Past And Future

( Originally Published 1898 )

ON the 9th of April, 1865, Lee surrendered; on the 12th, his soldiers stacked their arms and were paroled; meanwhile, Lincoln visited Richmond, and walked about its scarred and smoke-blackened streets; in the afternoon he held a reception in what had been the Confederate executive mansion; on the evening of April an unwillingness to disappoint the people, whose joy at the conclusion of the war had sharpened their desire to see and greet the President who had piloted them through the greatest storm that ever fell upon the Republic. Six months before they had avouched their confidence in him by reelecting him to his office, McClellan, the representative of faint-heartedness and discouragement, being his opponent.

Andrew Johnson, another man of the people, a tailor by trade, had been chosen Vice-President.

During the heat of battle the South had doubtless hated Lincoln; for he had freed their slaves; and by the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in December following his death, the corollary of his Emancipation Proclamation was accomplished; it declared slavery forever at an end in all parts of the United States. But the South was magnainmous, as are all brave peoples, and it was capable of realizing that this quaint, uncouth great man was no enemy of theirs, but loved them as a part of the nation he was appointed to govern, and had only opposed them with the whole strength at his command so long as they mistakenly fought against what he knew to be their own ultimate good. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; and the South was on the way to see and confess the friendship of Abraham Lincoln.

For his part, his mind, in these first moments of light after the long darkness, was occupied with plans for the re-instatement of the seceding states in the privileges assured by the Constitution; and the terms of peace offered by Sher-man to the army of Johnston may be taken as a sketch in the rough of what Lincoln hoped to confirm by regular legislative process. These terms spoke of recogintion of state governments in the South, of restoring to them the franchise and political rights, and of a general amnesty. The terms were sent to Congress for consideration, and had not of course been passed upon on the 14th of April. But Lincoln believed that the way to win back the heart of the South was to be generous to them, and trust to their honor loyally to submit to what the test of war, so valiantly invoked, had decided. They were ruined, in power and fortune; but they were our brothers, and it was to the interest as much of the North as of theirs to take every means to heal their wounds and support their faltering footsteps, until their strength and health returned to them.

But there was in the South a small and obscure knot of irreconcilables who desired revenge, and who regarded Lincoln as their arch-foe. By what process of reasoning they persuaded themselves that his death could profit the South, we cannot conceive; and it is possible that their governing thought was to inflict sorrow on the people which they had failed to overcome in battle. But it would seem that the most elementary perception of the motives which govern human action should have apprised them that an act of deadly violence against the Chief Magistrate, at a time when the war was done, could result only in hardening the heart of the North against them, and causing the terms granted to them to be more severe than otherwise they would be. Be that as it may, a conspiracy was hatched by the extreme wing of this small group of malcontents, and eight persons were afterward known as having been actively concerned in it. The protagoinst of the conspiracy, its boldest and most urgent member, was a hare-brained and dare-devil actor, John Wilkes Booth, representing the narrowest and most fanatical spirit of the South; a young man, handsome, vain, high-flown, and reckless of life. His profession, or rather his conception of it, had inflamed and confirmed the cheap, sensational, histrionic views of mortal obligations which were native to him; and he stood forward as the instrument by whom the chief crime contemplated was to be done. His fellows were to strike down, at the same moment, other distinguished members of the Cabinet, and the Vice-President----for the rumor that Johnson was in any way or degree coginzant of the conspiracy never had foundation, and was on the face of it preposterous. We must suppose that it was hoped thus to paralyze the North, and terrify them into yielding the government to hands which might guide it in Southern interests. A more per-verse and impossible notion could hardly have entered the brain of a madman.

We need not be concerned to recall the dark details of the plot. Lincoln entered his stage-box at the theater, which was draped with the American flag, which had been rent, and was now whole again. Several persons were with him. The box was but little elevated above the stage, so that an active man might easily leap thence to the stage without in-jury. The performance had not been long in progress, when the door of the box was opened, and a young man entered. It is said that he locked the door behind him with his left hand. In his right hand was a revolver. No one knew who he was; and the suddenness of his entrance prevented his being questioned. Probably he might have been mistaken for some person employed in the front of the house, or perhaps for a messenger with dispatches from the State Department. The time was counted by seconds. He took a step forward, leveled his weapon at the back of the unconscious President's head, and sent the bullet through his brain. Then, pushing forward at once to the front of the box, he vaulted over the railing to the stage below. It is said that in so doing the spur on his heel caught in the folds of the flag, causing him to strike the stage in such a way as to snap the bone of the leg above the ankle. The . audience had heard the sound of the shot, but for an instant fancied it to be in some way connected with the performance. But the spectacle of a man leaping from the President's box upon the stage was too extraordinary to be accounted for; and when he was seen to throw up the arm which held the weapon, and to exclaim "Sic semper Tyrannis," immediately passing across the stage and out by the rear, the theater was in an uproar.

The shot had stricken Lincoln senseless, and his body inclined forward as he sat. The wound was mortal, and he never spoke or had a conscious thought from the first; he survived several hours, and died the next day, the 15th. The other conspirators were unsuccessful, though Payne forced his way into Seward's chamber and attacked him with a knife. The other intended victims, including General Grant, were not approached. Booth had been the only one whose success was complete.

