<em>War on Record: The Archive and the Afterlife of the Civil War</em>. By Yael A. Sternhell

If the work is to be of real historical value, if it is to be any credit to the country, it should be well edited," proclaimed Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts in an exchange in the U.S. Senate held on May 24, 1866.The debate centered on a joint resolution meant "to insure the publication in proper form, and at the least possible expense, of the reports and orders of commanding o cers, and of all correspondence by telegraph or otherwise, and of all other documents of every description relating to the late rebellion, accumulated in the archives of the War Department since the 1st of December, 1860," that would ful ll the purpose of a congressional resolution adopted on May 19, 1864.Attempting to garner support, Wilson explained that the object of the prospective multivolume work "was to perpetuate the proud record made by the armies of the Republic in their e orts for the maintenance of the Union, and to furnish a means for historical reference and professional instruction, by the compilation and publication in a compact, convenient, and permanent form of what may be termed the o cial military history of the rebellion."Wilson's presentation prompted worried remarks from Senators Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and William Pitt Fessenden of Maine that employing a supervisor at an annual salary of $2,500 for two years would be woefully insu cient given the immense number of records.It would be better to do nothing than overwhelm an individual and produce poor-quality books without proper indexes that made nding desired information virtually impossible.Senator Henry B. Anthony then interjected to call for more sta , saying "it would take twenty men to perform that work as it ought to be performed."Sumner then observed that the ideal supervisor would be very hard to nd: "He must be a man without any of the turbulent ambition that