The result of the Civil War produced among other nations a renewed confidence in the perpetuity of the United States and inaugurated at home the active foreign policy characteristic of the present day. The " peace policy" of Grant towards the American Indians was fully developed and a beginning made of the final task of converting tribal nomads into self-supporting individuals. Above all, the political conception which saw in a party a vast machine warranted in using its control of both national and state governments in order to perpetuate itself and to benefit its members, was weakened by the final collapse of the reconstruction contrivances and by the activity of the civil service reformers. In this decade, therefore, may be sought not only the beginnings of modern industrial and economic triumphs, but also a quickening of the higher sentiment which regards public service as a public trust and civic duty as akin to religious obligation. In 1884 the awakening brought about the election of a “reform president" for the first time in half a century, and appropriately rounded out the decade. EDWIN ERLE SPARKS. NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT THE CHAPTER I THE NEW SPIRIT OF '76 (1876-1877) 'HE one hundredth anniversary of the birth of American independence came opportunely to mark an epoch in American history. The material damage wrought by the Civil War was wellnigh repaired by time and industry. The discord in the hearts of the people was disappearing, as the policy of restoring the Union by force was gradually abandoned. How the specific problems of reconstruction were met has been described in a preceding volume of this series.1 How the beneficent policy of President Hayes eradicated the last evils of reconstruction and hastened a true reunion is to be told in later chapters of this volume. But there was a reconstruction going on in a larger sense; a reconstruction of industries, an adjustment of new sources of supply to new processes of manufacture, a co-ordination of means of transportation 1 Dunning, Reconstruction (Am. Nation, XXII.). with the demands of population, an adaptation of national vision to the new order of things, and a realization that neither secession, civil war, nor reconstruction had circumscribed the future of the republic. Millions of acres of unoccupied lands stretched invitingly towards the west; vast mineral resources lay undeveloped in the earth; forests covered the mountain slopes and spread over large areas in the northwestern and southern states; and unimproved opportunities for new ways of transportation presented themselves all over the continent and across the adjacent waters. Burdened no longer by slavery and sectionalism, the republic seemed to enter upon a new era of life as it neared the first centennial of its birth. To celebrate fittingly and in this spirit the year 1876, public thought turned towards a national fair which should illustrate by proper exhibits the century's progress in the United States, and in which other nations might be invited to join. Doubtless the success of the Paris Exposition in 1867 and the Vienna Exhibition of 1873 suggested this form of celebrating the American centennial year. As early as March 3, 1871,1 Congress provided for an exhibition of American and foreign arts, products, and manufactures to be held in 1876 in the city of Philadelphia, the first capital of the federal republic and the scene of the drama of the Declaration of Independence. The president of the United States was 1 U. S. Statutes at Large, XVI., 470. |