Chapter 4: The Contemporaneous FRUS, 1870–1905

After the reinstitution of FRUS in 1870, the production of annual volumes, in conjunction with supplementary irregular releases (discussed later in this chapter), became a regular of part of executive-legislative interaction, Departmental operations, diplomatic calculations, and public civic discourse. The signal feature of the later 19th–early 20th century series and the supplementary submissions to Congress that complemented the bound volumes was timeliness: the U.S. Government routinely published foreign policy records within a year (and sometimes within a few weeks) of their creation. Most Americans believed this immediate form of openness, which informed both the electorate and the elected, to be essential to the proper exercise of democratic, responsible government. This chapter outlines the expression of those republican values, as exemplified by the “Contemporaneous FRUS,” in their 19th and early 20th century setting.

FRUS as Vehicle for Congressional Oversight

Congress comprised the most important audience for the Contemporaneous FRUS. In accordance with practices established in the 1790s, the House and Senate requested records as they saw fit, and the Department frequently released records throughout the year. In addition, by 1870 Hamilton Fish had concluded that the Department could most efficiently meet Congressional expectations by producing one or more general volumes of documentation not previously transmitted to the legislative branch. Consequently, it is important to take account of both types of releases when considering the total dissemination of foreign policy documents after 1860.

The regular release of bound volumes became a routine part of Department business. Between 1870 and 1880 the Department transmitted selected correspondence for the year concurrently with the President’s annual December message to Congress for publication by the Government Printing Office approximately one month later.1 Correspondence from the remainder of December was included in the subsequent year’s volume. In 1881 the Department began transmitting annual correspondence in the first half of the following year, with publication normally occurring between April and June.2 The correspondence appeared as either a single volume or in two volumes as the quantity and length of documents dictated. The 1866 legislation that required publishing at least 8,500 copies of each volume (at congressional expense) remained in place until 1895, at which time Congress reduced the minimum print run to 4,682 copies (see appendix B).

In addition to the annual Foreign Relations publication, throughout the year the Department regularly responded to Senate and House resolutions calling on the President to transmit diplomatic correspondence on issues of interest to Congress. These periodic submissions were published most frequently as Senate or House Executive Documents and occasionally as Miscellaneous Reports. These documents often totaled hundreds of pages. They consisted of instructions, despatches, and telegrams—the same type of material presented in the same fashion as in Foreign Relations—from the year of the request as well as relevant correspondence from earlier years not previously published in Foreign Relations. Annual Foreign Relations volumes rarely reprinted correspondence previously transmitted to Congress in response to Senate and House requests throughout the year, a strong indication that the Department considered these periodic submissions to have accomplished the same purpose as Foreign Relations.

A sampling of these “extra-FRUS” submissions supports this expanded definition. For example, the Department gathered in three “supplemental volumes,” also termed “appendices” to Foreign Relations, 1894, diplomatic correspondence provided to the House and Senate during 1894 on diverse subjects.3 Correspondence that the Senate requested in December 1894 on unrest along Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast appeared both as a Senate Executive Document and as a third supplemental volume to Foreign Relations, 1894.4 As discussed in more detail below, the executive branch transmitted considerable documentation about Cuban affairs in the months before declaration of war in 1898, as well as large tranches of records transmitted confidentially to Congress within a few weeks of the formal cessation of hostilities.

The timely transmittal of what we term “Supplemental FRUS Submissions”—fully integrated with the “regular” annual Foreign Relations volumes—demonstrated the Department’s recognition of the foreign-policy prerogatives of the legislative branch as well as the need to respond promptly and as comprehensively as possible to its requests for information. From 1868 to 1914, the Department of State submitted over 16,000 pages of diplomatic correspondence in addition to the documents included in the “regular” annual FRUS publications—the equivalent of roughly 20 additional Foreign Relations volumes (see appendix C).

Through the first decade of the 20th century, the Foreign Relations series, when considered together with the frequent Supplemental FRUS Submissions of diplomatic correspondence to Congress that complemented the annual volumes, established itself as a reliable primary source for United States foreign policy. Consisting primarily of correspondence, these records can be considered as complete as possible, taking into account the very small number of documents redacted in part or in whole according to 19th century standards for withholding, and given that Presidential records such as Cabinet minutes remained off limits and contemporaries did not consider “personal” documents such as diaries and private letters government records. As the Supplemental FRUS Submissions in particular demonstrate, the Department took seriously its obligation to provide Congress, in a timely manner, the information necessary to exercise appropriate oversight. Indeed, Supplemental FRUS Submissions running into hundreds of pages were prepared and submitted to Congress normally within a month of a congressional request, a remarkable performance given the small number of Clerks on staff. The Department made every effort to ensure Foreign Relations and the Supplemental FRUS Submissions met the contemporary standards for timeliness, accuracy, and completeness.

FRUS Production and Departmental Operations

The available evidence indicates that highly qualified individuals prepared 19th and early 20th century FRUS volumes following systematic procedures that utilized the expertise of personnel from multiple bureaus.5 Although the Secretary of State took direct charge of volumes in a few cases, in most instances the Second Assistant Secretary of State redacted despatches for FRUS. In addition to supervising production of Foreign Relations volumes, the Second Assistant Secretary served as the principal policy adviser to the Secretary of State.6 That position rendered him uniquely qualified to determine the contents of the series. From 1866 to 1924, the Department employed only two Second Assistant Secretaries—William Hunter (1866–1886) and Alvey A. Adee (1886–1924). The importance of Hunter and Adee to Departmental operations cannot be overemphasized.7 As career officials with a deep reservoir of knowledge and who enjoyed the confidence of Secretaries and Presidents from both parties, they brought to FRUS professional-diplomatic expertise and nonpartisan oversight. A meticulous review of all despatches in the National Archives that were stamped for inclusion in Foreign Relations, 1887, together with a representative sampling of redacted correspondence from other years published in Foreign Relations, shows that Hunter or Adee marked passages for exclusion. They also assigned despatches to Clerks within the Diplomatic Bureau for action and identified despatches to be omitted from Foreign Relations. Hunter normally made changes or identified correspondence for exclusion when reviewing the proof copies of Foreign Relations volumes. Adee preferred to review the original documents before preparation of page proofs.

The task of selecting and compiling correspondence for both Foreign Relations and the Supplemental FRUS Submissions fell primarily to Clerks in the Diplomatic Bureau. Rather than mere menials, Clerks served as career officials possessing considerable substantive knowledge. Assigned portfolios according to region and expertise, Diplomatic Bureau Clerks drafted responses to incoming despatches on behalf of Department principals, and they also submitted reports to them on issues of importance. They functioned as the equivalent of today’s Country Desk Officers. Available evidence in the form of marginal annotations to despatches shows that the Diplomatic Bureau Director or a Division Chief reviewed Foreign Relations page proofs at some stage in the process. The production process for 19th and early 20th century volumes, then, consisted of high-ranking officials participating directly in the work, complemented by a staff that can be fairly characterized as “professional” with regard to the expertise necessary to compile FRUS volumes in their contemporary context.8