Had this assassination been perpetrated in 1863, when the South was winning victories, and when many in the North thought the cause of the Union was lost, it might have had a profound effect upon the complexion of affairs. But now it could have no effect, except to curdle the milk of human kindness which was beginning to flow in the breast of the North for their conquered brethren. At first it was surmised that the crime might have been conceived in high quarters; but a little reflection showed that it was impossible that Southern gentlemen could have lent themselves to an act so dastardly. Booth was pursued and shot in a barn where he had taken refuge, which had been set on fire; no man of the attacking party having the courage to go up and take him prisoner. A story was told to the effect that the man thus killed was not Booth; that the latter had made good his escape, and died many years later in the West In-dies. Such legends are apt to spring up in the surroundings of a great crime; they amuse the popular imagination; but they never sustain the test of serious examination. The other conspirators were arrested and executed, Mrs. Surratt, at whose house the conspirators met, included. But beyond this, no attempt at retaliation was made by the North. Jefferson Davis, after his arrest, was imprisoned for a couple of years in Fortress Monroe, and then unconditionally re-leased. Meanwhile the era of Reconstruction had begun, and Johnson and Congress were at odds upon the questions involved. It was now that the harmonizing influence of Lincoln was missed, and the South was brought to a practical realization of how wise and charitable a friend they had lost in him.

Johnson, on assuming office, saw the army of the North quietly disbanded; for a day the procession of two hundred thousand men, in weather-worn uniforms, with tattered flags and polished guns, defiled before the President; the men who had made history, the preservers of the Union, the citizens who had taken up arms and transformed them-selves into the best soldiers in the world, who were now to lay down their arms and be reabsorbed at once into the body of the population from which they had come forth. Both to the eye, and to the mind and heart, it was a spectacle of unexampled grandeur and impressiveness. These men could have marched, as they were, to the conquest of the world; but their thoughts were not of ambition, or of the seizure of power, but of home, and of the quiet and industrious productive life which is proper to the citizens of a republic. Yet a profound difference had been wrought in them by the war, and in the main it was a beneficial one ; their military discipline had taught them the meaning and uses of discipline and the sway of just' authority in the life of peace : a lesson of peculiar value to a great democracy, whose foible it is to lapse into loose ways of action and thought. It had taught them the worth of patriotism, and steadfast courage in meeting the stress of battle in the matters of daily routine, which are often not less trying than is the shock of arms in open war. By revealing to them their own strength, it rendered them gentle and charitable, and less sensitive to the criticism of others. Incidentally, it had given them an acquaintance with their own country which might other. wise have been postponed for generations ; and a sympathy with and respect for the men against whom they fought, which might else perhaps never have been attained at all.

So far all was well; but the politicians who had remained at home now once more became prominent, and sowed the seeds of legislative trouble. Johnson's theory was that the states had never in fact seceded, because the result of the war had proved secession to be ineffective; therefore, as soon as certain formalities had been observed, they should be readmitted to the rights of citizenship, voting, and representation in Congress. Upon this basis he acted, during the period while Congress was not in session; but on their reassembling they adopted a stricter view of the situation, and disallowed some of the President's acts. Strife ensued between the executive and legislative branches ; Johnson vetoed the bills of Congress, and the latter, having a two-thirds Republican majority, passed the bills over his veto. The law of appointments to and dismissal from office was a bone of contention, and the quarrel came to a head over Johnson's dismissal from the office of Secretary of War of Stanton, who had acted efficiently under Lincoln, but whose brutality on several occasions had raised him up many enemies. In the stress of emotion and anxiety caused by the fortunes and doubts of the war, much should be forgiven to men of honest purpose and sterling patriotism, like Stanton, who temporarily lost temper and judgment, and so committed acts of injustice. The determination of Congress to continue him in office in spite of the President, led to an attempt to impeach the latter, in which much time and breath were wasted, and ne good result whatever attained ; for neither was the motion successful, nor was the conduct of public business promoted; on the contrary, feelings of mutual enmity were aroused which were injurious to all concerned, and most of all to the public, which had elected these men to attend to the affairs of the nation. The Reconstruction measure which Congress carried over th veto was to the effect that the states had in fact seceded and were unassimilated as yet to the Union, and could become so only through act of Congress. Citizen-ship was given to negroes by a Fourteenth Amendment, and representation was reduced according to the number of citizens admitted to citizenship. No person who had violated his oath by joining in the act of secession should be allowed to hold office under the United States, and compensation for freed slaves should not be accorded. These laws were not wisely framed; their effect was to exclude from responsible positions the men of the South who were best qualified for holding them, and to put in power the tribe of irresponsible adventurers, known as "carpet-baggers," who for real or assumed party services had been let loose on the Southern states. Hard feeling and disturbances ensued, as might have been expected; and the military governors who ruled the seceded states by martial law did not throw oil upon the troubled waters. Johnson's policy was the wiser of the two, though it also might have been wiser. In matters of this kind, action should not be taken according to the strict dictation of logic. It was bootless to ask whether or not the states had seceded; the thing to do was to trust so far as possible to their common-sense and good faith, and to re-move instead of placing obstacles in the way of bringing a proud people once more into the fold from which they had broken forth. Military laws and alien interlopers should not have been permitted ; Americans should not have to be told that, for any community not actually barbarous, home-rule is the only rule admissible. Disturbances might of course have occurred under such liberal terms, but they would have been discountenanced by the weight of public opinion, and could readily have been checked by more stringent means if necessary. As it was, the states sub-scribed to the new regulations slowly and reluctantly, and the acerbities of the war were kept alive. The Republican Party, which had gloriously brought the country through the war, here began already to abuse its power; and though its predominance was to be prolonged for many years, and was still to be productive of much good, its decline had commenced, and from some of its mistakes we are still inconvenienced. But the Republican Party was, for the present, a Hobson's choice for the people; they could not again trust the Democrats, who had become in a measure identified with the principle of disloyalty. Centralization was a natural tendency, after the experience of the perils incident to the opposite point of view ; and we should perhaps won-der that the Republicans, as chartered libertines, did not do more mischief, than that they did any mischief at all.

