Comic History of the United States Part 26

The Fourteenth Amendment, a bright little _bon mot_, became a law June 28, 1868, and was written in the minutes of Congress, so that people could go there and refresh their memories regarding it. It guaranteed civil rights to all, regardless of race, color, odor, wildness or wooliness whatsoever, and allows all noses to be counted in Congressional representations, no matter what angle they may be at or what the color may be.

Some American citizens murmur at taxation without representation, but the negro murmurs at representation without remuneration.

The Fenian excitement of 1866 died out without much loss of life.

In October, 1867, Alaska was purchased from Russia for seven million two hundred thousand dollars. The ice-crop since then would more than pay for the place, and it has also a water-power and cranberry marsh on it.

The rule of the Imperialists in France prompted the appointment of Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, as Emperor of Mexico, supported by the French army. The Americans, still sore and in debt at the heels of their own war, pitied the helpless Mexicans, and, acting on the principles enunciated in the Monroe Doctrine, demanded the recall of Maximilian, who, deserted finally by his foreign abettors, was defeated and as a prisoner shot by the Mexicans, June 19, 1867.

The Atlantic cable was laid from Valentia Bay in Ireland to Heart's Content, Newfoundland, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four miles, and the line from New York to the latter place built in 1856, a distance of one thousand miles, making in all, as keen mathematicians will see, two thousand eight hundred and sixty-four miles.

A very agreeable commercial treaty with China was arranged in 1868.

Grant and Colfax, Republicans, succeeded Andrew Johnson in the next election, Horatio Seymour, of New York, and Frank P. Blair, of Missouri, being the Democratic nominees. Virginia and Mississippi had not been fully reconstructed, and so were not yet permitted to vote.

They have squared the matter up since, however, by voting with great enthusiasm.

In 1869 the Pacific Railroad was completed, whereby the trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific--three thousand and three hundred miles--might be made in a week. It also attracted the Asiatic trade, and tea, silk, spices, and leprosy found a new market in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Still flushed with its success in humorous legislation, Congress, on the 30th of March, 1870, pa.s.sed the Fifteenth Amendment, giving to the colored men the right to vote. It then became a part of the Const.i.tution, and people who have seen it there speak very highly of it.

Prosperity now attracted no attention whatever. Gold, worth nearly three dollars at the close of the war, fell to a dollar and ten cents, and the debt during the first two years of this administration was reduced two hundred million dollars.

Genuine peace reigned in the entire Republic, and o'er the scarred and sh.e.l.l-torn fields of the South there waved, in place of hostile banners, once more the cotton and the corn. The red foliage of the gum-tree with the white in the snowy white cotton-fields and the blue-gra.s.s of Kentucky (blue-gra.s.s is not, strictly speaking, blue enough to figure in the national colors, but the author has taken out a poetic license which does not expire for over a year yet, and he therefore under its permission is allowed a certain amount of idiocy) showed that the fields had never forgotten their loyalty to the national colors. Peace under greatly changed conditions resumed her vocations, and, in the language of the poet,--

"There were domes of white blossoms where swelled the white tent; There were ploughs in the track where the war-wagons went; There were songs where they lifted up Rachel's lament."

October 8, 1871, occurred the great fire in Chicago, raging for forty-eight hours and devastating three thousand acres of the city.

Twenty-five thousand buildings were burned, and two hundred million dollars' worth of property. One hundred thousand people lost their houses, and over seven and one-half millions of dollars were raised for those who needed it, all parts of the world uniting to improve the joyful opportunity to do good, without a doubt of its hearty appreciation.

Boston also had a seventy-million dollar fire in the heart of the wholesale trade, covering sixty acres; and in the prairie and woods fires of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, many people lost not only their homes but their lives. Fifteen hundred people perished in Wisconsin alone.

In 1871 the damage done by the Alabama, a British-built s.h.i.+p, and several other cruisers sent out partly to facilitate the cotton trade and partly to do a little fighting when a Federal vessel came that way, was a.s.sessed at fifteen million five hundred thousand dollars against Great Britain by the arbitrators who met at Geneva, Switzerland, and the northwestern boundary line between the United States and British America was settled by arbitration, the Emperor of Germany acting as arbitrator and deciding in favor of America.

This showed that people who have just wound up a big war have often learned some valuable sense; not two billion dollars' worth, perhaps, but some.

San Domingo was reported for sale, and a committee looked at it, priced it, etc., but Congress decided not to buy it.

The Liberal Republican party, or that element of the original party which was opposed to the administration, nominated Horace Greeley, of New York, while the old party renominated General Grant for the term to succeed himself. The latter was elected, and Mr. Greeley did not long survive his defeat.

The Modoc Indians broke loose in the early part of Grant's second term, and, leaping from their lava-beds early in the morning, Shacknasty Jim and other unlaundried children of the forest raised merry future punishment, and the government, always kind, always loving and sweet toward the red brother, sent a peace commission with popcorn b.a.l.l.s and a gentle-voiced parson to tell Shacknasty James and Old Stand-up-and-Sit-down that the white father at Was.h.i.+ngton loved them and wanted them all to come and spend the summer at his house, and also that by sin death came into the world, and that we were all primordial germs at first, and that we should look up, not down, look out, not in, look forward, not backward, and lend a hand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PEACE COMMISSION POW-WOWING WITH THE MODOCS.]

It was at this moment that Early-to-Bed-and Early-to-Rise-Black Hawk and Shacknasty James, thinking that this thing had gone far enough, killed General Canby and wounded both Mr. Meacham and Rev. Dr. Thomas, who had never had an unkind thought toward the Modocs in their lives.

