Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/128

112 allowed by law, the Department cannot undertake any compilation, which, as already explained, would in any event necessarily be incomplete and unsatisfactory.

Historical investigators of recognized standing are permitted to have access to the War Department records under certain conditions, but the Revolutionary War records have become so worn and dilapidated by reason of lapse of time and long use thereof that access thereto is permitted only under exceptional circumstances. Inasmuch as those records are very incomplete and afford scarcely any information bearing upon the subject in question it is not seen that any useful purpose can be served by granting permission to search those records for the data desired.

Many of the States that had troops in the Revolutionary War have published rosters of such troops. These rosters can probably be readily consulted in the Congressional Library, and it is believed that they afford the most promising source for obtaining the information sought.

Very respectfully, 5em The Adjutant General

The following sent out some time ago under the frank of Congressman Goldfogle may have some historic value:

When the Jamestown Exposition Bill was under consideration by the Committee on Industrial Arts and Expositions of the House of Representatives, at Washington, Congressman Henry M. Goldfogle, of New York, a member of the committee, took a very keen and lively interest in securing an appropriation of a hundred thousand dollars for a Negro exhibit.

On the day the Committee finally revised the bill and voted on it, Congressman Goldfogle was suffering intensely from carbuncles, and was about to undergo a surgical operation. Despite this, he went to the committee meeting, and there moved the insertion of the provision for the appropriation for a Negro exhibit.

Some members of the committee who were not favorable to the project and others who were quite indifferent to it urged the Congressman to allow the matter to remain in abeyance, saying that it might be taken up at some future time. Judge Goldfogle, however, insisted there was no time like the present and that the colored men and women of the country ought to have an oppor-