valuable material was collected by the Society in New Orleans; but its most active friends were finally led to the conclusion that its interests would be promoted by a change of domicil and of certain features of its organization.
Accordingly the Executive Committee of the Society issued a call for a convention of its friends to assemble at the Montgomery White Sulphur Springs, Virginia, on the 14th of August, 1873, and sent a communication to that convention urging that the domicil of the Society be changed, a new organization effected and certain alterations made in its working.
In response to this call a large and enthusiastic convention, composed of delegates from twelve States, and embracing some of the most distinguished soldiers and civilians of the Confederacy, assembled, and unanimously voted to remove the headquarters of the Society to Richmond, and to adopt our present plan of organization.
The Executive Committee met in Richmond soon after and put on foot plans for the vigorous prosecution of the objects of the Society; but they begun their work with an almost empty treasury and with all of the natural difficulties which beset such an enterprise. The experience of the Committee at New Orleans had demonstrated the importance of some means of publication, and accordingly a contract was made by which the Southern Magazine of Baltimore was adopted as the organ of the Society. After an unsatisfactory working of this arrangement (by which we published twenty pages each month) from January, 1874, to July, 1875, it was abandoned, and the Society was without an organ until January, 1876, when we started the Southern Historical Society Papers.
By special act of the Virginia Legislature and the courtesy of the Governor of the Commonwealth we were assigned an excellent office on the Library floor of the State capitol, where our archives are as safe as those of the State, and where we have had some special facilities for the prosecution of our work.
The annual reports of the Society, heretofore published, have exhibited the steady progress made in the accumulation of material, the publication of valuable papers and the extension of the influence of the Society.
We are most happy to be able to report that during
THE PAST YEAR
we have made more real progress, and have been able to place the
