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Symbols Of The Entire United States

The National Archives has been called variously the nation’s memory, storehouse, attic, and soul. The institution is known as the place where Americans can find their roots, as the country’s Hall of Heroes, and, by cynics, as the nation’s wastebasket. All these labels are, in fact, perfectly apt. In the handsome National Archives building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, in the fifteen regional records centers, and in the seven presidential libraries—which altogether make up the National Archives—are stored 3,250,000,000 documents, 5,000,000 still pictures, 91,000,000 feet of motion pictures, and 122,000 sound and video recordings. The range is breathtaking: the most important holdings are the nation’s birth records—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—which, carefully guarded and preserved, are on permanent display; less awesome are such homey exhibits as a handwritten letter from Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain to President Eisenhower, sending him a recipe for “Drop Scones.”

The wastebasket label is quite accurate too. Every year the federal government generates some 7,000,000 cubic feet of records—the tax returns alone would fill ninety railroad cars—which are sent to the National Archives to be appraised and honed down to the 1 to 3 percent that are of permanent enough value to be retained. “Good records,” one archivist has said, “go to the heavenly archives and the bad ones go to the flames.”

It comes as a surprise to many people to learn that the National Archives is only fifty years old. When the nation was founded, the government records followed Congress around to wherever it was sitting, moving eleven times before 1800. The government’s establishment in Washington determined in what city the records would be kept, but the lack of a fireproof depository still left the papers vulnerable. Again and again, bills were introduced in Congress to authorize the building of a proper fireproof building, and again and again, the project was shunted aside. Finally, in 1921, a fire at the Commerce Department virtually destroyed the 1890 census and damaged census records back to 1790, leading at last to the passage of a bill in favor of a National Archives building. The architect John Russell Pope was chosen to design it, and construction started in 1932. Oddly enough, it was two more years before the National Archives Act of 1934 officially established the agency that would inhabit the building and defined its mission.

Now, fifty years later, our records are uniquely accessible. As well as documenting all the acts of our government—treaties, maps, trade agreements—a remarkably detailed portrait of the American people emerges through millions of military service records, hundreds of thousands of pension claim files, and the immigration and naturalization documents of our vast immigrant population. Census records detail our vital statistics, and federal court records register crime. And for comic relief, the archivists have preserved such oddities as the Declaration of Independence reproduced in alphabet noodles. The following portfolio is excerpted from a forthcoming book, The National Archives of the United States by Herman Viola, to be published by Harry N. Abrams. The photographs are by Jonathan Wallen.

Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept by us forever. Concern for the preservation of the records of the nation was expressed early. "Time and accident," Thomas Jefferson warned in 1791, "are committing daily havoc on the originals deposited in our public offices." But it was not until the early 1930s that historians and others concerned with the preservation of the nation’s records saw their hopes realized. Learn More

The task of designing an archives building was given to the distinguished architect John Russell Pope. He set out to create a structure that would be in harmony with other great Washington landmarks—the White House, Capitol, Treasury Building, and Lincoln Memorial—and at the same time express the significance, safety, and permanence of the records to be deposited inside.

Ground was broken in 1931; President Herbert Hoover laid the cornerstone in 1933; and the staff moved in to work in 1935. The building reached capacity in the late 1960s, and many records were moved to off-site storage and regional archives. After years of planning, in 1993 a new archives building was completed.

Many people know the National Archives as the keeper of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, symbols of the entire United States. But we also hold in trust for the public the records of ordinary citizens—for example, military records of the brave men and women who have fought for our country, naturalization records of the immigrants whose dreams have shaped our nation, and even the canceled check from the purchase of Alaska.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

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