The troops then allowed their ill temper to get the best of them, and asked the Modocs if they meant anything personal by their action, and, learning that they did, the soldiers did what with the proper authority they would have done at first, bombarded the children of the forest and mussed up their lava-beds so that they were glad to surrender.

In 1873 a panic occurred after the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., of Philadelphia, and a money stringency followed, the Democrats attributing it a good deal to the party in power, just as cheap Republicans twenty years later charged the Democratic administration with this same thing.

Inconsistency of this kind keeps good men, like the writer, out of politics, and turns their attention toward the contemplation of a better land.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TALKING ABOUT THE CENTENNIAL.]

In 1875 Centennial Anniversaries began to ripen and continued to fall off the different branches of government, according to the history of events so graphically set forth in the preceding pages. They were duly celebrated by a happy and self-made people. The Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876 was a marked success in every way, nearly ten millions of people having visited it, who claimed that it was well worth the price of admission.

Aside from the fact that these ten millions of people had talked about it to millions of folks at home,--or thought they had,--the Exposition was a boon to every one, and thousands of Americans went home with a knowledge of their country that they had never had before, and pointers on blowing out gas which saved many lives in after-years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOVE ON, MAROON BROTHER, MOVE ON!]

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

CLOSING CHRONICLES.

In 1876 the peaceful Sioux took an outing, having refused to go to their reservation in accordance with the treaty made with the Great Father at Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., and regular troops were sent against them.

General Custer, with the 7th Regiment, led the advance, and General Terry aimed for the rear of the children of the forest up the Big Horn.

Here, on the 25th of June, without a.s.sistance, and with characteristic courage, General Custer attacked the enemy, sending Colonel Reno to fall on the rear of the village.

Scarcely enough of Custer's own command with him at the time lived long enough to tell the story of the battle. General Custer, his two brothers, and his nephew were among the dead. Reno held his ground until reinforced, but Custer's troops were exterminated.

It is said that the Sioux rose from the ground like bunch-gra.s.s and swarmed up the little hill like a pest of gra.s.shoppers, mowing down the soldiers with the very newest and best weapons of warfare, and leaving nothing at last but the robbed and mutilated bodies lying naked in the desolate land of the Dakotah.

The Fenimore Cooper Indian is no doubt a brave and highly intellectual person, educated abroad, refined and cultivated by foreign travel, graceful in the grub dance or scalp walk-around, yet tender-hearted as a girl, walking by night fifty-seven miles in a single evening to warn his white friends of danger. The Indian introduced into literature was a bronze Apollo who bathed almost constantly and only killed white people who were unpleasant and coa.r.s.e. He dressed in new and fresh buckskins, with tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of same, and his sable hair hung glossy and beautiful down the coppery billows of muscles on his back.

The real Indian has the dead and unkempt hair of a busted buggy-cus.h.i.+on filled with hen feathers. He lies, he steals, he a.s.sa.s.sinates, he mutilates, he tortures. He needs Persian powder long before he needs the theology which abler men cannot agree upon. We can, in fact, only retain him as we do the buffalo, so long as he complies with the statutes. But the red brother is on his way to join the cave-bear, the three-toed horse, and the ichthyosaurus in the great fossil realm of the historic past. Move on, maroon brother, move on!

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON HIS WAY TO JOIN THE CAVE-BEAR, THE THREE-TOED HORSE, AND THE ICHTHYOSAURUS.]

Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler were nominated in the summer of 1876, and so close was the fight against Samuel J. Tilden and Thomas A. Hendricks that friends of the latter to this day refer to the selection of Hayes and Wheeler by a joint Electoral Commission to whom the contested election was referred, as a fraud and larceny on the part of the Republican party. It is not the part of an historian, who is absolutely dest.i.tute of political principles, to pa.s.s judgment. Facts have crept into this history, it is true, but no one could regret it more than the author; yet there has been no bias or political prejudice shown, other than that reflected from the historical sources whence information was necessarily obtained.

Hayes was chosen, and gave the country an unruffled, unbiased administration, devoid of frills, and absolutely free from the appearance of hostility to any one. He was one of the most conciliatory Presidents ever elected by Republican votes or counted in by a joint Electoral Commission.

He withdrew all troops from the South, and in several Southern States things wore a Democratic air at once.

In 1873 Congress demonetized silver, and quite a number of business-men were demonetized at the same time; so in 1878 silver was made a legal tender for all debts. As a result, in 1879 gold for the first time in seventeen years sold at par.

Troubles arose in 1878 over the right to fish in the northeast waters, and the treaty at Was.h.i.+ngton resulted in an award to Great Britain of five million five hundred thousand dollars, with the understanding that wasteful fis.h.i.+ng should cease, and that as soon as either party got enough for a mess he should go home, no matter how well the fish seemed to be biting.

The right to regulate Chinese immigration was given by treaty at Pekin, and ever since the Chinaman has entered our enclosures in some mysterious way, made enough in a few years to live like a potentate in China, and returned, leaving behind a pleasant memory and a chiffonnier here and there throughout the country filled with scorched s.h.i.+rt-bosoms, acid-eaten collars, and white vests with burglar-proof, ingrowing pockets in them.

The next nominations for President and Vice-President were James A.

Garfield, of Ohio, and Chester A. Arthur, of New York, on the Republican ticket, and Winfield S. Hanc.o.c.k, of Pennsylvania, and William H.

English, of Indiana, on the Democratic ticket. James B. Weaver was connected with this campaign also. Who will tell us what he had to do with it? Can no one tell us what James B. Weaver had to do with the campaign of 1881? Very well; I will tell you what he had to do with the campaign of 1881.

He was the Presidential candidate on the Greenback ticket, but it was kept so quiet that I am not surprised to know that you did not hear about it.