Foreign Relations of the United States
Published since the Lincoln administration, these are the official communiques between the U.S. government and foreign governments. Originally classified, they can be declassified 30 years later (but usually later than that). Cuban relations can generally be found in volumes with “the Americas” in the title. Under the Kennedy administration, look for volumes titled, Cuba, 1961-1962 and volume XI; and Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962-1963.
The volumes are freely available from the State Department website. But many users find the content easier to navigate through HeinOnline. The University of Wisconsin Library’s site is another alternative, especially if full text searching is required.
Presidential Documents via Federalregister.gov
Executive Orders, Proclamations, and other issuances can be found at this site back to the Clinton administration. Use this link to discover all Cuba-related issuances. For older issuances, these can be found in ProQuest Congressional (above).
This provides the easiest way to get the text of Presidential speeches, issuances, and even campaign speeches relating to Cuba. Use this link to execute a comprehensive search, then limit by Name and by Category to see results.
Public Papers of the Presidents
This famous series, published by the National Archives, began in 1957, but goes back retrospectively to the Hoover administration. The Government Publishing Office hosts the official online series. The set is complete from 1929 to recent (there is about a five year lag time for publication). Note that there is a gap for all the FDR years, since his papers were privately published. But HeinOnline has the Public Papers not only covering the GPO series, but also papers of all the Presidents, including FDR.
