Excerpt from Library of Congress The Library of Congress was established by virtue of an act of Congress approved April 24, 1800, appropriating for the purchase of books and for fitting up a suitable apartment in the Capitol to contain them. In 1802 a joint committee of both Houses on the Library was created. Under direction of this committee the Library continued for many years, but with the abandonment of joint committees the control passed more and more to the librarian. Since 1897 the direction of the Library has been entirely in his hands as a matter of law. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.