RECONSTRUCTION WITHOUT PAIN--ADMINISTRATIONS OF JOHNSON AND GRANT.
It was feared that the return of a million Federal soldiers to their
homes after the four years of war would make serious trouble in the
North, but they were very shortly adjusted to their new lives and
attending to the duties which peace imposed upon them.
The war of the Rebellion was disastrous to nearly every branch of trade,
but those who remained at home to write the war-songs of the North did
well. Some of these efforts were worthy, and, buoyed up by a general
feeling of robust patriotism, they floated on to success; but few have
stood the test of years and monotonous peace. The author of "Mother, I
am hollow to the ground" is just depositing his profits from its sale in
the picture given on next page. The second one, wearing the
cape-overcoat tragedy air, wrote "Who will be my laundress now?"
Andrew Johnson succeeded to Mr. Lincoln's seat, having acted before as
his vice.
A great review of the army, lasting twelve hours, was arranged to take
place in Washington, consisting of the armies of Grant and Sherman. It
was reviewed by the President and Cabinet; it extended over thirty miles
twenty men deep, and constituted about one-fifth of the Northern army at
the time peace was declared.
[Illustration: THE STAY-AT-HOMES WHO WROTE WAR-SONGS.]
President Johnson recognized the State governments existing in Virginia,
Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana, but instituted provisional
governments for the other States of the defeated Confederacy, as it
seemed impossible otherwise to bring order out of the chaos which war
and financial distress had brought about. He authorized the assembly
also of loyal conventions to elect State and other officers, and
pardoned by proclamation everybody, with the exception of a certain
class of the late insurgents whom he pardoned personally.
On Christmas Day, 1868, a Universal Amnesty was declared. The Thirteenth
Amendment, abolishing slavery, became a part of the Constitution,
December 18, 1865, and the former masters found themselves still morally
responsible for these colored people, without the right to control them
or even the money with which to employ them.
The annual interest on the national debt at this time amounted to one
hundred and fifty million dollars. Yet the Treasury paid this, together
with the expenses of government, and reduced the debt seventy-one
million dollars before the volunteer army had been fully discharged in
1866.
Comment on such recuperative power as that is unnecessary; for the
generation that fights a four-years war costing over two billions of
dollars generally leaves the debt for another generation or another
century to pay.
Congress met finally, ignored the President's rollicking welcome to the
seceded States, and over his veto proceeded to pass various laws
regarding their admission, such as the Civil Rights and Freedman's
Bureau Bills.
Tennessee returned promptly to the Union under the Constitutional
Amendments, but the others did not till the nightmare of Reconstruction
had been added to the horrors of war. In 1868, after much time worse
than wasted in carpet-bag government and a mob reign in the South which
imperilled her welfare for many years after it was over, by frightening
investors and settlers long after peace had been restored,
representatives began to come into Congress under the laws.
During this same year the hostilities between Congress and the President
culminated in an effort to impeach the latter. He escaped by one vote.
It is very likely that the assassination of Lincoln was the most
unfortunate thing that happened to the Southern States. While he was not
a warrior, he was a statesman, and no gentler hand or more willing brain
could have entered with enthusiasm into the adjustment of chaotic
conditions, than his.
The Fourteenth Amendment, a bright little _bon mot_, became a law June
28, 1868, and was written in the minutes of Congress, so that people
could go there and refresh their memories regarding it. It guaranteed
civil rights to all, regardless of race, color, odor, wildness or
wooliness whatsoever, and allows all noses to be counted in
Congressional representations, no matter what angle they may be at or
what the color may be.
Some American citizens murmur at taxation without representation, but
the negro murmurs at representation without remuneration.
The Fenian excitement of 1866 died out without much loss of life.
In October, 1867, Alaska was purchased from Russia for seven million two
hundred thousand dollars. The ice-crop since then would more than pay
for the place, and it has also a water-power and cranberry marsh on it.
The rule of the Imperialists in France prompted the appointment of
Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, as Emperor of Mexico, supported by the
French army. The Americans, still sore and in debt at the heels of their
own war, pitied the helpless Mexicans, and, acting on the principles
enunciated in the Monroe Doctrine, demanded the recall of Maximilian,
who, deserted finally by his foreign abettors, was defeated and as a
prisoner shot by the Mexicans, June 19, 1867.
The Atlantic cable was laid from Valentia Bay in Ireland to Heart's
Content, Newfoundland, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four miles,
and the line from New York to the latter place built in 1856, a distance
of one thousand miles, making in all, as keen mathematicians will see,
two thousand eight hundred and sixty-four miles.
A very agreeable commercial treaty with China was arranged in 1868.
Grant and Colfax, Republicans, succeeded Andrew Johnson in the next
election, Horatio Seymour, of New York, and Frank P. Blair, of
Missouri, being the Democratic nominees. Virginia and Mississippi had
not been fully reconstructed, and so were not yet permitted to vote.
They have squared the matter up since, however, by voting with great
enthusiasm.
In 1869 the Pacific Railroad was completed, whereby the trip from the
Atlantic to the Pacific--three thousand and three hundred miles--might
be made in a week. It also attracted the Asiatic trade, and tea, silk,
spices, and leprosy found a new market in the land of the free and the
home of the brave.