During Johnson's term occurred the culmination of the Maximilian incident in Mexico. Napoleon III., aiming at foreign empire, had long been plotting to get hold of Mexico; and our Civil War gave him the opportunity he desired to set at naught the warning of our Monroe Doctrine. Persuading the English and the Spanish to act with him, he made with them an effort to collect damages for injuries sustained or alleged in the past; and to induce the anarchical populace to accept a permanent ruler. Spain and England soon retired from the combination, perceiving its true objects; and Napoleon then sent an armed expedition to Mexico City, which forced the Mexicans to accept a king in the person of Archduke Maximilian of Austria—who, for his part, agreed to ascend the throne upon the assurance (falsely given by France) that the entire Mexican people desired him to do so. That the popular desire had been for a republic he was not long in discovering; but with Austrian obstinacy, he would not recede; and a long course of intestine trouble might have been the result, had not the ending of our war admonished France that her support of the king must cease. Lacking Napoleon's support, Maximilian was unable to make head against the leader of the republican element, Juarez; he was court-martialed and shot. Except in Brazil and Canada, there were now no traces of empires in the western hemisphere; and the former was soon to throw off her royal yoke, though it had been an easy one.

In 1866 Cyrus W. Field, after twelve years' labor and three experiments, accomplished the laying of the Atlantic cable by means of the steamship "Great Eastern" ; it was one of the renowned victories of peace. Not less important in another way was the purchase from Russia, for about seven million dollars, of the vast territory of Alaska, which was supposed to be valuable only as a fur country, but which has since, in a single year, yielded gold enough to repay its cost many times over. Nevada had been made a state in Lincoln's time; Nebraska was admitted in 1867. The general prosperity of the country was great, in spite of the destitution of a large part of the South; the public debt, which had risen to over two and a half billion dollars during 1865, underwent a steady reduction from this time forth, beginning with a sum of over seventy millions in the very first year of peace. The revenue from duties, taxes and stamps, at the same period, was more than three hundred and twenty million dollars.

When the national conventions assembled, that of the Re-publicans unanimously voted for Grant as the next President; the Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour, who was defeated at the polls by one hundred and forty electoral votes, but only by about three hundred thousand votes cast by the people. Grant was the third soldier to assume the office of Executive since Washington; and though he had not the political ability of Jackson, nor even, it may be, of Taylor, he was so strong, straightforward and firm that his admiinstrations were a success. The chief industrial feature of his first admiinstration was the completion of the Atlantic-Pacific railway, which gave an immense momentum to the prosperity of the country; and its chief disaster was the great fires, which almost destroyed Chicago, laid a large part of Boston in ruins, and devastated Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan. Threat of war with England was averted by the payment by her of damages for injuries to commerce sustained from the cruiser "Alabama," built and manned by England; and by the rectification of the north-west boundary in our favor; both being the result of arbitration. Grant was in favor of accepting the tender of annexation made by the Republic of San Domingo; but Congress rejected it, whether or not wisely is still matter of dispute. Grant was made his own successor, the coalition candidate of liberal Republicans and Democrats, Horace Greeley, the journalist, being defeated, much to his own surprise. A war with the Modocs, who had left their reservation, and murdered commissioners sent to treat with them, was one of the first incidents of Grant's second term; and a similar difficulty with the Sioux occurred in 1876, and was marked by the death of Custer and his men, who attacked an Indian village with inferior numbers, and were surrounded and killed before re-enforcements could arrive. The first Centeninal Exhibition was given at Philadelphia in 1876, three years after the disastrous panic caused by the failure of the bankers, Jay Cooke & Co., who had dabbled overmuch in rail-way stocks. The American people are fond of anniversaries, and uniformly observe them with heartiness and elaboration. The centennial of the Republic was a specially glorified Fourth of July, and it was delightful to the patriotic American to compare what we were in 1876 with what we had been a hundred years before. The material progress was certainly surprising; but it might have been edifying to inquire how far we rose above the moral and self-abnegating virtues which had characterized us in Washington's time. The behavior of a people varies with its conditions of life; but prosperity, sudden and excessive, is of all conditions the most hostile to the development of civic integrity and faith-fulness. Looking upon our increase in population, power and wealth, we were easily forgetful of the principles which had laid the foundation for such an unprecedented advance, and we tended to give undue credit to that kind of ability which wins material success and accumulates money. That the true greatness of a country does not lie in this direction has of late been recognized by a part of our people, and it may be expected that a change in the object of our energies may gradually be made.

