Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 2.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[247] list, which has now run up to 1,560. We have as regular subscribers, not only leading Confederates, but a number of distinguished Federal officers, some of the more important public libraries of this country, and a number of prominent gentlemen and public libraries in Europe. We sent our discussion of the “Treatment of Prisoners” to a large number of the principal newspapers and libraries at the North, and about 300 copies to different parts of Europe. We have reason to believe that these have already produced valuable fruit. Several English gentlemen have written their warm appreciation of the importance and value of our Papers. A distinguished officer and able military critic of the Prussian army has written that they “give him great pleasure and create great interest in the historical world,” and a distinguished French historian writes that he is highly gratified at receiving them, and promises to give them, especially the numbers on the prison question, “a careful study.”

We have had the two numbers (March and April) which discuss the “Treatment of prisoners,” bound into a beautiful volume, which our friends should help us to place in every public library. We have also very beautifully bound copies of the first volume of our Papers.

In regard to the character of the Papers which we publish, the committee have had frequent and earnest consultation, and have agreed upon a general policy which, we trust, will meet the approbation of the Society. If we had a source of revenue which rendered us independent of any popular interest attaching to our publications, it might be the best policy to publish occasional volumes of “transactions,” carefully collated, and containing nothing but what would be of high historic value; but as we have found by past experience that we must make frequent publications in order to keep up an interest which will secure the means of carrying on our work, it seems clearly best that we should issue a monthly.

We might confine this monthly publication to official reports, discussions of military movements by our ablest military critics, and such like papers, and this course would be doubtless most agreeable to many of our honored friends, but we must have also a popular element to please the masses, who read and pay for the monthly, or the enterprise will soon break down. Our policy, therefore, is that while preserving the strictly historical character