stable social order, their reliance upon the bureau's courts often left them defenseless against the hostility of the larger social order in which they were to function as equals. In a frontier society blacks lived in trepidation of vigilante groups. Although they continually complained of personal attacks, there was little blacks or bureau agents could do to alleviate the situation. For example in Hallettsville, Tom Foley, a freedman, brought suit against Stewart Campbell, a white, for assault and battery. Witnesses stated they had seen Campbell strike and cuff Foley just as he had done during slavery. At one point Campbell wanted Foley to ride a wild horse, but Foley expressed fear of being thrown. Campbell told Foley, "G_d d_mn you, I will see if you don't" and then proceeded to knock the black man down and kick him. When Foley got up, Campbell pulled a knife and screamed, "G_d d_mn you, I will cut your life out." Foley then ran. Campbell was fined $50. The same day he was also fined $125 for whipping a black woman with a rope. 30 In attempting to protect their civil rights the two major difficulties the blacks confronted in the courts were their reluctance to fine whites or impose bonds that would compel them to keep the peace. The freedpeople regularly brought assault and battery cases to bureau courts. The civil authorities would not cooperate when these cases were brought to them and grand juries were unwilling to indict whites because they were themselves intimidated. Blacks continued to risk their lives in the process, although not all cases reached a final decision because the freedmen sometimes failed to appear. For the most part it was not hard to determine why, but this was an issue which neither the black community nor the bureau courts were ever able to solve.

Taking weapons from blacks so that the danger of retaliation would be minimized was another stratagem used by the whites. Again, neither the black community nor bureau or civil courts were able to protect blacks in their

30 Tom Foley v. Stewart Campbell, Oct. 25, 1866, vol. 115, pp. 1-2, 4; Sophie Campbell v. Stewart Campbell, n.d., ibid., pp. 3-4, 6. See also Abraham Gilmore v. Isaac Burleson, Dec. 1, 1868, vol. 62, pp. 70-71; Mary Morgan v. Silas Morgan, Aug. 4, 1868, vol. 113, p. 13; Martha Downs v. Scott, May 2, 1868, vol. 170, pp. 2-3; Edwin Warner v. Plant Williams, n.d., vol. 123, pp. 31-32.

constitutional right to purchase and keep weapons on their persons or in their households.31 In Texas and throughout the South the actions of the courts were quite within the constitutional standards of nineteenth-century America; that is, to provide blacks with a means to protect themselves and uphold equality before the law. Beyond this they were not empowered to go. The most recent judgment has been that "Bureau justice was more civilian than military, more state and local than national." Republicans in Congress assumed that "as a consequence of the war, intrastate equality of legal treatment should exist in their constitutionally governed federal system, as intrinsic parts of each state's constitution, laws, and customs." This meant that the bureau courts were a natural consequence of the Civil War as were the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments and the Reconstruction Acts. Congress and legalists were endeavoring to assure a state-based federalism involving a minimum of federal intervention. The most they would extend to blacks was formal equality with whites before the law; it was up to the former slaves to carry on from that point. This solution was not satisfactory, but the institutional and constitutional restraints against the lawmakers made it impossible for them to proceed further.32 It was a conservative solution to a complex problem, and it was the freedpeople who suffered most from lack of federal intervention and protection.

31 Any of the 43 volumes of complaints in the Texas Bureau records may be consulted for confirmation of these views. The amount of violence committed against blacks was at times overwhelming. See also Crouch and L. J. Schultz, "Crisis in Color: Racial Separation in Texas During Reconstruction," Civil War History 16 (1970):37-49.

32 H. M. Hyman, A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution (New York, 1973), pp. 458, 460; "Reconstruction and Political-Constitutional Institutions: The Popular Expression," New Frontiers of the American Reconstruction, ed. H. M. Hyman (Urbana, 1966), pp. 1-39; Alfred H. Kelly, "Comment on Harold M. Hyman's Paper," ibid., pp. 40-58. I have been influenced in my legal thinking and interpretations by the following works: Charles Fairman, Reconstruction and Reunion, 186488: The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise (New York, 1971), 6, pt. 1; Wallace D. Farnham, " The Weakened Spring of Government'; A Study in Nineteenth Century American History," American Historical Review 68 (1963):662-680; James Willard Hurst, Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century United States (Madison, 1956); Charles E.

In summary, the blacks' response to Texas bureau courts suggests that blacks had access to judicial remedies; they pressed their legal rights aggressively and with an awareness of what the law should do for them. The freedpeople brought cases to these government courts for numerous and varied reasons, establishing that their concepts of business, labor, justice, domestic relations and obligations, and contractual responsibilities were part of a complete ethos in the black community. They realized they were part of the law and could not live outside it, nor did they desire to. Blacks simply wanted the legal system to remedy the injustices done them and to provide protection for their newly won rights and freedom. For a people who had been denied so many rights under slavery, they learned quickly with a little experience that the bureau courts were generally more receptive to their grievances than were the civilian courts.