The Department regularly produced both the annual volumes and Supplemental FRUS Submissions despite a steadily increasing burden of work. Departmental correspondence during the Civil War more than doubled the volume handled by the Buchanan administration, and the flow did not decrease after 1865. During the first Grant administration the communications traffic increased an additional 17 percent. In 1873, the Department received over 20,000 diplomatic communications and sent out more than 19,000 replies. During that year, Congress received 2,122 pages of manuscript records printed in Supplemental FRUS Submissions. Department staff processed nearly 8,000 additional pages of manuscript to produce the annual FRUS volumes covering events for 1873. At that time, the Department employed fewer than 80 people in Washington. Staff shortages perennially plagued the Department as it sought to balance preparation of Foreign Relations volumes and responses to congressional requests for correspondence with other work.9

It should come as no surprise, then, that in addition to informing Congress, officials utilized Foreign Relations as an integral element of Department operations. FRUS served as the ready reference for Clerks of the Diplomatic Bureau in preparing reports (the equivalent of today’s action and information memoranda) for the Secretary and other Department officers. An exhaustive examination of Diplomatic Bureau reports for the period reveals that Clerks regularly cited correspondence found in Foreign Relations as references or included them as appendices to the reports.10 Indeed, the Department reserved several copies of each volume for internal use, and some volumes (or perhaps galley proofs not bound into volumes) were cut up into clippings and inserted directly into the files. The FRUS series and Supplemental FRUS Submissions together provided an aid to institutional memory, an account of past decisions, and a record of negotiations, all essential functions that the volumes still serve today.

FRUS also served as a key vehicle for expounding on evolving Departmental interpretations of international law. Publishing those documents served notice to Congress, foreign governments, and the public of such interpretations, and provided a ready reference to Consuls and Ministers overseas as well as Department officials in Washington. In his seminal Digest of International Law, the preeminent American expert John Bassett Moore frequently cited correspondence in Foreign Relations volumes or in the Supplemental FRUS Submissions as sources for United States decisions and precedents in matters of international law.11 The volumes typically featured foreign diplomatic notes or records of conversations, oftentimes confidential, with U.S. ministers. Of particular importance were despatches and instructions from the Secretary of State to U.S. ministers elucidating the reasons behind American decisions. Also significant were ministers’ analyses and recommendations. For example, in the wake of the 1871 Tien-Tsin (Tianjin) Massacre of foreign missionaries, Minister to China Frederick F. Low sent Secretary of State Hamilton Fish a detailed despatch with his interpretation of China’s treaty obligations with respect to the rights of missionaries. The Department retransmitted the communication as authoritative to U.S. ministers in nations having such treaties with China.12 In addition to informing Congress, the Department of State utilized Foreign Relations volumes to posit definitive interpretations of international law advantageous to American interests.

Another important body of documentation in Foreign Relations dealt with American citizen services, an essential diplomatic and consular function. The dissemination of correspondence concerning foreign government practices and laws averse to the interest of American citizens served a function similar to that of today’s consular travel advisories and warnings. Correspondence from American legations and consulates advising U.S. citizens of an array of potential problems Americans might face when traveling abroad suffused the volumes, ranging from unique marriage and divorce procedures to the risks of dual nationals being conscripted into foreign armies.

FRUS Document Selection

During the 19th century, outgoing government officials retained their “personal” correspondence. Today those records are found not in Foreign Relations volumes or Department records at the National Archives, but rather in collections of personal papers. This leads to a fundamental question regarding the utility of 19th century Foreign Relations volumes: how complete a picture did they offer of U.S. foreign policy? Gaillard Hunt, a long-time Department employee but with little direct experience of FRUS, wrote in a 1911 history of the Department that “the most interesting correspondence of the Department does not appear in the [Foreign Relations] volumes.”13 On the other hand, John Bassett Moore, who served as Third Assistant Secretary (1886–1891), Assistant Secretary (1898), and Counselor (1913–1914), and whose prominent role in the production of the 1898 volume is discussed below, judged that Foreign Relations “embraced all our important diplomatic exchanges.”14 Comparing the contents of Foreign Relations volumes and Supplemental FRUS Submissions with the registers of Department of State correspondence in the National Archives does not account for the absence of significant “personal” records that were not controlled by the Department, but it does allow for a retrospective evaluation of the comprehensiveness of the series’s coverage of “official” diplomatic records.

On only one occasion did a Secretary of State publicly certify the contents of a Foreign Relations volume as comprehensive. In a letter to the President accompanying the correspondence for submission to Congress for publication as Foreign Relations, 1887, Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard wrote,

Bayard’s assertion takes on additional significance because during 1887 Congress requested only one small Supplemental FRUS Submission.16

On balance, Bayard’s claim to comprehensiveness stands up to scrutiny.17 In 1887, the Department received 3,308 despatches from its legations. Of these, 221 appeared in Foreign Relations, 1887 and 151 in Foreign Relations, 1888, comprising just over 11 percent of the despatches retained in Department records.18 Of the 3,308 despatches recorded in the Department that year, only 36 omitted from Foreign Relations, 1887 or 1888 might have merited inclusion. They include the following:

• Five of the 153 despatches from the U.S. legation in Guatemala City, which represented the United States in every country in the region except Nicaragua: three are reports on Costa Rican railroad concessions, two on internal politics (Secretary Bayard opposed Guatemalan efforts to impose federal union on the states of Central America in 1885).
• One of 255 despatches from China: a report on trade developments that lamented the “ignorance of American manufacturers on the needs of remote markets.”
• Nine of 194 despatches from France: six deal with the Triple Alliance and ongoing Franco-Russian maneuvering; three treat domestic French politics.
• Three of 164 despatches from Persia; these report on the escape from Persia of the claimant to the Afghan throne and Great Britain’s successful demand that the Persian Foreign Minister consequently be dismissed.
• Eight of 61 despatches from Peru; these despatches report on the quarantining of Peruvian ports from Chilean vessels for fear of an outbreak of cholera. This subject seemingly would have been of interest to U.S. merchant vessels.
• All reporting (six despatches) on political affairs in Cuba (particularly the presence of U.S. filibusterers) and U.S. estate claims; also two reports of domestic Spanish politics. None of the 131 despatches from Spain deals with those sensitive subjects.
• Four of 120 despatches from Korea: two reports on China’s efforts to assert power over Korea (which Bayard strongly opposed) and two reports on Korea’s interest in obtaining foreign military instructors.

In addition to the 36 despatches outlined above, all 13 despatches from Japan reporting on negotiations among foreign representatives in Tokyo regarding the regulation of Japanese commerce were omitted from Foreign Relations, 1887 or 1888. The omission of these despatches was consistent with Department policy to exclude from Foreign Relations correspondence pertaining to ongoing treaty negotiations. In this instance, Bayard had instructed the U.S. minister to Japan to oppose any measure that would impinge upon Japanese sovereignty.

The content of Supplemental FRUS Submissions accounts for what otherwise appear to be gaps in Foreign Relations, 1887. Congress had already requested and received diplomatic correspondence on the most volatile and potentially dangerous issue of the day—the German occupation of Samoa, where the United States maintained a naval coaling station.19 The absence of documents on Samoa in Foreign Relations, 1887 demonstrates that these periodic additional FRUS submissions to Congress should be rightly viewed as integrally related to Foreign Relations, and the completeness of annual volumes should be evaluated in that light. A similar case involved the British-Venezuelan border dispute, which the discovery of gold in the contested area of British Guiana exacerbated. In April 1888, Congress asked for Department correspondence on the subject, and the Cleveland administration complied in July. All 1887 despatches on the dispute were included in the package the President submitted.20

Foreign Relations, 1887 and the Department of State correspondence published as Supplemental FRUS Submissions provided a comprehensive and complete rendering of despatches on issues of importance. Department officials and Clerks exercised good stewardship by not republishing records already released earlier that year; they devoted their efforts to disclosing additional material in the bound volume. Although this careful examination of the thoroughness of FRUS and attendant supplementary releases was limited to one year, the available evidence indicates that the same commitment to near-comprehensive coverage was common throughout the era of the Contemporaneous FRUS.

