A School History of the United States Part 53

1. That the silver dollar should again be coined, and at the ratio of 16 to 1; that is, that the same number of dollars should be made out of sixteen pounds of silver as out of one pound of gold.

2. That silver should be a legal tender, at face value, for all debts, public and private.

3. That all silver bullion brought to the mints should be coined into dollars without cost to the bringer. This was "free coinage of silver."

The House pa.s.sed the bill, but the Senate rejected the "free coinage"

provision and subst.i.tuted the "Allison" amendment. Under this, the Secretary of the Treasury was to _buy_ not less than $2,000,000, nor more than $4,000,000, worth of silver bullion each month, and coin it into dollars.

The House accepted the Senate amendment, and when Hayes vetoed the bill Congress pa.s.sed it over his veto and the "Bland-Allison Bill" became a law in 1878.

%516. Silver Certificates.%--Now this return to the coinage of the silver dollar was open to the objection that large sums in silver would be troublesome because of the weight. It was therefore provided that the coins might be deposited in the Treasury, and paper "silver certificates" issued against them.

A few months later, January 1, 1879, the government returned to specie payment, and ever since has redeemed greenbacks in gold, on demand.

%517. Foreign Relations; the French in Mexico.%--The statement was made that with the exception of Russia the great powers of Europe sympathized with the South during the Civil War. Two of them, France and Great Britain, were openly hostile. The French Emperor allowed Confederate agents to contract for the construction of war vessels in French ports,[1] and sent an army into Mexico to overturn that republic and establish an empire. Mexico owed the subjects of Great Britain, France, and Spain large sums of money, and as she would not pay, these three powers in 1861 sent a combined army to hold her seaports till the debts were paid. But it soon became clear that Napoleon had designs against the republic, whereupon Great Britain and Spain withdrew.

Napoleon, however, seeing that the United States was unable to interfere because of the Civil War, went on alone, destroyed the Mexican republic and made Maximilian (a brother of the Emperor of Austria) Emperor of Mexico. This was in open defiance of the Monroe Doctrine, and though the United States protested, Napoleon paid no attention till 1865. Then, the Civil War having ended, and Sheridan with 50,000 veteran troops having been sent to the Rio Grande, the French soldiers were withdrawn (1867), and the Mexican republican party captured Maximilian, shot him, and reestablished the republic.

[Footnote 1: See Bullock's _Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe_.]

%518. The Alabama Claims; Geneva Award.%--The hostility of Great Britain was more serious than that of France. As we have seen, the cruisers (_Alabama, Shenandoah, Florida_) built in her shipyards went to sea and inflicted great injury on our commerce. Although she was well aware of this, she for a long time refused to make good the damage done.

But wiser counsel in the end prevailed, and in 1871, by the treaty of Washington, all disputed questions were submitted to arbitration.

The Alabama claims, as they were called, were sent to a board of five arbitrators who met at Geneva (1872) and awarded the United States $15,500,000 to be distributed among our citizens whose ships and property had been destroyed by the cruisers.

%519. Other International Disputes; the Alaska Purchase.%--To the Emperor of Germany was submitted the question of the true water boundary between Washington Territory and British Columbia. He decided in favor of the United States (1872).

To a board of Fish Commissioners was referred the claim of Canada that the citizens of the United States derived more benefit from the fishing in Canadian waters than did the Canadians from using the coast waters of the United States. The award made to Great Britain was $5,500,000 $5,500,000 (1877).

In 1867, we purchased Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000.

SUMMARY

_Financial History, 1868-1880_

1. When the war ended, the national debt consisted of two parts: the bonded, and the unbonded or floating.

2. As public sentiment demanded the reduction of the debt, it was decided to pay the bonds as fast as possible, and contract the currency by canceling the greenbacks.

3. Contraction went on till 1868, when Congress ordered it stopped.

4. The payment of the bonds brought up the question, Shall the 5-20's be paid in coin or greenbacks?

5. The Democrats in 1868 insisted that the bonds should be redeemed in greenbacks; the Republicans that they should be paid in coin,--and when they won, they pa.s.sed the "Credit Strengthening Act" of 1869, and in 1870 refunded the bonds at lower rates.

6. In the process of refunding, the 5-20's, whose princ.i.p.al was payable in greenbacks, were replaced by others payable "in coin." In 1873, the coinage of the silver dollar was stopped, and the legal-tender quality of silver was taken away. The words "in coin" therefore meant "in gold."

7. In 1875 it was ordered that all greenbacks should be redeemed in specie after January 1, 1879 (resumption of specie payment).

8. In 1878 silver was made legal tender, and given limited coinage.

_The South and the Negro_

9. In 1869, three states still refused to comply with the Reconstruction Act of 1867 and had no representatives in Congress.

