Ohio History Journal

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EDITORIALANA

EDITORIALANA.

MEETING OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.

In the historic and picturesque city of New Orleans, on the days

of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, December 29, 30, and 31, 1903,

was held the nineteenth annual meeting of the American Historical

Association. It proved to be an event of unusual interest and enjoyment.

The American Historical Association was organized at Saratoga,

New York, September 10, 1884, and now numbers some twenty-five

hundred members, comprising the leading historical students, professors,

and writers in the United States and Canada.

The city chosen for the gathering and the nature of the meet-

ing, it being the 100th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, gave a

two-fold attractiveness to the members of the Association, to say noth-

inf of the unusual list of distinguished speakers selected for the program.

In the absence of the Hon. Charles Lea, the President of the Asso-

ciation, the Hon. William Wirt Howe, President of the American Bar

Association, presided and delivered an address upon "The Civil and the

Common Law in the Louisiana Purchase."

The first session of the meeting was held in the council chamber

of the famous Cabildo, or municipal building, itself an object of great

historic interest, it having been erected more than one hundred years

ago, during the days of the Spanish dominion, and in the council chamber

of which took place, as related elsewhere in this Quarterly, the transfer

of the Louisiana province, first, from Spain to France, and then from

France to America in November, 1803. At the opening gathering the

Association was welcomed to Louisiana and the city of New Orleans

in a graceful speech by Professor Alcee Fortier, professor in the Tulane

University and President of the Louisiana Historical Society. The various

formal sessions of the Association were subsequently held in the lecture

rooms of the buildings of the Tulane University. Papers were read as

follows: "New Orleans and the Burr Conspiracy," by Dr. Walter F.

McCaleb; "The Story of Lewis and Clark's Journals," by Dr. Reuben

G. Thwaites; "Louisiana in the Spanish Archives," by Dr. W. R. Shep-

herd; "Ethical Values in History," by Dr. Henry C. Lea, read in the

absence of the author by Prof. Haskins; "Louis XVI, Machault and

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