Grant went out of office with the affection and respect of his countrymen, which his services both in the field and in the White House had well deserved. After his retirement he made a tour of the world, which he had intended to be a private affair, but which became the most famous "progress" of modern times; he was everywhere received by the governments of the countries he visited with honor, as the most distinguished living American; and nothing that he said or did during his journey failed to confirm the good repute which had preceded him. His simplicity and his greatness were at all times and in all places equally apparent, and greatly elevated the foreign estimate of his country. The mind dwells upon every act of his career, public and private, with satisfaction; and a few years before his death he made the unusual reply to a question on the subject, that had he his life to live over again, he would choose to live it as before. His last years were saddened by a financial misfortune, for which he was not to blame; and they were ennobled by the constancy with which, while dying from a painful disease, he continued to write his "Memoirs," in order to secure for his family support after his death. He lived just long enough to finish the book, the sale of which justified his hopes. It is an important contribution to the history of the war; and the modesty of its tone, and the strength and simplicity of its style, recall and reflect the qualities of the man who wrote it.

Besides the Democrats and the Republicans, there was a third party in the Presidential contest for 1876—the Green-back Party, whose platform called for the issue of green-backs based on the credit of the country, with which bonds should be bought up. Peter Cooper, a venerable and rustic old gentleman, of great wealth and philanthropic disposition, was nominated by this party; Samuel Tilden was the Democratic choice; and the Republicans put up Rutherford B. Hayes, a person of correct private life and limited caliber, who had been a respectable volunteer officer in the war, but who was destitute of any personal qualifications or deserts for the office. The processes of the election were unusually fraudulent; the whole power of the Republicans being exerted for their candidate, while Tilden was the undoubted preference of the majority of the nation. In spite of all that bribery and intimidation could do, the count was so close that danger was feared should Hayes be declared elected; and a commission was therefore appointed to pass upon the returns. It was made up of fifteen members, appointed in consequence of the recommendation of a Congressional comittee :—five Senators, five Representatives, and five associate justices of the Supreme Court. The commission decided each case brought before it in favor of the Republicans, by a constant vote of eight against seven, and Hayes was accordingly declared President. Preparations were secretly made to suppress with an iron hand the revolt that was apprehended; but the Democrats, though convinced that the election had been stolen, acquiesced with admirable loyalty, and Mr. Hayes assumed his functions.

His colorless administration, streaked with pallid efforts at "reform," requires little notice. Evarts, a distinguished New York lawyer, was his Secretary of State, and Carl Schurz was his Secretary of the Interior. Hayes withdrew from South Carolina and Louisiana the United States troops which had been sent there by Grant to maintain order; and those states in consequence came at once under the normal Democratic control. In 1877 the industrial situation was threatened by large and violent strikes and riots at Pitts-burg, Chicago, Reading and Baltimore; property was burned and destroyed, the troops were called out, and many per-sons were killed; the strikers gained nothing. There was a severe yellow fever epidemic in the South. Hayes in vain vetoed the Bland Silver Bill which authorized the coiinng of a 412- 1/2 grain silver dollar at the rate of between two and four million dollars annually, and made it legal ten-der; and recommended, but without result, the fixing of a ratio between gold and silver by international agreement. The sum of five and a half million dollars was awarded by a commission to England as compensation for alleged interference with English fisheries rights Gold reached par in 1878, from a maximum advance of 285 in 1864. Specie payments were resumed a few days later. The census of 1880 showed the population to have increased over eleven mil-lions during the past decade, numbering upward of fifty millions. The most curious minor incident of Hayes's administration was the crusade against wines and liquor undertaken by Mrs. Hayes; the only result being that, by her orders, wine was not served at White House dinners. Mrs. Hayes was the wife of a public servant to whom had been temporarily intrusted the stewardship of government property; and her conduct illustrates her conception of her rights in the premises.

Parties were still further multiplied in the canvass of 1880; the Prohibitionists and the Anti-Masonic parties being added to the former three. General Grant also stood for a third term. Garfield and Arthur were the regular Republican nominees; General Hancock was selected by the Democrats; General Weaver by the Greenbackers; Neal Dow by the Prohibitionists, and John W. Phelps by the Anti-Masons. Here were five generals against two civilians. Arthur, how-ever, was but a quartermaster-general; and Garfield can hardly be said to have reached mediocrity as a volunteer general. But he was a clever politician, and a useful man to his party. He was successful over Hancock by a moderate margin; Neal Dow had some ten thousand supporters in the Uinted States, and the Greenbackers could muster but three hundred thousand.

