Unpublished Federal documents are acquired, organized, and stored by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The NARA, as the name suggests, is an archive, and organizes documents, like other archives, by provenance. In the case of the NARA, provenance generally means originating agency.

To identify these unpublished government documents, use NARA's catalog. Some of the documents listed in this catalog have been digitized, and are available online through links in the NARA Catalog:

NARA has also microfilmed many of its most "important" (depending on how one defines "important") document collections, and these microfilmed document collections can be identified using NARA's catalog of microfilmed documents:

An especially useful guide for researching this subject would be NARA's guide to documents in its collections on Latin America:

NARA also has a printed version of their general microfilm catalog, which some researchers find easier to use:

Some documents of the Federal Government are published by the U.S. Government Printing Office (the largest publisher in the world), and distributed to libraries through the Federal Depository Library Program. These published government documents can be identified using the Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications and also through library catalogs.

For more help finding government documents, contact the Government Documents Librarian, Sanga Sung: ssung@illinois.edu .

Below are collections of both published and unpublished government documents:

Presidential Papers

Before the Presidential Records Act of 1978, all presidential papers were considered the personal property of the president, and presidents took their papers with them when they left office. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 designated any document produced during the course of the president's official duties (by both the president and his or her staff) as official, public records, and as such those documents become the property of the nation. Since 1981 each departing president has been required to deposit any such records with the National Archives and Records Administration.

The Presidential Records Act obviously does not apply to eighteenth and nineteenth century American presidents. The papers of eighteenth and nineteenth century American presidents exist in varying states of completeness, and some no longer exist at all. Many were subsequently acquired by the Library of Congress, and they have made the papers of several nineteenth century presidents available online. Some are still only available on microfilm.

Bear in mind that these "presidential papers" will include a mixture of personal and official papers.

Ministerial Despatches

Despatches are letters from United States embassies to the State Department in Washington, D.C. Despatches may also include enclosures that embassy staff sent along with their letters, and that usually pertained to the subjects of those letters (e.g. newspaper clippings or reports). Unlike consular despatches (see below), ministerial despatches are authored by the diplomat or diplomatic staff working from an American embassy, and deal with relations between the nation to which the diplomat has been accredited and the United States of America. As a generalization, ministerial despatches provide a top-down view of what's happening within a nation, whereas consular despatches provide a more bottom-up view.

Consular Despatches

Unlike the embassies, which are located in each nation's capital, the consulates are scattered about the nation, usually in its larger cities. And unlike the embassies, which are principally charged with conducting the affairs of the United States government, the consulates are more focused on the needs of American civilians abroad, including residents, tourists, merchants, investors, sailors, and so forth.

The consular despatches document a wide range of subjects, including "floods, famines, epidemics, and other disasters; economic development; commerce and industry; agriculture; mining and manufacturing; transportation; and other information collected in the course of normal consular business.  In addition to consular and commercial matters, the despatches can include reports on political conditions; the latter more so from posts in colonial possessions."¹

What are "consular despatches"? Consular despatches are "reports to the Department of State from U.S. consular representatives abroad. The despatches reply to consular instructions and report on a wide range of subjects dealing with economic, political, and social conditions abroad in addition to routine matters. Many of the despatches are accompanied by enclosures, such as copies of correspondence between consuls and local government officials, U.S. diplomatic representatives, other consuls, U.S. naval officers commanding naval vessels or squadrons stationed in foreign waters, and U.S. citizens abroad. Some despatches relate to commercial and other regulations, navigation law, exports and imports, duties and tariffs, censuses, cases of U.S. citizens tried abroad and appeals for help, and the reaction of foreign people to U.S. policies."²

1. Netisha Currie, “More Department of State Records Now Available Online: Consular Despatches, 1783-1906,” The Text Message (blog), August 5, 2021.

2. John H. Hedges, Diplomatic Records: A Select Catalog of National Archives Microfilm Publications (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1986), 6.