Excisions and Exclusions From FRUS

Despite the general comprehensiveness of 19th and early 20th century releases, Department officials sometimes excised portions of correspondence before publication. Usually, the Second Assistant Secretary of State edited the diplomatic correspondence. Hunter and his successor Adee removed passages appearing in Foreign Relations if the information fell into one of several categories similar to those first outlined by Edmund Randolph in 1794.21 The most frequently excised passages were inflammatory in nature, or critical of the Department or U.S. government officials, or revealed sensitive foreign sources. Rather than employing exactly-defined criteria, it appears that Hunter and Adee excised material as they deemed appropriate based on their appreciation of the subject matter and the context. Illustrative examples of excised despatches appearing in Foreign Relations volumes include:

• On June 24, 1874, U.S. Minister George Williamson submitted an appraisal of the limited prospects for a Central American Union, articulating eight reasons why it would fail. The first seven reasons, which were noncontroversial, appeared in FRUS. The eighth reason, which constituted a frontal assault on the local political class, the Catholic Church, Spanish colonial rule, and the general state of society was excised from Foreign Relations. The deleted passage reads in part:

  The apparent want of public faith is a serious impediment to any plan of Union . . . The man who aspires to office is supported by his personal followers, either with ballots or bullets . . . I infer from my present information [that] office is regarded here more as a personal benefaction than as a sacred trust confided to an honorable Citizen, whose acceptance of it implies the pledge of honor that he will only use it to promote the interests of his Country . . . Whether this want of public faith results from religious teachings, from the suspicion and possible hatred that might have been engendered by centuries of oppression of the aboriginal classes by the Spanish element, from National characteristics, from the admixture of races, from a sad experience in politics, or from a combination of all these causes, it would be difficult to say.22

• A self-congratulatory despatch to Acting Secretary Hunter from U.S. Consul General to Tripoli M. Vidal dated November 6, 1873, in which Vidal boasted of his nearly single-handed dismantling of the slave trade between Tripoli and Constantinople, was peppered with excisions. The deleted paragraphs dealt with Vidal’s assertion that Turks were unable to live in Europe without smuggled slaves, and his comparison of upper-class Turks who return to Constantinople from Tripoli with slaves to American tourists who return to the United States with smuggled cigars.23
• In a note enclosing a copy of Japan’s copyright law, Minister to Japan John A. Bingham railed against “‘political fledglings and demagogues’ who wanted to strip the diplomatic service of needed resources,” beginning with his indispensable Japanese translator. His tirade against Congress was excised.24
• From Minister George W. Merrill’s 1887 report on a constitutional crisis in Hawaii that ended peaceably, Assistant Secretary Adee excised the following reference to gunboat diplomacy: “I am confident also that the presence of the three United States naval ships, and one English ship, now moored in the harbor, have a very tranquilizing effects on those desirous of creating turmoil and unrest.”25
• In an 1886 paragraph withheld from a report on discriminatory petroleum regulations in Austria-Hungary and hopes for a more favorable treaty, Chargé d’Affaires James F. Lee questioned the integrity of his predecessor. “Our trade in petroleum has naturally steadily declined. Not from any want of proper attention to its interests (as implied in recent publications in the United States) by those representing the Department of State at present in this monarchy,” he assured Secretary Bayard. “It is surprising to learn that other administrations have, through the friendly personal relations of their representatives, prevented some mythical hostile legislation. The truth is there has been no legislation and none proposed during the last ten years.” Also excised were references to Lee’s secret dealings with Standard Oil to improve the company’s position in the Austro-Hungarian market and with Bohemian Clubs to encourage them to speak out against the imperial policy.26
• From a despatch of Minister John W. Foster regarding a ministerial crisis in Spain, the following sentence was omitted: “The constitution of 1876, now in force, was formulated which gives its character as one of the most retrograde of the governments of Europe.”27

The excision of derogatory assessments of the integrity and legitimacy of host-nation governments, such as those Williamson and Foster leveled, may have been calculated to protect the authors of the correspondence.

The (Limited) Confidentiality of Diplomatic Communications

The experience of Minister to Venezuela Thomas Russell after the publication of a despatch critical of the Venezuelan government certainly provided Hunter and Adee with a cautionary precedent for excising inflammatory remarks that served no policy interests. In 1866 the United States and Venezuela agreed to submit claims of American citizens against the South American country to a mixed commission for arbitration. Nine years later, the commission had yet to render judgment in all the cases. Those funds it had awarded to Americans remained locked in the Venezuelan treasury, the government unwilling to release them. On May 8, 1875, an exasperated Minister Russell told Secretary Fish that there were, in his opinion, “only two ways in which the payment of so large an amount can be obtained. The first is by sharing the proceeds with some of the chief officers of this government; the second, by a display of force, or, at least, a threat of force. The first course, which has been pursued by one or more nations, will of course never be followed by the United States. The expediency of the second it is not my province to discuss.”28 Although Fish made no reply to the despatch and it did not appear in Foreign Relations, 1875, Russell’s impolitic message was included in a July 1876 Supplemental FRUS Submission on the Venezuelan Mixed Commission.29 When the Venezuelan Government became aware of the message in January 1877, Foreign Minister Caleano told Russell to pack his bags. The statements in Russell’s May 1875 despatch, the foreign minister wrote, represented “a most violent attack because they insult the administration most grievously, besides involving a notorious falsehood.” Secretary of State Thomas Evarts rushed to Russell’s defense. On April 2, 1877, he sent Venezuelan Minister to the United States Dalla Costa a note stating that if the Venezuelan Government did not communicate a satisfactory explanation for the “abrupt and extraordinary step” of expelling Russell, Dalla Costa would also be sent home. Although Caracas formally withdrew its statement in July, Russell remained persona non grata in Venezuela and did not return.30

Either Assistant Secretary Hunter misjudged the potential Venezuelan reaction to Russell’s uncomplimentary despatch, or he decided that it failed to meet the “not in the public interest” threshold for withholding correspondence from Congress. Had Hunter deemed the despatch sufficiently important to share with Congress, but too sensitive for public consumption, he might have taken an alternative course—submit the despatch confidentially. As had been the case since the Early Republic, occasionally the Department provided Congress diplomatic correspondence with the understanding that the documents would be treated as confidential and not published. Normally this procedure was reserved for correspondence pertaining to treaty negotiations. Congress printed the correspondence as lettered, rather than the usual numbered Executive Documents, and marked them “Confidential.” In every other respect the printed documents resembled the Supplemental FRUS Submissions described above.31

Even the routine communications regularly published in FRUS sometimes caused difficulties for American diplomats abroad. For example, from the legations in China and Japan came complaints that the English-language press in those countries—newspapers that British interests controlled—used published despatches to bludgeon both the ministers and American policy. In August 1872, the U.S. Minister to Japan Frederick F. Low reported with annoyance and perplexity the mixed reaction of The Shanghai Courier, a British-run newspaper, to despatches concerning China in Foreign Relations, 1871. The Courier praised some of the volume’s reporting about China, but also decried the inexperience and lack of sound judgment evidenced by some U.S. representatives.32 Similarly, the U.S. Minister to Japan, John A. Bingham, lamented the regular criticism of American policy toward Japan by English journalists in that country.33 Many U.S. ministers regarded such problems as a cost of doing business. Low attributed the Courier’s somewhat hostile commentary to his unmasking of the evils of the opium trade, in which British merchants, with government support, were conspicuously engaged. But, he told Fish, “at the risk of incurring the displeasure of the local press I shall continue to prosecute my investigation with reference to the internal economy of this country, the result of which together with such suggestions as may seem appropriate, will be given to the Department.” Low did not ask that the Department refrain from including such reports in Foreign Relations, but his reassurances about continued straightforward reporting identified a key risk to excessive transparency: the central purpose of sending diplomats abroad would be defeated if they did not feel “safe” to provide honest accounts and incisive assessments.34 Fish’s attempt to secure input from the field (discussed in chapter 3) indicates that he recognized this dilemma.