Garfield's Secretary of State was James G. Blaine. The Republican Party was divided into two hostile camps at this time; the dispute between them being as to who should control the division of the spoils. Roscoe Conkling, the leader of the "half-breeds," as the opponents of the "stalwart" administration were called, resigned his seat in the Senate on account of an appointment by Garfield which displeased him. The wrangling which ensued caused some excitement, which turned the brain of a wretched office-hunter named Guiteau; and he shot Garfield in the back at a Washington railroad station on July 2d, 1881. Garfield's youth and vigorous constitution kept him alive till the 19th of September; meanwhile great sympathy was expressed for him. Upon his death, Arthur succeeded him. Garfield had been a poor farmer's boy; had married a farmer's daughter, and owed such education as he had to his own efforts. Arthur was a rich man and an "exquisite," a genial fine gentleman of popular manners. Only two matters of importance are associated with his administration : the Chinese exclusion bill, and the tariff reform bill. The former was passed, with many dissentients; the latter is still a bone of contention between parties ; and the attempts which have been made to solve the problem which it involves have cost us much money and more ill-feeling. Statesmanship, politics and finance become mixed in an inextricable snarl, and the multitude of advisers do but darken counsel. Upon the whole, fortune was kind to Arthur in giving him nothing of moment to do; and he retired from office with the commendation and good will of all.

In the ensuing election the frivolity of the time was shown in the still further increase of so-called parties; not to mention others, there was the woman's rights party with Belva A. Lockwood for President and Mrs. Dr. Lozier for Vice-President. The Democrats were represented by Grover Cleveland and T. A. Hendricks, the Republicans by James G. Blaine and John A. Logan. Cleveland and Hendricks were elected. Cleveland was another poor boy; but he. had early got into politics; he had sent a substitute to the war, and applied himself to making a political career. He rose through various civic grades till he was elected governor of New York by a majority unusually large, which put him in the presidential race. He was bold and firm, and honest as politicians go; confident in the soundness of his own views, and apt to be independent in his attitude. He caught the fancy of his countrymen, and was in many ways a favorite of for-tune. He had an advantage in being the first Democratic President for many years, and his ambition to make a record was no doubt genuine and honorable.

The epoch was necessarily one of small things. There were no foreign complications, except the chronic petty squabbles with England about the fisheries, which led, this term, to the dismissal of Lord Sackville, the British minister to Washington, on account of a foolish letter he had been betrayed into writing on the subject. The Indians, on whose behalf much pretentious legislation, with a view to their education, had been passed or mooted, gave trouble again after a period of quiet, owing to invasion of their rights in Oklahoma. Senator Blair got a bill through Congress forbidding the importation of aliens under contract to perform labor in this country; upon which a notoriety-loving member of the St. Andrew's Society brought an action to restrain the sermons of an English clergyman who had been asked to officiate in an American friend's pulpit during the latter's absence. A New England Senator, anxious to be doing something for his constituents, conceived the idea of a presidential succession bill, which specified the order in which the office should pass from one Secretary to another, in the event of their all dying one after the other. Some tinkering was done with army and navy bills, with no results perceptible outside of Washington. Against any improvement or strengthening of our army or navy the threadbare and thrifty argument was used that we were at war with nobody, meant to attack none, and would be attacked by nobody; therefore, why should we accumulate means of offense and defense? They cost money, and could be of no use. It was a policy of shop-keepers, humanitarians, Trusts and bankers; people who form a not inconsiderable class of the community, and whose operations give them exaggerated prominence, but who in no degree represent the spirit of the nation. The nation, how-ever, attending, each individual of it, to his own affairs, takes little note of proceedings in Washington, unless what occurs there happens to touch the popular imagination. Politicians, and those whose secret or open subsidies constitute the springs of their activity, are allowed to have things their own way, until some scandal or turpitude of unusual baseness takes place, making the people growl menacingly for a while, and sending the offenders scuttling to cover. But soon the many-headed monster turns to its affairs again, and the noxious creatures creep out once more. In general, little vital mischief is done; the country is strong enough to support vast quantities of parasites without feeling a drain. But the money annually paid out by Uncle Sam to persons who, to put it in the most delicate way, have done nothing honestly entitling them to it, would maintain an army and navy as large and efficient as those of any European power, and would place a belt of steel round our entire coasts. It is vain to suppose that other nations will respect us because we are big and rich, if we turn out to be, at the same time, strengthless and pusillanimous. On the contrary they will regard us as a goose to be fattened, and, at the proper time, to be killed and eaten. An object lesson of the fate of a great nation which has no civic unity and power of co-operation, is afforded by the recent history of China. With a population of hundreds of mil-lions, and immense resources of treasure, this nation was defeated in war by a few thousand foreign soldiers and sailors. The nation had become, during centuries, self-centered; the mass of the people, overawed by combinations of the rich and ambitious, had lost all sense of nationality and patriot-ism, and were sunk into a kind of industrious barbarism, each atom working for itself or for its immediate master. At last there was no longer a nation, but only countless hordes of disconnected individuals, more or less in subjection to arbitrary tyrants. It would be inaccurate to say that China went to war with Japan, or was beaten by her. Only a minute fraction of the Chinese inhabitants of the country were ever aware that any war had taken place. But they were and are helpless to repel aggression, and we now see their country being divided up among the alien invaders, whose only consideration is not for the Chinese but for one another. No one who understands history will say that it unusual baseness takes place, making the people growl menacingly for a while, and sending the offenders scuttling to cover. But soon the many-headed monster turns to its affairs again, and the noxious creatures creep out once more. In general, little vital mischief is done; the country is strong enough to support vast quantities of parasites without feeling a drain. But the money annually paid out by Uncle Sam to persons who, to put it in the most delicate way, have done nothing honestly entitling them to it, would maintain an army and navy as large and efficient as those of any European power, and would place a belt of steel round our entire coasts. It is vain to suppose that other nations will respect us because we are big and rich, if we turn out to be, at the same time, strengthless and pusillanimous. On the contrary they will regard us as a goose to be fattened, and, at the proper time, to be killed and eaten. An object lesson of the fate of a great nation which has no civic unity and power of co-operation, is afforded by the recent history of China. With a population of hundreds of mil-lions, and immense resources of treasure, this nation was defeated in war by a few thousand foreign soldiers and sailors. The nation had become, during centuries, self-centered; the mass of the people, overawed by combinations of the rich and ambitious, had lost all sense of nationality and patriot-ism, and were sunk into a kind of industrious barbarism, each atom working for itself or for its immediate master. At last there was no longer a nation, but only countless hordes of disconnected individuals, more or less in subjection to arbitrary tyrants. It would be inaccurate to say that China went to war with Japan, or was beaten by her. Only a minute fraction of the Chinese inhabitants of the country were ever aware that any war had taken place. But they were and are helpless to repel aggression, and we now see their country being divided up among the alien invaders, whose only consideration is not for the Chinese but for one another. No one who understands history will say that it was exclusiveness which brought China to this pass; it was selfishness, in the whole and in all its parts; the policy of each one for himself, with its inevitable corollaries of gradual subordination of the many to the few, the spread of ignorance, and disintegration. If the industrial affairs of America should continue to be managed by trusts, insensibly increasing in strength and independence; if its financial interests are left to combinations of bankers; if its government is abandoned to politicians; the fate of China must ultimately be ours. Like causes produce like results in the end, though that end may seem so distant as to be non-existent. —But, in truth, the conditions which have suggested such a peril are transient, and do but warn us to keep to our duty.