10. Such states as had complied and given the negro the right to vote were under "carpetbag" rule.

11. This rule became so unbearable that the Ku Klux Klan was organized to terrify the negroes and keep them from the polls.

12. Congress in consequence sent out the Fifteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution, and in 1871 enacted the Force Act.

13. These and other issues, as that of amnesty, split the Republican party and led to the appearance of the Liberal Republicans in 1872.

14. In general, however, party differences turned almost entirely on financial and industrial issues.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDUSTRIAL AND RAILROAD MAP OF THE UNITED STATES]

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

GROWTH OF THE NORTHWEST

%520. Results of the War.%--The Civil War was fought by the North for the preservation of the Union and by the South for the destruction of the Union. But we who, after more than thirty years, look back on the results of that struggle, can see that they did not stop with the preservation of the Union. Both in the North and in the South the war produced a great industrial revolution.

%521. Effect on the South.%--In the South, in the first place, it changed the system of labor from slave to free. While the South was a slave-owning country free labor would not come in. Without free labor there could be no mills, no factories, no mechanical industries. The South raised cotton, tobacco, sugar, and left her great resources undeveloped. After slavery was abolished, the South was on the same footing as the North, and her splendid resources began at once to be developed.

It was found that her rich deposits of iron ore were second to none in the world. It was found that beneath her soil lay an unbroken coal field, 39,000 square miles in extent. It was found that cotton, instead of being raised in less quant.i.ty under a system of free labor, was more widely cultivated than ever. In 1860, 4,670,000 bales were grown; but in 1894 the number produced was 9,500,000. The result has been the rise of a New South, and the growth of such manufacturing centers as Birmingham in Alabama and Chattanooga in Tennessee, and of that center of commerce, Atlanta, in Georgia.

%522. Rise of New Industries in the North.%--Much the same industrial revolution has taken place in the North. The list of industries well known to us, but unknown in 1860, is a long one. The production of petroleum for commercial purposes began in 1859, when Mr. Drake drilled his well near t.i.tusville, in Pennsylvania. In 1860 the daily yield of all the wells in existence was not 200 barrels. But by 1891 this industry had so developed that 54,300,000 barrels were produced in that year, or 14,900 a day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Scene in the oil regions of Pennsylvania]

The last thirty years have seen the rise of cheese making as a distinctive factory industry; of the manufacture of oleo-margarine, wire nails, Bessemer steel, cotton-seed oil, c.o.ke, canned goods; of the immense mills of Minneapolis, where 10,000,000 barrels of flour are made annually, and of the meat dressing and packing business for which Chicago and Kansas City are famous.

%523. The New Northwest.%--When the census was taken in 1860, so few people were living in what are now Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho that they were not counted. In Dakota there were less than 5000 inhabitants.

The discovery of gold and silver did for these territories what it had done for Colorado. It brought into them so many miners that in 1870 the population of these four territories amounted to 59,000. Between Lake Superior (where in the midst of a vast wilderness Duluth had just been laid out on the lake sh.o.r.e) and the mining camps in the mountains of Montana, there was not a town nor a hamlet. (There were indeed a few forts and Indian agencies and a few trading posts.) Northern Minnesota was a forest, into which even the lumbermen had not gone. The region from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains was the hunting ground of the Sioux, and was roamed over by enormous herds of buffalo.

%524. The Northern Pacific Railroad.%--But this great wilderness was soon to be crossed by one of the civilizers of the age. After years of vain effort, the promoters of the Northern Pacific began the building of their road in 1870, and pushed it across the plains till Duluth and St.

Paul were joined with Puget Sound. As it went further and further westward, emigrants followed it, towns sprang up, and cities grew with astonishing rapidity.

%525. The New States.%--Idaho, which had no white inhabitants in 1860, had 32,000 in 1880; Montana had 39,000 in 1880, as against none in 1860. Kansas in twenty years increased her population four fold, and Nebraska eight fold. This was extraordinary; but it was surpa.s.sed by Dakota, whose population increased nearly ten fold in ten years (1870-1880), and in 1889 was half a million. The time had now come to form a state government. But as most of the people lived in the south end of the territory, it was cut in two, and North and South Dakota were admitted into the Union as states on the same day (November 2, 1889); Montana followed within a fortnight, and Idaho and Wyoming within a year (July, 1890). The four territories, in which in 1860 there were but 5000 white settlers, had thus by 1890 become the five states of North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, with a population of 790,000.[1]

[Footnote 1: Colorado was admitted to the Union in 1876, Washington in 1889 (November 11); and Utah, the forty-fifth state, in 1896, under a const.i.tution forever prohibiting polygamy.]