k of the lost cause with a sigh. At the same time
a rational conviction settled down upon all its most thoughtful minds
that in secession the South had been misguided. Universal was the
admission that at least for the dominant race the death of slavery was a
blessing. Northern people and intelligent immigrants from Europe
thronged in. Coolly received at first, and in some cases maltreated if
freely expressing opinions which traversed those prevalent in the
section, in the end they were tolerated and even welcomed.

The multiplication of railways facilitated the acquaintance of southern
with northern people far beyond what had been possible before the war.
Travelling salesmen from the North penetrated the remotest hamlets at
the South, inclined from every consideration to produce the most
favorable impression possible. The selection of southerners for
important national offices by Presidents Grant, Hayes, Arthur, and
Cleveland, the election of the last-named, a Democrat, as President in
1884 and 1892, and the existence of a democratic majority in the House
of Representatives almost constantly from 1874, all felicitously
combined to beget in the people of the South a conviction that they were
really and truly citizens of the Union again. The rise in several
southern States of a strong republican organization among the whites
wrought in the same direction. Nor must we overlook as another cementing
influence the fraternizing of northern and southern soldiers in great
reunions such as occurred at Gettysburg, Richmond, and Chickamauga.

[1890]

The South's material prosperity kept pace with her political advance. It
had always been said that cotton was to be produced only by slave labor.
Nothing could have been more false. The largest cotton crop under
slavery, that of 1860, reached 4,669,770 bales. In 1871, 1876, and 1877
each, notwithstanding the economic chaos and the infinite destruction of
capital occasioned by the war, those figures were almost equalled; in
1878 they were surpassed; in 1879 and 1880 each, over 5,000,000 bales
were raised; in 1881, 1883, and 1886 each, over 6,000,000, the exact
figure for the year last named being 6,550,215. In 1890, 7,472,511 bales
were produced.

This cotton exhibit was sufficiently gratifying, yet the post-bellum
crops might have been far larger had not much energy at the South been
happily diverted into manufacturing channels. This was one of the most
hopeful features of the New