FOR FURTHER READING. The best one-volume account of Reconstruction is Dunning's Reconstruction (“American Nation"); but that volume is rather long, and in many places, rather difficult, for the average high school senior. A briefer recent account may be found in the first eighty pages of Haworth's Reconstruction and Union (" Home University Library ") or in the last sixty of Dodd's Expansion and Conflict. Rhodes' great history (vols. V-VII) remains the standard authority. Desirable biographies for high school use are Woodburn's Thaddeus Stevens, or McCall's Thaddeus Stevens, and Hart's Chase, 319–435 (especially good for the matter of the Judiciary)

The best fiction, for the Southern side, is Page's Red Rock, which every Northern student should read. Mention should be made also of Tourgee's Fool's Errand, Cable's John March, and Octave Thanet's Expiation.

CHAPTER LX

THE CLOSE OF AN ERA

713. In 1872 the Republicans began to divide on the question of military rule in the South. The conviction was growing that the North needed its energies at home. A "Liberal Republican" Convention nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency, on a platform calling for civil-service reform and for leaving the South to solve its own problems. The Democrats accepted program and candidate; but they felt no enthusiasm for Greeley, a life-long, violent opponent, and the "regular" Republicans reëlected Grant triumphantly.

714. His second term, however, proved a period of humiliation for the simple-minded soldier. His confidence was abused basely by political "friends," and he showed himself a babe in their unscrupulous hands. The public service had become honeycombed with corruption. In 1875 Benjamin H. Bristow, Secretary of the Treasury, unearthed extensive frauds whereby high officials had permitted a "Whisky Ring" to cheat the government of millions of the internal revenue. Babcock, the President's private secretary, was deeply implicated, and Grant showed an ill-advised eagerness to save him from prosecution, while he allowed the friends of the convicted criminals to drive Bristow from office. Grant, himself, on a visit to St. Louis, had been lavishly entertained by a leading member of the "ring," and had even accepted from him a gift of a fine span of horses.

In 1876 Belknap, Secretary of War, was found to have accepted bribes, year after year, for appointments to office in the department of Indian affairs. Of course the officials who paid the bribes had enriched themselves by robbing the Indians. The Democratic House (see elections of 1874, below)

began to impeach Belknap, but the President permitted him to escape punishment by hastily accepting his resignation. Low, however, as the honor of the government had fallen, no one imputed personal dishonesty to the President.

715. The main proof of corruption in Congress was connected with the Union Pacific Railroad. For ten years before the Civil War, ever since the discovery of gold in California, the country had discussed the building of a transcontinental railway. In 1862 Congress gave right of way through the Terri tories from Omaha to California, to a corporation known as the Union Pacific, - with a grant also of twenty square miles of land along each mile of road, and a "loan" of $50,000,000. In 1869 the two lines, building from the east and from the west, met in Utah.

The nation had been so dazzled by the romance of carrying an iron road from ocean to ocean through two thousand miles of "desert" that it had been exceedingly careless of its own interests. The fifty million dollar loan was inadequately secured, and never repaid. That sum, with the land grants, more than built the road - which, however, was left altogether in private hands.

The only new feature about this was the huge size of the grant. As early as 1850, Congress gave Illinois 3,000,000 acres from the Public Domain within that State for the Illinois Central Railroad. The State legislature then transferred the grant, as was intended, to the company building the road. Immense grants of like character were made to other Western States. In 1856 twenty million acres were given away. Mild attempts by the legislatures and by Congress to couple the gifts with conditions to secure the public interest achieved little success. After the war, still more immense gifts were made, by Congress directly, from the Domain in the Territories. In the shaded part of the map opposite, every alternate section was granted for the construction of some road. (Texas had no National land within it; and none was granted in Oklahoma, then Indian Territory.) The huge State grants are not shown on this map.

716. Worse than this waste of the people's property was a steal within the Company. A group of leading stockholders of

§ 717]

CREDIT MOBILIER SCANDAL

595

the Union Pacific formed themselves into an "inside" company known as the Credit Mobilier. Then, as stockholders of the Union Pacific, they looted that company by voting their Credit Mobilier extravagant sums for constructing the road. This was

the first notorious use of a device that the coming decades were to make disgracefully familiar.

717. And worse than this steal by private individuals was the accompanying corruption in Congress. The Credit Mobilier feared that its robbery might be stopped by Congressional action. To prevent that, it gave shares of its highly profitable stock, or sold them far below market rates, to Congressmen. Oakes Ames, the agent of the Company, wrote his associates that he had placed the shares "where they will do us the most good." The matter leaked out; and Congress had to "investigate." It censured two members, against whom it found absolute proof of corruption, and excused from punishment various others, smirched in the transaction, on the peculiar ground that they had not understood that Ames meant to corrupt them.

Still others, including the Vice President, were left under grave suspicion.

Even after this, Congress proved reckless enough to pass the "salary grab." That scandalous Act raised the pay of all members and applied to the past two years. This was more than the country could stomach. Many members who voted for the "back pay" never had a chance to draw any future pay.

718. The people of the North were growing weary of military rule in the South, and they were sickened by the corruption in high places in the National government. The elections of '74 gave the Democrats a large majority in the lower House of Congress, and placed them in control in several Northern State governments.

Then the presidential election of 1876 closed the long era of political reconstruction. The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden of New York, a prominent reformer, and adopted a "reform" platform. The Republicans named as their candidate Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, and appealed chiefly to war-time prejudices by a vigorous "waving of the bloody shirt."

On the morning after election, papers of both parties announced a Democratic victory. That party had safely carried every "doubtful" Northern State (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Indiana), and, on the face of the returns, they had majorities in every Southern State. They claimed 204 electoral votes to 165.

But in Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina, carpetbagger governments, hedged by Federal bayonets, would have the canvassing of the returns, and they were promptly urged by des

1 James G. Blaine, for many years preceding 1874 the Speaker of the House, had been a leading candidate. Shortly before the convention met, however, he was accused of complicity in the Credit Mobilier scandal. The evidence was supposed to be contained in letters from Blaine to a certain Mulligan. On pretense of examining these letters, Blaine got hold of them and never permitted them to pass again from his hands. He read parts from them in a dramatic "justification" of himself before the House; but the "Mulligan Letters made this "" magnetic" statesman thereafter an impossible candi

date for National favor.