Civil Service Reform, and the Tariff, were the chief objects of attention during Cleveland's term. Some steps were taken toward making tenure of civil office dependent upon fitness for it, instead of upon party services; and there was a show of competitive examinations, and assurances that there should be no removals except for cause, one of which was specified as "pernicious activity." But the broad principle first enunciated by William Marcy and enforced by Andrew Jackson, that to the victors belong the spoils, still holds practical sway in our government; with the consequence that a large part of the President's time is occupied in the mere clerk's drudgery of removing and appointing incumbents of consulships, post-offices, and the like petty offices. The men who apply for these posts are usually, of course, men who have failed to make a living by ordinary trades or professions, and who, knowing that their tenure is limited to four years, try to make as much as possible out of their brief opportunities, and give small thought to the welfare of the interests confided to them. But were office-holders to be kept in their positions year after year and term after term, during good behavior, the government would be deprived of the vast patronage which their constant rotation supplies; and patronage means the votes and political support of subordinates, and money extorted from them under various pretexts, most of which goes into the pockets of their superiors. Our government is a government of the people by and for the people; and until the majority of our people shows itself explicitly and persistently opposed to this rotation system, it will continue. Public spirit, civic virtue, not sporadic and spasmodic, but general and continuous, are needed. The American people is capable of them, when poignant need arises; but they do not as yet show them-selves willing to take time and attention from private affairs, year after year and decade after decade, in order to enforce measures and principles which all admit to be right. It is only after public abuses have begun obviously to interfere with the prosperity of private business, that we can expect a genuine movement of reform. The supporters of corruption fight hard, because they fight for life; their opponents are at the disadvantage of fighting them against their own personal convenience and inclination. Corruption has a strong and highly organized system, patiently fortified against every attack, prepared to bow before a passing storm, and to rise again after it has passed, often seeming to enlist under its opponents' banner, in order the more thoroughly to defeat and discredit them. The considerable body of political re-formers and independents known in our nickname language as Mugwumps, has numbered in its ranks many men of sterling character and ability; but they have not won hearty popular sympathy. They seem, as a whole, to have been lacking in sympathy with average human nature, in political sagacity, and in knowledge of the world; they have put forward excellent moral propositions, and have been perplexed at their own failure. But in order to win the confidence of the average American, who is slightly cynical and full of common-sense, though capable, upon occasion, of fighting and dying for an abstract idea, these Mugwumps must give us something which they have not given as yet. They have their value as showing a growing tendency or the part of the community to achieve better conditions; but the magnetic word that shall unite all in accomplishing such conditions has not yet been spoken; the leader whom all cannot choose but follow has not yet arisen. We recognize that the political and industrial bosses are men who do what the average citizen might do if he had the chance and the ability; and therefore there is a half-heartedness about our condemnation of them. Mere ability, the faculty of managing, receives great admiration in this country, without too much regard to the methods by which results are attained. This is but natural in a republic where every man must fight for himself or go down. The boss relieves the average citizen of a great deal of trouble, and thereby sets him free to look after his personal interests. The trusts crush the small dealers, but they are a convenience for the consumer, and the increased price which the latter may be obliged to pay is set off against the facility of making purchases. Wage earners are wronged, but low wages cheapen products. Many doctors of political economy have arisen, with medicines for the cure of these ills; but it will probably be necessary for us to wait for experience to prove to us that the welfare of each depends in the long run on the welfare of the whole, and to live accordingly.