The way the freedpeople regarded the law contains momentous implications for the study

Larsen, "Nationalism and States' Rights in Commentaries on the Constitution After the Civil War," American Journal of Legal History 3 (1959):360-369; Phillip S. Paludan, “John Norton Pomeroy, States' Rights Nationalist," American Journal of Legal History 12 (1968):275-292; Paludan, "The American Civil War Considered as a Crisis in Law and Order," American Historical Review 77 (1972):1013-1034.

of slave culture. Many slaves had been astute enough observers during the antebellum years to realize that the law conveyed rights to all citizens. For the most part, blacks became acculturated to the legal values of the United States, accepting them readily when fair and impartial justice was dispensed, and fighting through the courts when justice was denied. Without a complex slave culture and ethos it is unlikely that they would have responded to freedom as they did and used the bureau courts to protect themselves against white society and to maintain stability and harmony in the black community.

The bureau courts, then, were only an institutional vehicle through which blacks expressed their views of justice and their perception of the law. The state judicial system often denied the freedpeople similar opportunities. It is not surprising that blacks used the bureau courts as much as they did because they knew that their individual and community survival depended upon how promptly they reacted to their new legal status and how well they protected their culture. That they were able to preserve an autonomous spirit throughout slavery and were ready to implement it when freedom finally arrived is no more clearly seen than in their use of the courts and the law in Texas from 1865 to 1868.

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The administrator of general services is authorized by law to accept for accessioning as part of the National Archives of the United States the records of a federal agency or the Congress that the archivist of the United States judges to have sufficient historical or other value to warrant their continued preservation by the U. S. government. In addition, certain personal papers and privately produced audiovisual materials that relate to federal activities may also be accepted. Normally, only records at least twenty years old are considered for transfer; the chief exceptions are essential documentary sources of federal actions and the records of terminated agencies.

Excluded from the recent accessions described below are those that merely fill minor gaps or extend the date span of records already in the custody of the National Archives and Records Service. As noted, some of the accessions have been made by the archives branches of the federal archives and records centers and by the presidential libraries.

CIVIL ARCHIVES DIVISION

LEGISLATIVE, JUDICIAL, AND FISCAL BRANCH

Records of the Subversive Activities Control Board, an independent, five-member, quasijudicial agency created by the Internal Security Act of 1950 and that ceased to operate June 30, 1973, have been accessioned. The principal function of the board was to hold hearings, on petition of the attorney general, to decide if organizations were Communist-action, Communist-front, or Communist-infiltrated, as defined by the act. The records consist of docket files, transcripts of testimony, exhibits, reports and decisions, indexes to names of witnesses, appeal files, hearings files, minutes of the board (1951-73), and correspondence, 121 cubic feet.

Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee for 1968, 6 volumes, were accessioned. This committee, part of the Federal Reserve system, sets the policies under which Fed

asters, 40 cubic feet. The records span 1950 to 1973, but most of them date after 1966.

An accession of records, 5 cubic feet, of the Bureau of Air Operations of the Civil Aeronautics Board documents allocation of routes to feeder airlines in Alaska Territory from 1939 to 1950.

Records, 3 cubic feet, of the National Commission on the Financing of Postsecondary Education, 1972-74, were accessioned. The commission's meeting files, staff reports, and files of its subordinate committees are included.

State, memorandums, notes from host governments, translations of editorials and reports, and cross-reference sheets to other files. Examples of the files are requests by the Department of State for extradition of persons, letters of introduction, and documents on protection of private interests. The files are arranged in nine subjects as follows: miscellaneous; administration, U. S. government; extradition; protection of interests; claims; international congresses and conferences, international treaties; commerce, commercial relations; relations of states; and internal affairs of states. Use of the records is limited by Department of State restrictions.

Received from the Office of Economic Opportunity were additions to the Census Bureau series "Poverty Neighborhoods in 105 Large Central Cities," consisting of printouts from the 1970 census. The data concerns neighborhoods with populations of 20,000 or more, twenty percent of which are poor, in metropolitan areas of 250,000 or more persons.

AUDIOVISUAL ARCHIVES DIVISION

Four thousand photographs made by the Medical Survey Group of the Coal Mines Administration-Navy, 1946-47, were accessioned from the Bureau of Mines of the Department of the Interior. The photographs illustrate working and living conditions of soft coal miners and their families in fifteen large coal-producing states. More than half are by the noted photographer Russell W. Lee.

MILITARY ARCHIVES DIVISION

New accessions include subject files, 10 cubic feet, of the Commercial Traffic Section, Communication Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1929-37; and correspondence and other records, 41 cubic feet, of the Naval Office of the Coordinator of Research and Development, 1941-45.

GENERAL ARCHIVES DIVISION

A very large accession of foreign service post records of the Department of State was received, 8,555 cubic feet. Most of the records date between 1936 and 1949, but some date as recently as 1957. The files consist mostly of dispatches, letters, reports, and copies of telegrams sent between posts and to the Department of

REGIONAL ACCESSIONS

ARCHIVES BRANCH, KANSAS CITY FEDERAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS CENTER

The branch has completed arranging and describing 120 cubic feet of records of the U.S. Coast Guard and its predecessors, the Steamboat Inspection Service and the Bureau of Navigation. The records span the mid-1840s to 1960, but most date from 1880 to 1920. Included are inspection reports, pilot licenses, correspondence, wreck investigations, tests and inspections, and excursion permits. The records are from ports in the fourth and fifth districts of the Steamboat Inspection Service: Duluth and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota; Dubuque, Iowa; Galena and Cairo, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; and Pembina, North Dakota.