A few objected to FRUS altogether. Echoing the sentiments expressed by security guardians since the inception of the series, in 1907 Third Assistant Secretary of State Huntington Wilson opposed “rushing into print with the prompt publication of our diplomatic business” because “the effect of the publication of Foreign Relations is to show our hand to our competitors and to place in their hands arguments to be, in turn, used by them against us. Foreign governments await the publication of Foreign Relations more eagerly than anyone else.” Opponents of significant documentary releases often proposed substitute arrangements that would have fundamentally altered the character of the established U.S. transparency regime. Wilson, for example, wanted to discontinue FRUS in favor of occasional papers on discrete subjects or concluded negotiations, produced primarily for confidential dissemination to the Senate and diplomatic posts abroad. Revealing his approach to public affairs, Wilson suggested, “those of these papers which might be found useful to inform and mould public opinion and which were still innocuous could be given to the press at opportune times.”35

Despite the difficulties inherent in publishing potentially sensitive foreign policy documents of recent vintage, considerations about how much information to publish took place within a widespread commitment to openness. Department officials repeatedly held that no system of occasional releases could take the place of FRUS. In response to Wilson’s complaint, Adee judged that even if some arrangement to produce disaggregated brochures were to replace FRUS “they should be serial, and bound in annual volumes and distributed for preservation in continuation of the For. Rels. Series.”36 The problems that FRUS could cause notwithstanding, even the diplomats most directly affected rarely argued against the principle that the American people had a right to know as much as possible about the conduct of the nation’s overseas affairs.

Idiosyncratic Information Management Practices

The many examples cited above highlight a fundamental problem exacerbated by the deeply-valued practice of releasing recent foreign policy documents. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Department of State lacked clear, consistent information security policies to control the protection and release of documents. This led to skirmishes between Department principals and ministers at overseas posts reluctant to express themselves freely for fear that their words might appear in public.

After the Department published, and the German press reprinted with angry commentary, a despatch he had written in May 1883 on the contentious issue of American pork exports, Minister A. A. Sargent told Washington that he would desist from reporting honestly. That angered First Assistant Secretary J. C. Bancroft Davis. Second Assistant Secretary of State Adee, a career civil servant widely respected in Congress for his nonpartisanship, crafted a carefully worded rebuke for Davis’s signature. In view of Adee’s impeccable credentials and long service, and the 13 years that Davis logged under two administrations, the letter of instruction is reprinted as the best postbellum expression of Department policy. As Davis explained to Sargent:

It is unlikely that Davis’s assurances assuaged Sargent; there simply were too many examples of both confidential and private communications finding their way into the Foreign Relations series and the Supplemental FRUS Submissions transmitted in response to congressional requests.

In November 1892, Secretary of State John W. Foster invoked Davis’s stratagem to preempt possible publication of sensitive correspondence from U.S. Minister to Hawaii John L. Stevens. Like Davis, Foster told Stevens that he should separate despatches into “two classes, one of which shall aim to give the narrative of public affairs in their open historical aspect, and the other to be of a strictly reserved and confidential character reporting and commenting upon matters of personal intrigue and the like so far as you may deem necessary for my full understanding of the situation.” Too many of Stevens’ despatches, observed Foster, “combine these two modes of treatment to such a degree as to make their publication in the event of a call from Congress or other occasion therefore, inexpedient and, indeed, impracticable, without extended omissions.”38

Either Foster played Stevens false, or he did not believe his own instructions. In January 1893, Congress requested correspondence relating to the 1854 Treaty with the Kingdom of Hawaii, with the usual “if not inconsistent with the public interest” caveat. Foster interpreted Congress’s intent liberally and provided documents covering the half century from 1843 to 1893. Among them were two despatches from Stevens, clearly marked “Confidential,” about personal intrigue in the court of Queen Liliuokalani. Both predated but were in accordance with Foster’s November letter of instruction. In his submission of documents to Congress, Foster omitted his letter of instruction; apparently the public interest was not served by its implication that Foster hoped to evade close congressional scrutiny of the Harrison administration’s Hawaii policy.39 In March 1893, Walter Q. Gresham replaced Foster as Secretary of State in the new administration of Democrat Grover Cleveland. That December, Congress asked for all correspondence of recent vintage relating to Hawaii, and Gresham resubmitted Stevens’ confidential despatches, this time with Foster’s November 1892 cautionary instructions. There is no indication that anyone in Congress took note of Foster’s earlier sleight of hand.40

In an 1886 book based on lectures he had given at Johns Hopkins University and Cornell University on American statecraft, former U.S. Minister to Greece Eugene Schuyler voiced an argument that typified the position of security guardians in a 19th century setting.41 He dismissed the utility of split correspondence or red-inked despatches and warned of the impact of the Foreign Relations series on frank reporting. “Even with all the care that can be exercised despatches are not infrequently published which get their writers in trouble,” wrote Schuyler. As a consequence, “our ministers do not feel free to express to the Secretary their real opinions; for they have always in view the possibility that their despatches may be published. . . . Even confidential letters do not always tell the whole truth.” Schuyler proposed to scrap the Foreign Relations series, contending that “it would be wrong to print, simply for the general information of the public, anything more than . . . routine despatches.” Better, he thought, to wait until Congress asked for information on special subjects. “Even then,” Schuyler added, “great caution should be observed [because] foreign governments sometimes make confidential communications, and in such cases it would be improper to print these communications without the consent of those governments.”42

Although the Department did make small allowances for the sensitivities of other governments, the exceptions were few and narrow. First of all, no U.S.-originated documents required publication approval from abroad. Hamilton Fish made this clear to Horace Maynard, U.S. Minister to Turkey, after the latter reported that the Turkish Foreign Minister was angry that the correspondence of American consular officers in Tripoli and Tunis were grouped in Foreign Relations, 1874 under the heading “Barbary States,” instead of “Turkish Empire.” The encroachment of European powers, particularly France, upon Constantinople’s indirect sovereignty over Tripolitania and Tunis made this suggestion that they were independent nations particularly irksome to the Turks. “The fact that the volume to which he referred,” Fish told Maynard, “was a communication by the President to Congress and not one addressed to foreign governments (although we furnish them with copies of this, as we do of all or nearly all of our public documents),” and “that the arrangement to which he had referred was not intended to convey any special political significance, but was one of usage and domestic convenience; that we do regard both Tunis and Tripoli as Barbary States; that they are so regarded and spoken of by geographers, historians, and lexicographers; that we have separate and independent treaties with each of them, for the execution and observance of which we hold them responsible.”43

