Specie Resumption.
13. On the 1st of January, 1879, the Resumption of Specie Payments was accomplished by the treasury of the United States. After seventeen years' disappearance, gold and silver coin, which during that time had been at a premium over the legal-tender notes of the government, again came into common circulation.
14. The presidential election of 1880 was accompanied with the excitement usually attendant upon great political struggles in the United States. The Republican national convention was held in Chicago on the 2d and 3d of June; a platform of principles was adopted, and General James A. Garfield, of Ohio, was nominated for President. For Vice-president, Chester A. Arthur, of New York, received the nomination. The Democratic national convention assembled at Cincinnati on the 22d of June, and nominated for the presidency General Winfield S. Hancock, of New York, and for the Vice-presidency William H. English, of Indiana. The National Greenback party held a convention in Chicago on the 9th of June, and nominated General James B. Weaver, of Iowa, for President, and General Benjamin J. Chambers, of Texas, for Vice-president. The election resulted in the choice of Garfield and Arthur. Two hundred and fourteen electoral votes, embracing those of nearly all the Northern States, were cast for the Republican candidates.
General Grant's Tour.
15. Soon after retiring from the presidency, General Grant, with his family and a company of personal friends, set out to make a TOUR OF THE WORLD. The expedition attracted the most conspicuous attention both at home and abroad. The departure from Philadelphia on the 17th of May, 1877, was the beginning of such a pageant as was never before extended to any citizen of any nation of the earth. General Grant visited Europe, India, Burmah and Siam; China and Japan. In the fall of 1879 the party returned to San Francisco, bearing with them the highest tokens of esteem which the great nations of the Old World could bestow upon the honored representative of the New.
Oliver P. Morton.
16. The Census of 1880 was undertaken with more system and care than ever before in the history of the country. The work was intrusted to the superintendency of Professor Francis A. Walker. In every source of national power, the development of the country was shown to have continued without abatement. The total population of the States and Territories now amounted to 50,182,525—an increase since 1870 of more than a million inhabitants a year! The center of population had moved westward about fifty miles, to the vicinity of Cincinnati.
Oliver P. Morton.