Papers of the War Department, 1784 to 1800

On the night of November 8, 1800, fire devastated the War Office, consuming the papers, records, and books stored there. Two weeks later, Secretary of War Samuel Dexter lamented in a letter that "All the papers in my office [have] been destroyed." For the past two centuries, the official records of the War Department effectively began with Dexter's letter. An innovative digital editorial project, Papers of the War Department, 1784-1800, has brought about a major change. Some 55,000 documents of the early War Department, long thought irretrievable, have now been reconstructed through a painstaking, multi-year research effort and made available to scholars, students, and the general public.