Withholding information from other governments required specific agreement in advance. In a letter of instruction to U.S. Minister to Mexico Philip Morgan in 1883, Secretary Frederick Frelinghuysen reiterated the Department’s view that other governments had no voice in determining contents of the Foreign Relations series. “In the absence of any express reserve or pledge of confidence asked and given, correspondence between governments is the property of either,” Frelinghuysen averred, “to be published if the interests of either require. This government in common with most other governments publishes so much of its diplomatic correspondence to be required for the information of the national legislature and the people. It is thought quite immaterial on which side the correspondence may have been initiated, questions of public utility alone being sufficient to decide the time and the extent of publicity to be given to it.”44

Although official Department policy regarding confidential communications and defining the limits to foreign government equities in the Foreign Relations series appears to have been constant through the early 20th century, actual practices could vary considerably. The episodes related throughout Part One of this book demonstrate the absence from one Presidential administration to another (and sometimes even during the course of a single Secretary’s tenure) of clearly understood or uniformly applied policies defining the universe of diplomatic correspondence open to public submission to Congress or publication in Foreign Relations. As a consequence of this lack of policy clarity, in order to prevent the publication of sensitive despatches, ministers employed a variety of informal designators. Because “Confidential” despatches frequently appeared in Foreign Relations, they used labels such as “Confidential and Secret,” “Personal and Secret,” “Private and Confidential,” and “Personal and Private” to safeguard despatches from release. Documents marked as “personal” or “private” generally did not appear in Foreign Relations or in Supplemental FRUS Submissions to Congress. Their absence seems to represent a gentleman’s agreement within the Department that the airing of such correspondence was not in the public interest. Many such despatches were never entered into the regular recordkeeping mechanisms of the Department. Essentially, Department officers were struggling toward a concept that is embodied today in the Departmental handling designations such as NODIS (No Distribution), which restricts the dissemination of highly sensitive communications to the Chief of Mission at post, the Secretary of State, and the President (express permission is required to share such documents more broadly).45

Ultimately, the criteria for determining what required redaction could not be simplified to a formula. In 1900, John Bassett Moore stated, “I am not aware of any precise rule on which one could rely.” The decisionmaking process involved “a question of judgment and discretion.”46 For over a century, the responsibilities of principal officers at the Department of State included deciding, collectively, what information could be divulged without prejudice to “the public interest.” Although usually only an irritant in its 19th and early 20th century context, this aspect of publishing foreign policy documents rose to a much greater level of significance after 1914.

Press and Public Assessments of FRUS

The press and engaged American citizens also commented directly upon FRUS, albeit sporadically.47 As would be expected with any collection of government documents, the volumes received a mixed reception. An assessment of Foreign Relations, 1870 in the Cincinnati Commercial exemplifies the amalgamation of disdain and respect typically expressed about the content of the volumes and the process of creating them (including the Supplementary FRUS Submissions), as well as the congressional prerogative to request documents and the Departmental role in selecting and transmitting the records.

Reviewers often complained about the trivial nature of the material in the volumes or the excessively detailed coverage, except, of course, when they found the information of interest. Editors of the Commercial, for example, believed their readers wanted to know more about trade with Latin American countries. The 1870 FRUS also included significant material about an important ongoing dispute with Great Britain over American fishing rights in Canadian waters, but apparently that topic generated little interest in southwestern Ohio. The Department supplied nearly 200 Cuba-related documents in Supplementary FRUS Submissions during the year, which generated commentary in the press.49 Those earlier transmittals obviated the need to cover a leading foreign policy topic of the day in the end-of-year volume, and, consequently, the Commercial did not discuss the issue in its review.50 In 1876, the New York Herald opined that “The Argentine Republic, judging from the despatches of Mr. [Thomas O.] Osborn . . . must be a good deal of a sinecure. During the year he has written four short letters. If he has sent any more, Mr. Fish has not deemed them worth publication.”51 In 1880, the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin noted the absence of correspondence about Chinese immigration, a subject of deep concern in the West.52

Given that the volumes published correspondence no more than 18 months old, perhaps most surprising to modern eyes are complaints about lack of timeliness. In December 1873, the New York Times dismissed the 1873 volume as stale, noting “some of the documents [date] as far back as 1872, and a few up to the month of August [1873].”53 The New York Herald said of the 1877 volume, “Some of the contents are more than a year old, while the others are not of recent date.”54 In 1895, the Chicago Daily Tribune characterized the volumes as “deferred so long that they are of the quality of last year’s bird nests.”55 In early 1889, an ongoing dispute among the United States, Great Britain, and Germany over commercial rights in Samoa and use of the coaling station at Apia threatened to erupt into open warfare. Having become accustomed to timely Department submission of correspondence on international crises, the press loudly protested what the New York Herald called the “Silence on Somoa” and demanded Congress request all correspondence on the subject. Congress heeded the call, the Department complied promptly with a Supplemental FRUS Submission, and newspapers nationwide scrutinized the released documents closely.56 Conversely, when diplomats or journalists complained about improper releases of documents, the objections focused on sensitivity. Most observers would have agreed, for example, that Marsh’s 1870 despatches (see chapter 3) sent confidentially should have been retained within the Department for at least a few years. Yet even such cases, the “expiration date” on most sensitive-restricted material would be considered quite short by modern standards.57

Most observers appreciated the capacity of the Contemporaneous FRUS to inform citizens about recent events of major interest. Immediately after publication of the reinstated Foreign Relations in early December 1870, the New York Tribune printed two columns of excerpts about the Franco-Prussian War from the volume, entitled “Official War Correspondence,” directly adjacent to stories filed by civilian reporters. The New York Times printed excerpts from several despatches bearing on American policy during the war, and other American newspapers ran shorter summaries of the volume’s war coverage.58 The 1870 volume received attention abroad as well. With the French-German war still ongoing, The Times of London highlighted valuable information from the 1870 volume not otherwise available.59 Given Great Britain’s global interests, The Times also carefully examined the 1871 FRUS, reviewing the correspondence regarding the 1870 war and its aftermath, conditions in China, the Treaty of Washington that settled the Alabama claims dispute, and the state of affairs in Austria-Hungary.60 London’s Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, and Science appreciated American reporting about the Franco-Prussian War not only from Paris, but Berlin as well.61 Departmental releases could also provide information about more ephemeral events that made headline news. The New York Herald published a full page analysis of a 688-page Supplementary FRUS Submission on strained relations with Chile in the wake of an October 1891 Chilean mob attack on crewmen of the USS Baltimore while harbored in Valparaiso.62