The tariff developed the existence of two opposite opinions in the country, one holding that foreign goods should be taxed in order to protect the manufacturers of the same lines of goods here; the other, that such protection is really of little help to the manufacturer, while it injures the consumer. Free trade and protection are irreconcilable enemies, and their quarrel, too, must be settled by experience. Under Cleveland, Roger Q. Mills introduced a bill favoring free trade, which passed the House but was halted in the Senate. Cleveland's first administration had about it a good deal of personal flavor, but the people liked it partly for that reason, inasmuch as Cleveland was held to be honest, uncorrupt, and to mean right. His intellect was not great, but he was a man who learned as he went along. There was a massiveness about him which was comforting. Nor, as an element in his popularity, should we neglect to notice his marriage to a beautiful and intelligent woman. Sentiment catches many votes in this hard-headed people.

In 1888, the two chief candidates were Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison, the grandson of the former President Harrison, of Tippecanoe. Benjamin Harrison was in every way a worthy gentleman, who had always done work given him to do with faithfulness and energy, and who continued that practice in the White House. He had been a good soldier in the war, liked by his men, and attentive to their welfare and discipline; and his commands to them in battle uinformly began with "Come"—not "Go." He was a lawyer by profession, and had served in the Senate; his opinions, as drawn out during the canvass, were such as might be expected from a man of integrity and respectability, who was a Republican. He favored Civil Service reform, but turned out and put in as many civil servants as had any of his predecessors. He appointed Corporal Tanner Commissioner of Pensions. The pension payments had risen from thirty-four millions in 1884 to nearly fifty-three millions in 1887 ; and within a few months Tanner had raised this sum to over eighty millions, and was still going on. The national surplus was being wiped out, and Tanner was compelled by public opinion to resign. By the agency of Blaine, the Secretary of State, negotiations were opened looking to reciprocity with South American states—import duties to be mutually lowered or abolished. The revenue of the country, internal and customs, was larger than ever before. Idaho and Wyoming were admitted as states. William McKinley introduced a tariff bill, raising some duties and lowering others; it was relied upon by the Republicans to confirm their hold on power; but its first effect was to change the majority in Congress from Republican to Democratic, and in connection with other things, it defeated the Republicans at the polls for the next Presidential election. The continued free coinage of silver was beginning to unsettle financial matters, and much opposition to it was developed. An international copyright bill was passed, giving, under certain restrictions, American ownership of their work to authors foreign to America, and conferring similar privileges on our authors in foreign countries. In 1891, the Italian secret assassination society, called the Mafia, murdered a police officer in New Orleans; the culprits were tried and ac-quitted; but the mob broke open the jail and killed them. The Italian miinster at Washington protested, and our government paid twenty-five thousand dollars damages. The following year, members of the crew of the American man-of-war "Baltimore" were killed or hurt in a popular emeute in Valparaiso, Chile; and at first the Chile government made unsatisfactory replies to our demands for satisfaction; but subsequently apologized, and paid seventy-five thousand dollars indeminty.--Such are the ripples that varied the general calm of Harrison's administration.

After a tame campaign, in which the party differences concerned chiefly protection, and Federal supervision of elections, which Republicans favored and Democrats opposed, Grover Cleveland, renominated by the Democrats, was successful against Harrison. Cleveland returned to power to the sound of the guns which celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America. Business depression and financial troubles were great and numerous; but in the meanwhile the preparations for the Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago to commemorate Columbus's discovery, and to illustrate the industrial condition of the world, were actively making. The exhibition was held during six months, ending November, 1893, and was in all respects a success; the instruction it gave to the country was of permanent value, and it also, incidentally, enabled the people of all sections to see and become acquainted with one another. But while this splendid picture of material progress and wealth was being displayed, the condition of the country, owing to artificial causes, became worse. One of the President's first acts was to recall from the Senate the Hawaiian annexation bill. The Wilson bill, reducing tariff on imports, was passed, though strongly opposed; but such was the agitation in the country, traceable to no well-ascertained cause, that failures became constant. No one was sure what was the matter; but the people, in these cases, are apt to lay the blame on the existing administration, though often the latter may be wholly innocent, and but suffers from the evil legacy of its predecessor. The Democratic majority in Congress was reversed. The tariff did not pay the expenses of government, and the income tax, which had been much disliked, was finally declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The discussion of financial problems at this period was unprecedented, but little light was thrown upon them. The re-peal of the Sherman silver bill was demanded, and it began to be evident that the next election would turn on financial questions; the Republicans demanding the adoption of a gold standard, in harmony with Europe, and the Democrats, led by their nominee, William Jennings Bryan, urging the free and unlimited coinage of silver and the establishment of a ratio between silver and gold of sixteen to one. Meanwhile there was another threat of war with England; not, this time, on account of cod fisheries or seal fisheries; but because England refused to accept our proposal to arbitrate her dispute with Venezuela as to the true boundary between that country and British Guiana. Solicitude for our Monroe Doctrine urged us to take a hand in the matter; and Cleve-land sent a message to Congress recommending an ex parte commission to inquire into the merits of the case. This menaced war with England; stocks and United States bonds fell; the price of money rose from two per cent to eight. But the danger was finally averted through moderation on England's part. A rebellion which had broken out in Cuba against Spanish official tyranny and outrage attracted some attention at this time, though its ultimate consequences were not foreseen; attempts to secure recognition of a Cuban Republic by this country failed. There had been a previous, unsuccessful rebellion twenty years before; and it was evident that the conditions in the island were become intolerable.

