- Historic Sites News Of History December 1954 | Volume 6, Issue
1 Thus far the Commission has participated in planning for
editions of the papers of Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Benjamin
Franklin, James Madison, Archbishop John Carroll, Bishop Asbury
and John Wesley Powell, among others. It has also begun
assembling materials for two major publications that are badly
needed and that should properly be issued under the Federal
government’s auspices—a documentary history of the ratification
by the states of the Constitution and its first ten amendments,
and a similar work embracing the debates and proceedings of the
first Congress under the Constitution, 1789–1791. Perhaps the
most important task the Commission has undertaken so far is a
Guide to Archives and Manuscripts in the United States. This
will be a one-volume directory of all institutions known to hold
historical manuscripts, together with brief descriptions of
their holdings and references to more extended descriptions in
print. More than 1,800 depos