The voluminous correspondence revealed much about the Department’s operations and representatives, causing readers to draw conclusions about both the nation’s policies and the competence of those who carried it out. The 1870 volume featured a rebuke of the highly capable Minister to China, Frederick F. Low, by Secretary Fish for failing to convey United States policy accurately to the Chinese government. In the wake of the Tientsin massacre, the condition of American missionaries in China was the subject of vigorous press debate. The Department probably included the rebuke in Foreign Relations to assure the American public that it took the matter seriously.63 Sometimes the press criticized policy; in reviewing the 1876 volume, the New York Tribune disagreed with the belligerent U.S. response to Peking’s request to open a consulate in San Francisco to address complaints about the treatment of Chinese subjects there.64 Most often, press criticism focused on the inadequacy of the nation’s diplomatic representatives. Both the Chicago Daily Tribune and the Nation cited the malapropisms and diplomatic miscues of American diplomats revealed in Foreign Relations, 1894 to bemoan the lack of a professional diplomatic service. The Tribune offered a representative sampling of despatches that “express a manifest contempt for style.” The Nation called attention to an exchange between Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham and the U.S. Minister to Bolivia Thomas Moonlight to illustrate the unfamiliarity of many ministers with the basic rules of diplomacy. Moonlight had asked Bolivian authorities to promote a Bolivian army officer for “courtesies and kindnesses” he had extended Moonlight since the minister’s arrival in La Paz. Gresham hastened to remind him that, “however usual such a proceeding may be in Bolivia,” it was against U.S. statutes and Department regulations for an American diplomat to advocate for the advancement of a foreign official. The Nation also took note of a query from Minister Lewis Baker asking if he had the authority to perform marriages in Nicaragua. The Nation reached the same conclusion as had the Tribune: the United States needed better-qualified diplomats.65

Other commentators discovered in the volumes much to commend American diplomacy. Assistant Secretary of State J. C. Bancroft Davis mailed copies of the 1870 volume to colleagues and friends in states in which he had business interests. Benjamin Moran wrote from London, “I much like your new publication. The title—Foreign Relations—is legitimate and the volume is wisely arranged. It contains just what we want to know, and the Alphabetical Index is both novel and extremely useful. Please send me some more copies.” After his “first dash at it,” Alexander Hamilton, Jr. said he found the volume “very interesting.” Eminent New York City attorney James W. Gerard, Jr. also thought Foreign Relations, 1870 worthwhile. “I will peruse it with much gratification,” wrote Gerard, “and will find it very serviceable in my library for purposes of reference.” Massachusetts attorney William S. Richardson eagerly awaited the tome. “I believe in your department,” Richardson told Davis,” and I have done what few people outside of your office have undertaken. I have read nearly all the volumes and I shall read this one.”66 Many praised the evenhanded U.S. policy during the Franco-Prussian War revealed by the 1870 and 1871 volumes, as well as the actions of Minister to France Elihu Washburne to alleviate suffering during the siege of Paris. American officials in China generally received high marks for their promotion of treaty rights, commercial opportunity, and support for missionaries.67 Of the 1871 volume The Times of London opined, “Taken altogether, the papers in this collection, with few exceptions, bear witness that the great Power, of which the destiny is to be supreme in the New World, is not unworthy of its high mission, and that its policy is in the main intended to promote the civilization and happiness of mankind.”68 Commenting on the 1894 volume, the Worcester (Massachusetts) Daily Spy found of particular and “timely” interest correspondence pertaining to Great Britain’s dispute with Venezuela over the Guianese border that revealed the trajectory of U.S. efforts to broker a negotiated settlement: “It is gratifying to find in these [documents] proof that the [Cleveland] administration has been true to the precedents of its predecessors and has asserted American principles as embodied in the Monroe Doctrine with commendable firmness.”69 The Denver Evening Post concurred and also praised the organizational structure of the 854-page Foreign Relations, 1894. “Never before has such a great mass of diplomatic correspondence been published in a single year,” observed the Post, “and a novelty is in the arrangement of the letters, grouping them by subject rather than chronologically by country, has been adopted for the convenience of reference.”70

On rare occasions that echoed the example of the 1865–1866 Lincoln memorial volume (see chapter 2), FRUS provided material that aided in honoring the service of the nation’s statesmen. The May 29, 1895 issue of the New York Times drew upon Foreign Relations, 1893 and 1894 as well as the three 1894 supplemental volumes to extol the “consummate statecraft, wisdom, and patriotism” of Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham, who had died the previous day. Said the Times: “The Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States from March 1893 to the time immediately preceding Mr. Gresham’s death pay rich tribute to his skill as a diplomatist. Every subject of statecraft is touched upon.” Republicans, the Times continued, had bitterly assailed Gresham’s policies, but Foreign Relations permitted his record to stand “where the whole world may see it. It is one to be proud of. . . . The several volumes of Foreign Relations which tell the story of his achievements show also that while his attitude on all important questions was firm, he was never disposed to be quarrelsome. . . . His reputation will not suffer in the least by a careful examination of the diplomatic correspondence.”71

Special Cases That Illustrate Normative Expectations

Even before the end of Hamilton Fish’s tenure, the Foreign Relations series had become a regularized element of government operations that functioned within widely-accepted parameters. The publication faced no fundamental challenges to its continued existence, the executive and legislative branches presumed that openness pervaded the process (with the usual reservations concerning “the public interest”), Congress paid for the requisite number of volumes the GPO produced each year as required by law, diplomats sometimes groused about too much openness but nevertheless continued to convey substantive assessments, and the press followed foreign affairs with sufficient attention to weigh in when some notable occurrence arose. The volumes appeared annually, and for the most part received little fanfare. Within the normally smooth operation of the Contemporary FRUS era, two extraordinary incidents occurred that highlight key elements of the informal but powerful “FRUS compact” that governed the series.

“Jingo Jim” Blaine

In 1881, Secretary of State James G. Blaine became disastrously embroiled in the muddled multilateral diplomacy surrounding the War of the Pacific.72 By the time Blaine took office, the conflict had degenerated into a guerrilla war between remnants of the Peruvian army and Chilean occupation forces. Blaine believed stability in Latin America comprised the necessary precondition for enhanced U.S. trade opportunities in the region, and he decried the continued hostilities as an opportunity for European intervention in South America.73 After failed attempts by Hayes administration officials to broker a peace settlement, Blaine involved the United States again in order to prevent European influence from growing, and perhaps mindful too of the political capital he would accrue from a diplomatic victory.

Blaine drew up judicious and evenhanded instructions to his representatives emphasizing friendship and fair dealing with both belligerents.74 He directed Minister to Chile Hugh Judson Kilpatrick to admonish Santiago not to make unreasonable demands on Peru. He told Minister to Peru Stephen A. Hurlbut to encourage the Peruvians to accept any “reasonable conditions and limitations” necessary to facilitate Chilean recognition of the Peruvian provisional government and bring an end to the fighting.

Neither diplomat followed Blaine’s orders. Hurlbut sided openly with Peru, urged the U.S. government to intervene to prevent Chile from carving up the country, and negotiated an agreement with the provisional Peruvian Government for a U.S. naval coaling station. Kilpatrick openly espoused Chile’s cause and disputed publicly with Hurlbut, fervently criticizing his actions. Moreover, Hurlbut became entangled in the dubious machinations of several private companies’ claims to contested Peruvian nitrate and guano deposits (located in Chilean-occupied territory). Some of the claimants had political connections in Washington, lending credence to the appearance that Blaine and Hurlbut could be pursuing “guano diplomacy” to save Peruvian territory from Chile for the benefit of private business interests in which they might have a stake.75

Blaine neglected to rein in his ministers in a timely manner. The July 2, 1881 attack on President James A. Garfield, after which he lingered for 11 weeks before dying, threw the Cabinet into disarray. Few instructions of any sort emanated from the Department for nearly three months, and after Garfield died on September 19, an ill and exhausted Blaine departed for an extended vacation in Maine. He returned in mid-November to galvanizing developments. Blaine learned that President Chester A. Arthur intended to replace him with Frederick Frelinghuysen, pending confirmation when Congress reconvened in December. Newspapers had begun to ridicule the Secretary for his inattention to Hurlbut’s rogue diplomacy and to the unseemly duel between Hurlbut and Kilpatrick.76

