—The twenty years form indeed an incomparable era in the history of the United States. Despite the loss of life on the part of both North and South the Republic steadily gained in population for the entire period, at the rate of nearly a million each year; and each year there was added to the permanent wealth of the people $1,500,000,000;—a fact made all the more surprising when it is remembered that they were at the same time burdened with the interest on the National debt, of which they discharged more than eleven hundred millions of dollars of the principal within the period named.
Such progress is not only unprecedented but phenomenal. It could not have been made except under wise laws, honestly and impartially administered. It could not have been made except under an industrial system which stimulated enterprise, quickened capital, assured to labor its just reward. It could not have been made under the narrowing policy which assumes the sovereignty of the State. It required the broad measures, the expanding functions, which belong to a free Nation. Not simply to the leading statesmen of the Senate and the House, but to Congress as a whole, in its aggregate wisdom,—always greater than the wisdom of any one man,—credit and honor are due; due for intelligence, for courage, for zeal in the service of an endangered but now triumphant and prosperous Republic.
During the twenty years, the representatives serving in the House exceeded fifteen hundred in number. As an illustration of the rapidity of changes in elective officers where suffrage is absolutely free, each succeeding House in the ten Congresses, with a single exception, contained a majority of new members. Only one representative in all this number served continuously from 1861 to 1881,—the Honorable William D. Kelley, eminent in his advocacy of the Protective system, steadily growing throughout the entire period in the respect of his associates and in the confidence of the constituency that has so frequently honored him. In the Senate the ratio of change, owing to the longer term of office, has been less; but, even in that more conservative body, rotation in membership has been rapid. In the twenty years nearly two hundred and fifty senators occupied seats in the chamber. Of the whole number, Henry B. Anthony of Rhode Island, warmly remembered by both political parties, was the only senator whose service was unbroken from the opening to the close of the period. Two others were in Congress for the whole time, but not continuously in either House. Justin S. Morrill served six years in the House and fourteen in the Senate; Henry L. Dawes served fourteen years in the House and six in the Senate. For the entire period both were consistent upholders of Republican ideas and Republican politics.—James A. Garfield who was a member of the House for eighteen of the twenty years was, in November, 1880, by a singular concurrence of circumstances placed in an official position altogether without precedent. He was at the same time Representative in Congress, Senator-elect from the State of Ohio, President-elect of the United States.
The National Government has in these twenty years proved its strength in war, its conservatism in peace. The self-restraint which the citizens of the Republic exhibited in the hour of need, the great burdens which they bore under the inspiration of patriotic duty, the public order which they maintained by their instinctive obedience to the command of law, all attest the good government of a self-governing people. Full liberty to criticise the acts of persons in official station, free agitation of all political questions, frequent elections that give opportunity for prompt settlement of all issues, tend to insure popular content and public safety. No Government of modern times has encountered the dangers that beset the United States, or achieved the triumphs wherewith the Nation is crowned.
The assassination of two Presidents, one inaugurated at the beginning, the other at the close of this period, while a cause of profound National grief, reflects no dishonor upon popular government. The murder of Lincoln was the maddened and aimless blow of an expiring rebellion. The murder of Garfield was the fatuous impulse of a debauched conscience if not a disordered brain. Neither crime had its origin in the political institutions or its growth in the social organization of the country. Both crimes received the execration of all parties and all sections. In the universal horror which they inspired, in the majestic supremacy of law, which they failed to disturb, may be read the strongest proof of the stability of a Government which is founded upon the rights, fortified by the intelligence, inwrought with the virtues of the people. For as it was said of old, wisdom and knowledge shall be stability, and the work of righteousness shall be peace!
ADDENDUM.
Hon. Galusha A. Grow, who filled the important post of Chairman of the Committee on Territories in the Thirty-sixth Congress, criticises the statements made on pages 269-272 of Volume I. The anomaly was there pointed out that the men who had been most active in condemning Mr. Webster for consenting to the organization of the Territories of New Mexico and Utah in 1850 without a prohibition of slavery, consented in 1861 to the organization of the Territories of Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada without a prohibition. Mr. Grow as a zealous anti-slavery man writes in defense of the course adopted in 1861. The wisdom of the course was not criticised. Its consistency only was challenged. After giving a history of the various steps in organizing the three Territories in 1861, and of the great need, by reason of the pressure of thousands of emigrants, of providing a government therefor, and the impracticability of passing a Territorial bill with an anti-slavery proviso, Mr. Grow, in a letter to the author, says,—
"The Republican party, about to be entrusted for the first time with the administration of the Government, must show, in addition to sound principles, that it possessed sufficient practical statesmanship to solve wisely any question relative to the development of the material resources of the country, or it would prove itself incompetent to the trust imposed by the people.
"There was this difference in the condition of the public affairs, then, from what it was when Mr. Webster made his celebrated speech of March 7th. The great battle between Freedom and Slavery for supremacy in the Territories had been fought and won in Kansas, and the people had elected a Chief Magistrate on Freedom's side, so that the influences of National Administration would no longer be wielded for the extension of human bondage. Besides, Kansas, a free State, and New Mexico, a Territory already organized, would lie between these new Territories and slave institutions, so that by no possibility could they in the ordinary course of events become slave States.
"On the 7th of March, 1850, when Mr. Webster from the Senate chamber appealed to the North to 'conquer its prejudices' and rely on the laws of God and Nature to prevent the extension of the institution of human bondage, the two great forces of Liberty and Slavery were in deadly and irrepressible conflict,—with all the powers of the Government on the side of Slavery. That struggle reached its last peaceable stage in the triumph of Freedom in Kansas and the election of Lincoln to the Presidency."