its grand career of public prosperity, seemed but just begun. Similar features, modified by various circumstances but testifying to the same great facts, characterized all the States of the Northwest. The innumerable springs of prosperity that had been gushing forth from the whole surface of the West during the last fifty years were now gathering into a mighty river, broadening and deepening with every stage of progress.

The situation was improved by the new national enthusiasm developed by the victories of the war and the new sense of unity and strength in the Republic. The institutions established in the Valley had been subjected to a powerful strain and had manifested no sign of weakness but had rather settled more firmly into place. The test seemed to have been a benefit, rather than an injury, and the future could be faced with an absolute confidence. The element of weakness and dissension that had seemed to be forming two nationalities in the Valley was definitely removed, and, sooner or later, the agencies set in operation after the war must harmonize the population of the upper and lower basins in their feelings and sympathies. Soon, the wealth and prosperity of the upper branches of the great river must follow the course of the waters and enrich all the South with their golden flood. There was a stimulus to hopefulness in this prospect which could not but react with immense power on the struggling energies of all the States; inclining the South to courage, the North to sympathy, forbearance and generosity; and altogether to united counsels and vigorous effort. The future gave assurance of restored prosperity to the exhausted South, of increased gain to the alert and enterprising North. The "manifest destiny" of the great nation, of which the Valley included so important a part, was henceforth quite certain and all its citizens felt themselves girded up for new and more arduous undertakings.

All this had been felt by the North and the Federal Congress during most of the war and was one of the secrets of

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its success if not, indeed, the principal cause of their constancy and vigor in pressing it. The failure to realize this grand future was a possibility which the people and their representatives would not take into account; to secure it they considered no sacrifice too great, and felt almost as sure of the ultimate success of the Federal arms at the beginning as at the close of the conflict. This idea united the mass of both the great parties, regardless of the protest of the minority, and their naturally generous sympathy for the invaded and bleeding South.

The war was fought to a successful conclusion to realize this idea, and, having secured that end, the impulsive force springing from it naturally gathered weight and led the section which had triumphed to cherish, more heartily than ever, its patriotic dreams of future greatness. It was sensibly drawing nearer to the aim of its hopes. Nor could the South long remain insensible to the attractions of that hope. It had dreamed in vain of a separate nation. Now that the dream was dispelled so rudely and completely it must discover that it had much misjudged the antagonist that had triumphantly overcome a heroic resistance; must presently see that such wealth of resources, such manly vigor and capacity, were the allies it needed. It must comprehend that this reality was far better and more promising than the dream of an empire built on cotton and the negro; and, dismissing its dream with a sigh, perhaps, would address itself to this beckoning hope. This substantially occurred. The idea of recovering slavery, under any form, was immediately given up in answer to the earnest wish and fixed resolve of the rest of the nation; in its discouragement and poverty it was inspired by the grander views that began to smile from the future and the situation was improved by the beginning of a new and more perfect union between the sections.

When the armies were disbanded in the spring and summer of 1865, they returned to their homes inspired by these bright

visions, to aid in making them a reality. So filled were the released soldiers of the Federal Government with this patriotic enthusiasm that they displayed very little of the inevitable demoralization of the camp, and quietly resumed their places in the office, the workshop and on the farm, as if only returned from a journey. A powerful impulse within and about them carried them back to their accustomed life, and the demoralization was manifest chiefly in the looser notions that ruled, for a time, in public and business life, and in the impatience and hurry generally felt to realize their personal aims and wishes suddenly, and with too little heed to the means employed.

This promise of the future and absorption in active labor was the escape-valve for the passion and excitement brought from the army, and for the excessive ambition which flush times and great prosperity had encouraged among those who had remained at home. In due time it would be chastened and controlled by the good sense of the general community and the public reprobation it would not fail to receive.

The Southern soldier, who had shown himself the bravest of the brave-for no test of bravery is more decisive than that displayed in support of a constantly failing cause-being overpowered and disarmed, experienced, to some extent, a very natural reaction, and a longing to attach himself to ideas and occupy himself with deeds capable of succeeding. He returned to build up the wastes and repair the ruins of the desolated "sunny South," penetrated with respect for his fellow of the North whom his utmost valor could not overcome or weary, and, perhaps, even more disposed to re-embrace the cause of the promising country capable of inspiring so much tenacious patriotism. After all, it was his country and he was not shut out from sharing its glorious destiny. He would soon come to discover that the real resources of his beloved South were wasted and overlooked by the former system, and that free labor and a more varied and

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intelligent industry alone could develop it and give it proper rank in the Union.

With the return of the army to productive and business life higher ideas obtained full sway and a period of more vigorous execution in all the lines of development opened. The war was a practical education of the people, who perceived more clearly what they wanted, what they were resolved to have, what was possible and how it was to be obtained. From this point commenced a new growth, a new vigor of pushing the old lines of growth, and a new sense of capacity.

A new era opened to the Valley and to the nation, in the year 1865, and the first ten years of this era would leave the situation so improved, old evils so forgotten, and the scars of battle so nearly covered that the renovated nation would hardly be able to put itself back, in imagination, in the position it had occupied fifteen years before. It seemed a dim, distant, and almost impossible past.

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CHAPTER V.

VAST EXTENSION OF THE RAILWAY SYSTEM.

The first thing to be done to prepare the way for a new era of vast development in the great Valley was to complete the Railway System so as to render access to its treasures and remotest localities from the Eastern and Western seaboards easy, speedy and cheap. The Railway was the true providence of the Valley. Its products were found to be so vast and so easily obtained that water transportation by its systems of rivers, lakes and canals was wholly inadequate long before the latter were completed. Corn, transported more than 125 miles by ordinary roads, loses its value, or profit, even when it may be sold at 75 cents per bushel; and wheat, at $1.50 per bushel, can be profitably transported only 250 miles. Residence at any considerable distance from places of shipment by water took all profit from the heavy products of the prairies. When the water courses were most wanted they were frozen up; delay by accident, and frequent losses, required a high rate of insurance, and with only facilities of transportation by water the progress of this rich agricultural region must be painfully slow.

The transportation of freight by railroads commenced on a grand scale in 1851 and soon came, by its cheapness, to increase the value of the products of the Valley one hundred and sixty times over that which they bore when required to be transported to market on ordinary roads by land. Thus between 1850 and 1860 the gold mines of California opened a far richer mine in the West and furnished the North with the "sinews of war" for the four years' struggle.

Railways enriched the South much less than the North, chiefly owing to its different industrial organization.

Its