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Preface in New Mexico to achieve statehood is a particularly challenging one, because, of all the contiguous territories of the Union, New Mexico remained a territory the longest. To locate information dealing with this prolonged effort, which spanned parts of two centuries, libraries and archives were searched in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Washington, Denver, and elsewhere. The material, including personal correspondence, newspapers , and public and private documents, was relatively plentiful, especially for the years just prior to President Taft's proclamation of 1912 making New Mexico a state. The number of people and institutions I am indebted to is very large. To the late Dr. Frank D. Reeve of the University of New Mexico, I owe the initial inspiration to take the entire movement as my project. Dr. Myra Ellen Jenkins, the senior archivist at the State Records Center and Archives in Santa Fe, gave invaluable help, and showed unfaltering interest in my study and complete attentiveness to my many questions and requests. At the National Archives, Mr. Buford Rowland, in charge of the congressional bills and reports, was most considerate, as were the archivists in charge of documents in the Department of State, Department of Interior, and Department of Defense. Dr. John Porter Bloom, editor of the Territorial Papers, kindly helped me locate a rare and important document. To the librarians at the Division of Manuscripts of the Library of Congress I also owe a great debt. Other people who assisted me in my research were the librarians in vii STUDY OF THE MOVEMENT A viii NEW MEXICO'S QUEST FOR STATEHOOD charge of the Special Collections Division of the Universityof New Mexico library, and Dr. J. William Hess, associate curator of the West Virginia Collection in the University of West Virginia library, who was most kind in locating for me pertinent correspondence in the Stephen B. Elkins Papers. Many librarians at the Colorado State College library at Greeley were helpful to me, especially Miss Carol L. Koehmstedt, Mrs. Virginia S. Costello, Mrs. Marjorie M. Johnson, Mr. Gabor Kovacs, Mr. James B. Greer, and Mr. Daniel A. Seager, the head librarian. Advice and constructive suggestions were offered to me by Dr. Ben Sacks from Baltimore. Mrs. Jacquelyn Kay Otero helped me to translate difficult Spanish documents, and Dean Forrest W. Frease and Professor Marcia I. Willcoxon of Colorado State College were willing consultants on matters of punctuation and style. Mrs. Mary Krape, my typist, was always co-operative and very careful to avoid error. To Mrs. Winifred W. Gregory, my manuscript editor, of the University of New Mexico Press, I am especially indebted for suggestionson how to improvethe manuscript. Dr. France V. Scholes, professor emeritus of the University of New Mexico , has my deep gratitude for his guidance on manyscholarly matters. Among the institutions that made this study possible wasthe American Philosophical Society, through which I received two generous grants enabling me to do research at Santa Fe and at Washington in 1963 and 1964. I am also grateful for the interest shown by many of my colleagues, my family, and old friends and faculty members at the University of New Mexico. The greatest debt I owe, however, is to my wife, Carole, whose dedicated help in editing the first draft was an integral and essential part of the work. She shared from the beginning the vision of what I proposed to do in chronicling the long history of the New Mexico statehood movement . Robert W. Larson ...

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