Still flushed with its success in humorous legislation, Congress, on the
30th of March, 1870, passed the Fifteenth Amendment, giving to the
colored men the right to vote. It then became a part of the
Constitution, and people who have seen it there speak very highly of it.
Prosperity now attracted no attention whatever. Gold, worth nearly three
dollars at the close of the war, fell to a dollar and ten cents, and the
debt during the first two years of this administration was reduced two
hundred million dollars.
Genuine peace reigned in the entire Republic, and o'er the scarred and
shell-torn fields of the South there waved, in place of hostile banners,
once more the cotton and the corn. The red foliage of the gum-tree with
the white in the snowy white cotton-fields and the blue-grass of
Kentucky (blue-grass is not, strictly speaking, blue enough to figure in
the national colors, but the author has taken out a poetic license which
does not expire for over a year yet, and he therefore under its
permission is allowed a certain amount of idiocy) showed that the fields
had never forgotten their loyalty to the national colors. Peace under
greatly changed conditions resumed her vocations, and, in the language
of the poet,--
"There were domes of white blossoms where swelled the white tent;
There were ploughs in the track where the war-wagons went;
There were songs where they lifted up Rachel's lament."
October 8, 1871, occurred the great fire in Chicago, raging for
forty-eight hours and devastating three thousand acres of the city.
Twenty-five thousand buildings were burned, and two hundred million
dollars' worth of property. One hundred thousand people lost their
houses, and over seven and one-half millions of dollars were raised for
those who needed it, all parts of the world uniting to improve the
joyful opportunity to do good, without a doubt of its hearty
appreciation.
Boston also had a seventy-million dollar fire in the heart of the
wholesale trade, covering sixty acres; and in the prairie and woods
fires of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, many people lost not only
their homes but their lives. Fifteen hundred people perished in
Wisconsin alone.
In 1871 the damage done by the Alabama, a British-built ship, and
several other cruisers sent out partly to facilitate the cotton trade
and partly to do a little fighting when a Federal vessel came that way,
was assessed at fifteen million five hundred thousand dollars against
Great Britain by the arbitrators who met at Geneva, Switzerland, and the
northwestern boundary line between the United States and British America
was settled by arbitration, the Emperor of Germany acting as arbitrator
and deciding in favor of America.
This showed that people who have just wound up a big war have often
learned some valuable sense; not two billion dollars' worth, perhaps,
but some.
San Domingo was reported for sale, and a committee looked at it, priced
it, etc., but Congress decided not to buy it.
The Liberal Republican party, or that element of the original party
which was opposed to the administration, nominated Horace Greeley, of
New York, while the old party renominated General Grant for the term to
succeed himself. The latter was elected, and Mr. Greeley did not long
survive his defeat.
The Modoc Indians broke loose in the early part of Grant's second term,
and, leaping from their lava-beds early in the morning, Shacknasty Jim
and other unlaundried children of the forest raised merry future
punishment, and the government, always kind, always loving and sweet
toward the red brother, sent a peace commission with popcorn balls
and a gentle-voiced parson to tell Shacknasty James and Old
Stand-up-and-Sit-down that the white father at Washington loved them and
wanted them all to come and spend the summer at his house, and also that
by sin death came into the world, and that we were all primordial germs
at first, and that we should look up, not down, look out, not in, look
forward, not backward, and lend a hand.
[Illustration: PEACE COMMISSION POW-WOWING WITH THE MODOCS.]
It was at this moment that Early-to-Bed-and Early-to-Rise-Black Hawk and
Shacknasty James, thinking that this thing had gone far enough, killed
General Canby and wounded both Mr. Meacham and Rev. Dr. Thomas, who had
never had an unkind thought toward the Modocs in their lives.
The troops then allowed their ill temper to get the best of them, and
asked the Modocs if they meant anything personal by their action, and,
learning that they did, the soldiers did what with the proper authority
they would have done at first, bombarded the children of the forest and
mussed up their lava-beds so that they were glad to surrender.
In 1873 a panic occurred after the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., of
Philadelphia, and a money stringency followed, the Democrats attributing
it a good deal to the party in power, just as cheap Republicans twenty
years later charged the Democratic administration with this same thing.
Inconsistency of this kind keeps good men, like the writer, out of
politics, and turns their attention toward the contemplation of a better
land.
[Illustration: TALKING ABOUT THE CENTENNIAL.]
In 1875 Centennial Anniversaries began to ripen and continued to fall
off the different branches of government, according to the history of
events so graphically set forth in the preceding pages. They were duly
celebrated by a happy and self-made people. The Centennial Exposition at
Philadelphia in 1876 was a marked success in every way, nearly ten
millions of people having visited it, who claimed that it was well worth
the price of admission.
Aside from the fact that these ten millions of people had talked about
it to millions of folks at home,--or thought they had,--the Exposition
was a boon to every one, and thousands of Americans went home with a
knowledge of their country that they had never had before, and pointers
on blowing out gas which saved many lives in after-years.
[Illustration: MOVE ON, MAROON BROTHER, MOVE ON!]