From Preface - With this volume the National Archives and Records Administration is launching the publication of a major research aid, "The Trans-Mississippi West, 1804-1912: A Guide to Federal Records for the Territorial Period." This multi-volume guide is intended to succeed the previous letterpress and microfilm publication of documents constituting The Territorial Papers of the United States. Rather than providing transcripts of selected documents, the guide, when completed, will identify and describe all significant series of civil and military records relating to the contiguous States and Territories carved out of the area west of the Mississippi River. It will inform researchers of the nature of available Federal records and their location, whether in the Washington, DC, area or in regional archives.
The publication of this fourth volume of the guide, focusing as it does on records of the Department of State, is intended to alert researchers to the research potential of records created by those Government agencies that perhaps are not obviously associated with the American West. Users of this guide will find that the records described herein concern far more than the diplomatic history of national expansion. (Description by http-mart) - from Amzon