This year closes a most important era in the history of the United States, and of the world. The account with the civil war was definitely closed, and the final seal set on the policy of reconstruction by the inauguration of Gen. Grant, and the continuance of the Republican party in power by the people, together with the readmission of most of the Southern States and the possibility of the reversal of the decision in regard to slavery done away by the adoption of the fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, giving the elective franchise to the colored population. Much emphasis was given to all these things by the prosperity of the country, and the rapid reduction of the debt, by the generally wise conduct of the Southern people, and the slowly increasing prosperity of that section. These results reacted in other countries to strengthen the tendency to freer and more popular governments, and seem, in some respects to have introduced the Era of Republicanism. However slow may be the changes in this direction, they are sure to be made.
1870.
Jan. 1—Ten years ago the cloud of civil war settled densely over the country, and threatened its destruction. To-day that tornado has been passed by nearly six years, and its ruins are almost buried under the new and more thrifty growth of all interests and industries even in the South.
” 20—H. R. Revels, of Miss., is chosen the first colored Senator who ever represented a State in Congress.
” 23—The U. S. steamer Oneida sunk by collision with another vessel on the coast of Japan. 176 lives lost.
Feb. 22—Hon. Anson Burlingame, head of the Chinese embassy to the powers of Christendom, died at St. Petersburg, Russia.
Mar. 28—Gen. G. H. Thomas dies in San Francisco, Cal.
” 30—The Sec. of State proclaims the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution by three-fourths of the States.
June 15—Death of Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, at Baltimore, Md.
July 12—Death of Admiral Dahlgren, at Washington, D. C.