Originally entitled Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs Accompanying the Annual Message of the President, the name of this series was changed in 1870 to Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, and in 1947 to Foreign Relations Of The United States Diplomatic Papers.
"The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, the official documentary record of U.S. foreign policy, was born in the opening months of the Civil War. Originating in a response by the Department of State to a request from Congress, the series has endured through vast changes in the international system and the United States’s role in the world, through equally vast changes in the Department of State and in the nation’s government, and through recurrent crises that at times threatened the very survival of the series."