Presidential proclamations, addresses, messages, and communications to
Congress excepting those nominating persons to office and those which
simply transmit treaties, and reports of heads of Departments which
contain no recommendation from the Executive." In the Prefatory Note to
Volume IX the statement was made that this course was a mistake, and
"that the work to be exhaustive should comprise every message of the
Presidents transmitting reports of heads of Departments and other
communications, no matter how brief or unintelligible the papers were in
themselves, and that to make them intelligible I should insert editorial
footnotes explaining them. Having acted upon the other idea in making up
Volume I and a portion of Volume II, quite a number of such brief papers
were intentionally omitted. Being convinced that all the papers of the
Executives should be inserted, the plan was modified accordingly, and
the endeavor was thereafter made to publish all of them. In order,
however, that the compilation maybe 'accurate and exhaustive,' I have
gone back and collected all the papers--those which should have appeared
in Volumes I and II as well as such as were unintentionally omitted from
the succeeding volumes--excepting those simply making nominations, and
shall publish them in an appendix in the last volume." These omitted
papers, with editorial footnotes, have been inserted in the Appendix,
and appear in the Index in alphabetical order, so that no serious
inconvenience will result to the reader.

The compilation properly closed with President Cleveland's second
Administration, March 4, 1897, but as the Spanish-American War excited
great interest I determined, after conferring with the Joint Committee
on Printing, to publish the official papers of President McKinley which
relate exclusively to that war. These will be found in the Appendix.

I have been greatly assisted in the work of compilation by Mr. A.P.