CHAPTER XXXIII.
the administrations of grant, 1869–1877.
GRANT’S FIRST ADMINISTRATION, 1869–1873.
581. Pacific Railroads.—The policy of helping railroad building by Federal land grants began as early as 1850, when an important grant was given to aid the construction of the Illinois Central Railroad. In the course of the next six years several other grants were made for similar purposes. The construction of a railroad to the Pacific was recommended by the Republican platform of 1856; but the project was delayed by differences between the North and the South in regard to the location of the road. In 1862 the Union Pacific was projected to extend from Omaha to Ogden, where it was to connect with the Central Pacific for San Francisco. Though these roads were built by private corporations, the latter were largely aided by Congress.[[268]] Besides granting every other section of land along the routes for a space twenty miles in width, the government guaranteed the bonds of the corporations to the extent of over thirty thousand dollars a mile. The roads were completed in 1869, the first year of Grant’s administration.[[269]] Though the transcontinental lines have not generally proved profitable to stockholders, they have been of immense advantage to the country as a whole. Formerly from three to six weeks were required for the senators and representatives to reach Washington from California and Oregon; but the railroads reduced the time to a single week. Another advantage of far greater importance was the encouragement offered by the roads to the rapid settlement of the regions through which they passed. The new Western states increased in population with amazing rapidity, partly from foreign immigration, and partly from the migration of people from the Eastern states. By the census of 1870 it was found that more than a million inhabitants had already settled along the transcontinental lines. The Pacific states now for the first time seemed to be an integral part of the Union.
582. San Domingo Question.—In 1869 the people of the Republic of San Domingo expressed a desire to be annexed to the United States. Grant favored annexation, and a treaty was drawn up, but the project met with much popular opposition. A commission, consisting of Senator B. F. Wade of Ohio, Dr. Samuel G. Howe of Massachusetts, and President Andrew D. White of Cornell University, was sent to inspect the island and report upon its condition. The opposition to the treaty was based principally upon the fact that the people of San Domingo were chiefly ignorant negroes. Public opinion seemed not to favor an addition to the number of negroes giving trouble to the government, and the Senate rejected the treaty.
583. Fifteenth Amendment.—In order to improve the status of the negroes in the South the congressional plan of reconstruction was supplemented by the adoption, in 1870, of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This provided that no person should thereafter be deprived of the privilege of voting “because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” During the same year, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia were admitted to representation in Congress; and in 1871, for the first time in ten years, every state in the Union was duly represented.
584. Negro Legislation.—The negroes, although the most ignorant part of the population, were in control of the Southern legislatures, and their legislation was, as a rule, very crude and unwise. The white people of the South owned most of the property, but the blacks, through their control of the legislatures, to which they often elected unscrupulous white men, had the power to levy taxes. This fact kept up the violent opposition on the part of the white population which had begun under President Johnson. The negroes were sometimes bribed to keep away from the polls; sometimes threatened with discharge from employment if they voted; and sometimes were kept from voting by force. Congress retaliated by penal legislation against such interference with the negro’s right to suffrage. So-called “Force Bills” were passed in 1870 and 1871, which increased the bitter feeling in the South. To preserve order, the provisional governors were obliged to call on the President for Federal troops. This augmented the strife, and the Ku-Klux-Klan (§ [576]) was increasingly active. Within a year, however, affairs quieted down, a general Amnesty Act and other milder legislation helped to placate the whites, and soon the Supreme Court, by important decisions, made it plain that the individual states, in spite of the new Constitutional Amendments, could control their own citizens in many important ways. Thus the fears of the whites that the blacks would secure permanent control of affairs were allayed.
585. The Treaty of Washington.—In 1871 a treaty between the United States and Great Britain was signed at Washington, by which both nations agreed to submit to arbitration what were known as the “Alabama Claims,” made by the United States against Great Britain on account of losses to American shipping, caused by Confederate privateers fitted out in British ports (§ [502]). By the terms of the treaty, the questions involved were to be settled by a court of five arbitrators, one to be appointed by each of the governments of the United States, Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, and Brazil. The Court sat at Geneva in 1872. Elaborate testimony was offered on both sides. The United States government was able to show that the British government had been repeatedly warned of the fitting out of the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers. The Court, after hearing the evidence and arguments, held that Great Britain had not been duly watchful, as required by international law, to prevent the use of her ports by the agents of the Confederacy, and accordingly decided that the British government should pay to the United States damages to the amount of fifteen million five hundred thousand dollars in gold.
586. Northwest Boundary: Canadian Fisheries.—The Treaty of Washington also provided for the settlement by arbitration of two other important questions that had been in dispute for a considerable time. These were the boundary between the Oregon region and Canada, not clearly defined by the Treaty of 1846, and the fishery claims on the northeastern Canadian coast. By the terms of the Treaty of Washington the boundary question was submitted to the German Emperor, who gave his decision, in 1872, in favor of the American claim. The arbitrators to whom the fisheries question was referred decided against the United States and that the government should pay five million five hundred thousand dollars for the use of the Canadian shores for drying and curing fish.
587. Chicago and Boston Fires.—The autumn of 1871 will long be memorable for one of the most disastrous conflagrations ever known. In the evening of October 8, a fire broke out in a stable in West Chicago, and soon spread so that it was beyond control. Every structure within a space of more than three square miles in the heart of the city was reduced to ruins. More than a hundred thousand people were deprived of their homes, and the loss of property was estimated at more than two hundred million dollars. In November of the following year, about seventy-five acres in the richest part of Boston were burned over, at a loss of about seventy-five million dollars.