INTRODUCTION.

This forty-fifth volume of the Archives of Maryland is the sixth volume
in the sub-series of state documents relating to the period of the Revolutionary
War. The Council Proceedings were copied from Liber C. B. No. 24, and the
correspondence of the Council from Liber No. 78; both of these are con-
temporary copies of which the original rough minutes and drafts are in the
keeping of the Maryland Historical Society. The letters and reports to the
Council are from two sources in the possession of the Society; namely, the
three series of bound volumes of manuscripts known familiarly as the Black,
Brown and Red Books from the color of their bindings, and a mass of bundles
of manuscripts arranged in chronological order by Charles Fickus some five
years ago. These sources are more fully described in the introduction to
Volume 43. Material drawn from the bound volumes is identified in the margin
of the present volume by name of series and number of document, while papers
taken from the second source are located by a date reference only. The mar-
ginal references showing the date and source of each document are an innova-
tion in the editing of the series, begun with this volume. As in other recent
volumes of the Archives, much space has been saved and, we believe, no
interest lost by the excision of formal headings and conclusions of letters.
The preparation of the copy was begun and carried out by the late editor of
the Archives of Maryland, Bernard Christian Steiner, from copies made by
Miss Lucy Harwood Harrison, and the publication of the volume has been
effected by J. Hall Pleasants, with the help of Charles Fickus and Miss Carolina
Virginia Davidson.

It is not the purpose of this introduction to increase the size of a volume
already one of the largest in the series by detailed reference to matters of
especial interest in the collection. It is enough to say that the volume carries
on the proceedings and correspondence of the Council for the years 1780 and
1781, a period in the War of Independence when men's hearts and minds were
strained as they had not been at any time earlier in the struggle, because now
they could begin to feel a fearful hope for its successful outcome. We are
having historians lately who by the practice of insidious literary gifts attempt
to weaken our inherited reverence for the men and ideals of the Revolution.
Most of us are quick to admit that these writers have done good in correctly
labelling much that was unworthy in motive and action, but that they have
ignored or failed to understand the vitality of the spirit of opposition that
finally gained the victory is obvious to one who reads ever so hastily such a
collection of contemporary papers as is found in this new volume of the