"Today the responsibilities of the Department of State lie almost entirely in the field of foreign affairs. In this field the Department assists the President to promote and maintain friendly relations with foreign countries. Specifically, it aids in negotiating treaties and other international agreements, in determining measures to be taken to fulfill treaty obligations, in protecting U.S. citizens abroad and U.S. foreign interests, in deciding on the recognition of new governments and determining the status of belligerents, and in receiving foreign diplomatic agents to the United States and issuing exequaturs to foreign consuls. The Department administers the U.S. Foreign Service, conducts the diplomatic and consular correspondence, gathers information of political and economic conditions throughout the world, and carries out the laws and regulations governing alien immigrations, the issuance of passports, and the international traffic in arms, munitions, and implements of war…The Department's domestic duties have varied considerably through the years." Many of these duties have at different times been terminated or passed on to other agencies of the Government. "The inventory is organized in two main parts. Part I describes the central files of the Department of State, 1789-1944; Part II describes subgroups of records created and maintained by past and present administrative units of the Department, records relating to certain functions of the Department, and records relating to certain events, such as the Civil War and the War of 1812-all of which for one reason or another were kept separate from the central files. Because the Department of State has undergone many reorganizations and has lost most of its former domestic duties, it has been impossible to present the records described in Part II according to any pattern of organization or continuing function of the Department. The second part, therefore, has been organized alphabetically by key word in the title of each subgroup of records described."
Daniel T. Goggin and H. Stephen Helton
(1963), 2007, CD-ROM, Graphic Images, Adobe Acrobat v6, PC or Mac, 322 pp.
ISBN: 9780788442001
101-CD4200