With his tenure fast coming to an end, Blaine hastened to rescue his position and protect his longer-term reputation by manipulating the Foreign Relations series. He had not yet written his errant ministers; if made public, the record would show three months of silence on his part. Because the cut-off date had already passed for selection of records to be published in the 1881 FRUS, Blaine ordered a halt to work on the volume. For the first time since 1869, there would be no annual submission of diplomatic correspondence to Congress with the President’s December message.77

Blaine’s public relations-oriented strategy only made his situation worse. He hurriedly wrote the two ministers, upbraiding them for failing to follow his instructions, chiding them for undiplomatic behavior, and downplaying the impression that he had favored one of the competing claimants in the mineral deposits dispute. At the same time Blaine withheld the FRUS volume, he doled out select documents to the press himself. The suspect timing of those releases and the self-serving nature of the documents only exacerbated criticisms about Blaine’s judgment and his ministers’ competence. Both Houses of Congress called for all Department correspondence on the War of the Pacific. On December 19, 1881, President Arthur removed Blaine in favor of Frelinghuysen.78

Blaine’s longer-term reputation suffered most from his machinations, although his actions caused collateral damage as well. On January 26, 1882, Arthur submitted to Congress as a Supplemental FRUS Submission the Department’s War of the Pacific correspondence in its entirety—441 documents totaling 743 pages.79 In his eagerness to distance the Department from Blaine’s actions and avoid scandal, Frelinghuysen released everything, including very recent confidential reports that torpedoed the efforts of an American special envoy sent in December to broker peace between Chile and Peru. The issue of whether U.S. representatives overseas could report with candor, and the related question of what information could be appropriately divulged publicly, reappeared in the press. The Department and the Congress launched investigations to determine whether any anyone had engaged in improper actions to involve the U.S. government in business transactions with regard to the guano claims cases. Although the inquests produced no charges, the impression remained that Blaine had sought to manipulate the outcome of the war for personal gain.80 His political enemies, both Democrats and opponents within the Republican Party, pounced on the rumors and accusations to discredit the former Secretary. Blaine’s enemies made his conduct of Latin American policy a centerpiece of their attacks on his 1884 Presidential campaign. By that time Blaine had become the “tattooed man” to his political opponents primarily because of questionable dealings on domestic matters. The renewed suggestions—however unfounded—of scandalous conduct as Secretary of State reinforced that image, and while not decisive, the allegations contributed to his electoral loss to Grover Cleveland.81

The Blaine affair raised again fundamental questions that troubled diplomats throughout the era. Would their despatches be manipulated for partisan purposes, or would certain sensitive communications find their way into print? And what might such revelations mean for their relations with the host government and for their own careers? American ministers abroad sometimes protested the release of documents, and it is probably true that episodes such as this dampened honest reporting from the field for a time. Yet even these most directly interested officials, with rare exceptions, continued to support the value of government accountability to its constituents.82

The Blaine imbroglio demonstrated that politicians who violated the (largely implicit) “FRUS compact” did so at great risk. Blaine’s attempt to manipulate the timing and content of the 1881 volume backfired because members of both political parties, as well as the press, expected the series to remain above partisan infighting or personal interest. Foreign policy documents created by government officials were records “owned” by the public and not to be withheld, or even delayed, without very good reason. Knowledgeable observers recognized that exceptions might be necessary to protect the national interest, but the presumption remained that any communication was liable to become part of the public record as a consequence of the executive branch’s responsibility to inform the people’s representatives in Congress. Blaine, therefore, violated the compact on several counts. He delayed publication of the 1881 volume in order to redress his own deficiency in the formulation of policy. That the President’s appointed ministers exceeded or ignored their instructions only highlighted Blaine’s lack of supervision over the nation’s representatives abroad. Even the mere implication that the Department of State might engage in favoritism, or that high officials pursued personal gain instead of promoting the people’s business, constituted a potentially serious blow to the integrity of the government. Yet the rarity of such occurrences indicates that all parties respected the unofficial compact. Americans generally believed that transparency played a critical role in the proper operation of a republic, and FRUS represented an important manifestation of that principle.

FRUS at War: The 1898 Volume

The 1898 FRUS was the first to encounter a significant publication interruption since the bureaucratic disorganization and executive-legislative animosity of 1868–1870.83 Following tradition, the Department should have released the volume by early summer 1899, but it did not appear until two years later, in June 1901. Yet no discernible public controversy surrounded the delay; neither press nor Congress complained to any noticeable degree. Some sources have been read to suggest that the McKinley administration deliberately withheld sensitive information about U.S. actions surrounding the Spanish-American War.84 If that were an accurate depiction of the delay, it would represent an important milestone in the degradation of transparency expectations developed over the previous century: at the moment the United States arrived on the world stage as a Great Power by exerting force across two oceans and acquiring overseas territory, the executive branch withheld foreign policy documents from Congress and the public. Had that been the case, it could be argued that the 1898 volume established a precedent for expanding national security exceptions to the rapid release of information. A careful examination of the extant record, however, reveals that the established practices of responsible release continued to operate through the crisis of war and its aftermath. The President and the Department did share important information with the Senate in a timely manner. An unfortunate constellation of personnel changes, reassignments, and administrative reorganization caused the tardy appearance of the 1898 volume, which in turn delayed the 1899 and 1900 volumes. With the release of the 1901 volume, the series returned to the contemporaneous release practices established in 1861.

As appendix C demonstrates, the executive branch had regularly released documents about diplomatic tensions with Spain, primarily concerning Cuba, since the 1870s. In the two years before war erupted, the Department transmitted over 450 documents totaling more than 650 pages to Congress in Supplemental FRUS Submissions. Additionally, affairs with Spain figured prominently in Foreign Relations volumes; documentation on Spain, for example, comprised the largest chapter in the 1896 volume.85 In the months prior to war, President McKinley and his officials did not share some communications of recent vintage, but such withholdings were not out of the ordinary. As had been the case for a century, a general understanding maintained between the executive and legislative branches that certain material should remain sequestered for as much as a year, by which time all but the most significant sensitivities had subsided.

After the cessation of hostilities in August 1898, a series of alterations in the responsibilities of key U.S. government personnel derailed FRUS production. In September William R. Day resigned his position as Secretary of State (which he held for only five months) to head the American peace negotiation delegation. McKinley named John Hay as his third Secretary of State during 1898, which affected organizational continuity; the 1897 FRUS volume had been prepared under Day’s predecessor, John Sherman. Assistant Secretary of State John Bassett Moore also resigned to serve as the Peace Commission’s secretary and legal adviser. When the negotiations concluded on December 10, 1899, Day did not return to the Department, and Moore did so only long enough to prepare the substantial documentation that accompanied the submission of the peace treaty to the Senate.86

Given that the formal cessation of hostilities did not occur until mid-December, the McKinley administration fulfilled traditional expectations about responsible transparency in a remarkably timely manner. Along with the peace treaty, Hay transmitted confidentially a Supplemental FRUS Submission of nearly 700 pages to the Senate on January 4, 1899.87 Because leaks to the press occurred almost immediately, the Senate quickly made all this material public.88 Within days, the Senate requested additional information, and, on January 30, the Department forwarded a second 300-page tranche of documents, which remained confidential until shortly before publication of the 1898 FRUS volume in 1901.89 In contravention of usual Departmental efficiency practices that precluded duplicate publication of the same documents, the importance of many of the records from those two releases dictated that they also be republished in the 1898 volume.90 Thus, before the end of January 1899, approximately 10 percent of what eventually became the 1898 FRUS, encompassing a large proportion of the most important material for that year, had already been given to the Senate, and the majority of that information had been made public. Most press accounts about the information revealed were favorable toward American policy, and none complained about premature release of sensitive information.91

