Congressional Globe and other U.S. Congressional Documents

Congressional Globe Home Page: U.S. Congressional Documents: "The Globe, as it is usually called, contains the congressional debates of the 23rd through 42nd Congresses (1833-73) . . . The Globe is the third of the four series of publications containing the debates of Congress. It was preceded by the Annals of Congress and the Register of Debates and succeeded by the Congressional Record . . . Initially the Globe contained a 'condensed report' or abstract rather than a verbatim report of the debates and proceedings. With the 32nd Congress (1851), however, the Globe began to provide something approaching verbatim transcription . . . The contents of the appendix of each volume vary from Congress to Congress, but appendixes typically contain presidential messages, reports of the heads of departments and cabinet officers, texts of laws, and appropriations."

This is an enormously useful set of resources, with the full text of these important congressional records. The northwest was much on the mind of 19th- and 20th-century legislators. Some quick searches for northwest topics produce this Bill To provide for suppressing Indian hostilities in the territory of Oregon (passed in the wake of the killing of the Whitmans); An Act For the relief of Mrs. Mary Harris, of Oregon (to pay her money owed for "supplies furnished and services rendered in the Oregon Indian War of eighteen hundred and fifty-six"); and "The petition of five hundred and fifteen citizens of Washington Territory, for aid to the Seattle and Walla-Walla Railroad."

This resource opens up new avenues of research. I am particularly intrigued by the petitions to Congress, which might yeild new primary source descriptions of the Indian Wars of the northwest. Unfortunately the search function, though otherwise robust, searches only the indexes of the Globe, at least for some volumes.

Interestingly, Google Book Search seems to have most or all of the Congressional Globe as well. The disadvantage (and this is a repeated problem in using Google Book Search) is that the individual volumes are not linked in any way. On the other hand they are fully digitized and you can use Google's powerful search features to mine the text.

Sometimes History Finds You

My wife and I were in the Florida Keys last week, where we have the privilege of working with the Monroe County School District implementing a Teaching American History grant-funded project. Of course all work and no play makes a history professor even more boring than he already is. So one afternoon we joined a snorkeling excursion that took us to a coral reef a few miles straight south.

We had a nice few hours of paddling around the reef and looking at the pretty fish with our 9-year-old son, Wonderboy, and headed back to shore. On the way back the captain spotted something odd in the water. "We have to check this out," he said. (If you click on the image below it will take you to a Picasa web album with larger, geotagged images.)



What we found was an ancient wooden boat slowly sinking into the water. It was obviously a boat that Cuban refugees had used to try it make it to the United States. It was a ramshackle thing, with an engine from some Soviet-era car, five gallon jugs leaking diesel fuel into the water, and a tiller made from pieces of threaded pipe. The blue bumpers you see along the gunwale are apparently for added flotation, they are made from spray-on insulating foam with pieces of blue tarp tacked over them for protection. The boat spoke of ingenuity and desperation, and is perhaps the saddest thing I have seen..

The captain called in our discovery to the Coast Guard. After a few minutes of exchanging information the Coast Guard said that they were aware of the boat, that the refugees on it had been intercepted by the Coast Guard the day before, and was there anything else they could do for us?

I could not find a news report about this particular group of refugees (I will add a link if I do) so I don't know what happened to them. (Here is a video of perhaps a similar set of Cubans being arrested byt he Coast Guard). But I have been to Cuba twice and I can understand the forces that would drive people to risk their lives in a boat like for this for the opportunity to clean hotel rooms or mow lawns in Miami or Orlando.

I have spent my life studying history, usually as if it were something dead, to be dissected and analyzed with dispassion and objectivity. Last week history reached out and hit me up the side of the head.