The first volume includes mainly documents of the 1860s, including the authors of which the Minister of War of the Russian Empire D.A. Milyutin, Chief of the Caucasus A.M. Dondukov-Korsakov, Orenburg chieftains N.A. Maslakovets and P.V. Zvorykin, famous military writer F.F. Tornau and others. Most of the documents are devoted to two subjects: how much in the 1860s. the very existence of the Cossacks was economically beneficial to the Russian Empire, and what option for the development of the economy in the Cossack troops at that time should have been preferred.