Completion of the full 1898 FRUS volume then went awry, owing to a series of organizational and administrative anomalies that Department officials subsequently addressed. In 1898, the day-to-day responsibility for coordinating FRUS production shifted from its longstanding home in the Bureau of Indexes and Archives to the Chief Clerk’s office. William H. Michael had served as Chief Clerk only since May 1897, and therefore had little experience of the FRUS process. Day assumed that Moore had worked on the volume’s contents, but Moore left that task to Michael. Either owing to overwork or lack of interest, Michael apparently did little to direct the compilation process.92 Secretary Hay became aware of the discrepancy in July 1900, and he quickly acted to address the backlog, which by then included the 1899 volume and a potential delay in preparing the 1900 volume as well. Hay hired additional personnel whose time was dedicated wholly to bringing the series up to date,93 and he returned responsibility for FRUS production to the Bureau of Indexes and Archives. Hay’s measures got the series back on track in less than two years; the series returned to its traditional timetable, featuring two 1901 volumes published during the early part of 1902.

The publication delay, however, also provided a unique opportunity to release more documents. The discussion that ensued among current and former high government officials illustrates the general commitment to openness typical of the Contemporaneous FRUS era and provides insights into the criteria used to make redaction decisions. Although no longer Department officers, Day and Moore advocated with Adee and McKinley to include more material than would have been releasable two years earlier. Because the common understanding of the era held that U.S. Government representatives engaging in diplomatic correspondence should be consulted when determining the disposition of the records they created, Day persuaded Adee to “clear” still-closed negotiation records with the members of the American peace delegation.94 Day and Moore also argued successfully for the inclusion of additional documentation withheld from the Senate in 1899, primarily direct communications among McKinley, Day, and Minister to Madrid Stewart Woodford,95 as well as messages from military commanders. Despite the fact that much of this material had been marked “private” or “personal,” Day concluded, “I see no further occasion for keeping Mr. Woodford’s letters to Mr. Sherman—typewritten in the President’s correspondence—giving his views to the ambassadors of England, France, Germany, and Russia, from print.”96 Day believed inclusion of this special category of documents was necessary to avoid important gaps in the record and to “render intelligible” the course of events. He also judged that sufficient time had passed; with the peace treaty approved by both governments, no major harm would come from printing the negotiation records.97 Nevertheless, all agreed that certain categories of information must remain protected; for example, Day noted that “the parts referring to other governments and interviews with ministers of other countries, should, of course, be omitted.”98 In addition to Adee, President McKinley reviewed the volume before its release.99

The records concerning the 1898 FRUS convey a sense of how key government officials treated document handling, the factors weighed in “declassification” decisions, and the procedures for release of information. The lack of clear definition of what would now be designated “classified” documents, and the permeable border between personal records and those belonging to the government may seem curious to modern eyes. Yet few governments at that time had developed standardized, organized life-cycle polices for records retention, indexing, retrieval, retirement, and archival preservation—to say nothing of declassification and release. Within the U.S. Government, the senders and recipients of communications played the key roles in determining how to file for later use, and whether to disseminate, special correspondence in restricted communications categories such as “personal” or “confidential.100 In the 1898 case, and one may surmise in other instances as well, the principals adopted a pragmatic approach. This subjective approach to whether to withhold a specific piece of information from a particular document nevertheless involved corporate decisionmaking; in addition to the compilers, Department officials at the Assistant Secretary and Secretary level, and sometimes the President, conferred about what material to release. When they did excise documents, compilers and reviewers took great care to identify the lacunae with ellipses, asterisks, dashes, or similar markings. The timeliness element also figured in release determinations; those responsible for FRUS clearly believed that additional, qualitatively different, sorts of information could, and should, be divulged two years after the original submissions to the Senate. An informal but nevertheless efficacious type of extra-Departmental clearance procedure existed; the peace commissioners all agreed to release the record of their endeavors, and the Senate only voted to remove injunctions of secrecy when overtaken by events.101 In sum, the example of the 1898 volume indicates that while key decisionmakers applied limited exceptions to assure that information was not released irresponsibly, the default policy governing FRUS prescribed openness whenever feasible.

Indian Summer, 1902–1905

The “return to normalcy” in 1902 initiated a brief, final expression of the immediacy that comprised the most important feature of the Contemporaneous FRUS. Three volumes covering 1902, as well as one each for 1903, 1904, and 1905, all came out on time. In 1901–1902 the Department also produced three supplemental FRUS volumes on topics involving relations with China, Russia, and Mexico. The most important foreign policy issue of the period, the trans-isthmian canal and relations with Colombia and Panama, received ample coverage in Foreign Relations. At 226 pages, the Colombia chapter comprised by far the largest of the 1903 volume, and the Panama chapter was the largest in the 1904 FRUS. Moreover, Supplemental FRUS Submissions during 1903–1904 on that topic totaled an additional 1,000 pages, the equivalent of a full Foreign Relations volume.102 Often stimulated by Departmental pre-release of selected documents to journalists prior to formal publication, the press covered new volumes by highlighting various notable revelations.103 Although the executive branch continued on occasion to exercise its prerogative to withhold certain information deemed “not compatible with the best public interests at this time,”104 as long as the combination of Foreign Relations volumes and Supplemental FRUS Submissions remained current they played an important role in the deliberations and decisions of Congress.105 Chapter 5 details the demise of the Contemporary FRUS, which began a steady retreat from currency in 1906, forever altering the nature and purposes of the series.

For nearly a half-century, the Foreign Relations series and its Supplemental FRUS Submissions performed both practical and symbolic functions. The Department of State routinely produced diplomatic correspondence—of very recent vintage—on demand, and then bundled the remaining important papers into one or more volumes at years’ end. Along with the Congress, executive branch principals, including Assistant Secretaries and Secretaries of State as well as the President, shared a common commitment to provide the American people as much of the record as they could responsibly release. Congress considered the correspondence vital to their oversight function. Newspapers that supported the current administration’s efforts could cite praiseworthy evidence from the records, while detractors highlighted documents they believed illustrated defects in policy. Foreign observers mined the volumes for insight and information. FRUS facilitated routine Departmental business, enabled “messaging” aimed at domestic and international audiences, and presented enticing—if risky—opportunities for diplomatic or partisan maneuvering. Diplomats wrestled with the double-edged nature of seeing their missives in print soon after their transmission to Washington. On the one hand, public revelation of their assessments and activities could yield benefits to the nation as a whole, and perhaps for their individual careers as well. Conversely, untimely release could damage both current relations and their future prospects. The documents proved integral to the interchange between the executive and legislative branches, as well as to the wider public discourse about key foreign policy issues of the day. The FRUS process constituted a demonstrable expression of popular sovereignty for the nation and the world by serving as a mechanism for accountability. As the publication of foreign policy records fell behind current events in subsequent decades, FRUS stakeholders struggled to reinterpret the values exemplified by the series as the United States faced unprecedented international challenges.