much more lies in the unpublished valumes of the American Archives. The books are odd, huge format -- oversoze is inadequate to explain--and on an opened book are 4 numbered pages -- 2 ciolumns each page, each with a page number.
