For the legislative historian, now conditioned to the existence of convenient means of tracing U.S. legislative history from current Congressional calendars, many official catalogs or the almost countless checklists and services that have been published over the past 25 years, it seems scarcely credible that 32 volumes of the U.S. Statutes at Large, published from 1789 to 1903, contained no references to statutory bill numbers — an essential element in identifying the progress of legislation. Now that Congress can routinely introduce as many as 30,000 pieces of legislation in a two-year session, the bill number has assumed great significance as the usual means of tracking current status into law.
But for the historian seeking a description of legislative intent for laws enacted during the first century of the Republic, the search heretofore has been initially impeded because there was no reference in the statute books to bill numbers even if the searcher had access to early bill prints. Not only is there a dearth of documentation to describe intent before 1900, but there has been nothing to assist with this basic process of numerical identification even if the public law or chapter number of the legislation was known. As this checklist will reveal, bill numbers for this early period could be obtained only by tedious and generally inconvenient reference to the official Journals of the proceedings of the Senate and House of Representatives. Having now checked all of these reference for us from these journals and other little-noticed sources, Mr. Nabors makes a fundamental contribution to the job of researching legislation enacted from 1789 to 1903.
This work was very much inspired by necessity and by its author's fortunate proximity to an incomparable collection of legislation and Congressional records of proceedings in the American-British Law Division of the Library of Congress.
Mr. Nabors has been one of the principal managers of this collection for many years and for those who approach it, a mentor with singular knowledge of its organization and function. For those of us who have been privileged to know him in Washington, this knowledge has on countless occasions expedited "trips to the Hill" that could have otherwise consumed days. His patience and conscientious concern to assist a truly enormous public through a maze of documents that describe nothing less than the evolution of American government, are personal qualities that made this checklist finally possible. It has been at least ten years in preparation. The time that it will now save historians, librarians and archivists probably cannot be measured.
Ellen P. Mahar
Librarian, Covington & Burling
Washington, D.C.
J. S. Ellenberger
Librarian, Shearman & Sterling
New York City