The campaign of 1896 was in some respects remarkable. Bryan was a very young man for a presidential aspirant; he was gifted with eloquence, and he had the utmost sincerity of conviction that the principles he enunciated were true, and would pull the country out of its financial hole. More money was wanted, so that the poor might be enabled to live; he believed that by coining silver freely, its value as one-sixteenth that of gold might be maintained; he thought other countries would follow our lead in fixing this ratio, and meanwhile he declared that America did not have to go to Europe to find out what was good for her. These opinions, cogently expressed during a tour which covered almost every state in the Union, took great hold upon the minds of the poorer classes, and enlisted also the support of many who were not poor; and vast multitudes in the middle and west-ern states, and in some parts of the south, came together to listen to Bryan, and seemed to regard him as a sort of savior divinely appointed to rescue them from their troubles. The Republicans rallied the support of the wealthy and conservative element, the men of property and vested interests, the bankers and trust proprietors, and the employers in general of labor. The campaign was as bitter as the previous one had been apathetic; and the result was in doubt till the last. Then it appeared that McKinley, the Republican candidate, was elected by a small majority, so far as the popular vote was concerned.

The country now looked forward, too optimistically, to an immediate reappearance of prosperity. We have learned to live our personal lives so rapidly, and so many striking events crowd upon one another in this age of electricity and turmoil of governments, that we have become prone to finagine that effects in national affairs follow causes more quickly than they used to do. But erroneous methods, or partial solutions of economic problems, are not followed by good results any more than they formerly were, nor are the processes of evolution to be hurried because we are breathless and impatient. The people that does not know its true way does not get forward, no matter what its strength and activity. Our attention has been turned of late years almost exclusively to the expedition of business, and we are able, individually, to conduct our business with as much promptitude and efficiency as the conditions allow. But there are great secrets in the chemistry of finance, labor and government which have not yet been guessed; hitherto we have got on well enough without fully guessing them; but now the adjustments of life are finer than they were, we are confronted by hitherto untried situations, and we are consequently arrested in a fog of perplexities and wanton experiments. This nation has come to the end of one period of its growth, and is arrived at the threshold of another. Fifty or a hundred years from now we shall be able to look back and understand the position we occupy at this moment; and we shall probably see, then, that not one new thing, but many, awaited us. The next century may be expected to be not only different, but very different from the last.

To speak in the broadest terms, what is needed seems to be more of the spiritual quality in our affairs. There was a spirit dominating us in the Seventeenth Century, which drove us hither and anchored us in the wilderness; there was a spirit in 1776 which defended against oppression what we had won; and there was a spirit in 1861 which labored fiercely to rid our broad shoulders of the burden which stealthy ages had bound upon them; and which succeeded, though the knife with which we severed the bonds entered deep into our own living flesh. But now, during the succeeding decades, a great body of trade and industry has grown up, which is as yet without an inner soul: it has no ruling and guiding spirit within it. It is a vast, inorganic mass, which only seeks to grow bigger, instead of taking on intelligent form and proportions, and discovering its own meaning and its right to be. It is engendered of ambition and competition; it aims at possession and enjoyment of life—the good things of life: and this is no aim at all, nor can it ever be so; the real good of life comes only while we seek better things and, finding us with our eyes and hearts set elsewhere, suddenly is revealed humbly moving at our side. The utmost that commerce, agriculture, finance, government, science can give us, is in itself not worth stooping to pick up; the garment without the body is nothing, the body without the soul is nothing, the soul without immortality is nothing. We must learn the ultimate use and value of this vast accumulation of things which we are gathering together, like slaves, imagining ourselves masters of the world when we are its helpless drudges and lackeys. We must develop a soul to animate withal this huge corporeal mass of impedimenta, of conveniences, luxuries, curiosities, redundancies. We must lift it and organize it and rationalize it out of its present abject and selfish sprawl, and cause it to occupy its proper office and place in our human economy. Much of it will then disappear as worthless or obstructive; much more will be regarded as incidental merely to the attainment of better things. Material prosperity will become an instrument of life, not its object. As we value it less, it will become less irregular, more evenly distributed; not congested arbitrarily here and there, with spaces of want and misery between, but spread over the surface of the community like a comely skin or fitting garment. Our present careers are prone to insanities, collisions and the cruelties of neglect and preoccupation ; we need to consult each the interest of his neighbor, as of his larger and completer self, and therefore the self which merits most consideration and service. We cannot solve from below the problems which now perplex us; we must rise to a height where they become indifferent to us, and then we shall look down upon them and understand them.