THE JOHN P. BRANCH HISTORICAL PAPERS OF RANDOLPH-MACON COLLEGE JUNE, 1908. THE Preface HE Branch Papers for this year embrace numbers 3 and 4 and complete volume II. For reasons not neces sary to be stated here no "Papers" were published in 1907. In 1909 a complete edition of the available letters of Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina, for whom Randolph-Macon College was in part named, will be printed. These will fill a vol ume of some 300 pages. In addition, two or three short Virginia biographies (Thomas R. Dew, William C. Rives and John A. Broadnax) will be included. The price of the 1909 volume will be $2.00 net. If libraries or others desire copies it would be well to send in subscriptions at an early date. As to the contents of the double number before us, a word ought to be said: For the verified transcripts of the Taylor letters as they now exist among the Jefferson, Madison and Monroe papers in the Division of Manuscripts of the Library of Congress, I am indebted to Mr. Worthington C. Ford, chief of the Division, and his assistant Mr. Wilmer Ross Leech, now assistant to the New York State Historian. The editor greatly appreciates the kind, effective interest which these gentlemen have so clearly and generously manifested. It is also with the warmest gratitude that I recall here the assistance and co-operation which the students of the History Department of Randolph-Macon have always so readily rendered. Some few of the Taylor letters bearing upon domestic or purely personal affairs have been omitted. But all his political, even parts of the social, papers which have come into my hands have been reproduced verbatim. Of course this is not thought to be a definitive collection, and it is hoped that the appearance of this small portion of his writings may bring to light other and perhaps more important letters and papers of this very remarkable Virginian leader of a hundred years ago. The sketch of Taylor's career which precedes the correspondence is offered as a sort of commentary, with a view that it may lend somewhat to a better understanding of the Virginia Dynasty. |