t a vital though a decreasingly important organ of the
political frame, its real status offering to reward study as never
before because no longer a sectional issue, yet the war, as unmistakably
pronouncing the national will, laid the question of Nation's supremacy
over State forever at rest, having hereupon virtually the effect of a
constitutional amendment. Close construction of the Constitution could
never again throttle this Union. Whether such quasi-amendment altered
the Constitution, Stephens's view, or served but to bring out more
clearly its old meaning, our view, practically the war had entailed
enormous new exaltation and centralization of the Union, with answering
subordination of the State.

[Illustration: Several people standing outside small domes of snow blocks.]
Igloos, or Esquimau Huts.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
A. W. Greely.

A quickened sense of our duty as a nation might likewise be observed at
work in various directions. Our treatment of the Indians had been, since
the administration of President Grant, more humane than ever before.
Earnest and successful efforts were made, very largely at the national
expense, to educate them and prepare them for citizenship. They were
better protected from the rapacity of heartless agents and frontiersmen,
while the land in severalty legislation of 1887 opened the red man's way
to the actual attainment of civil rights and to all the advance in
civilization of which he was capable.

The part which our Government had begun to take in the advancement of
science was greatly to its credit. We have space to instance only the
expedition of 1881-1884, headed by Lieutenant Greely, to the northern
polar regions for scientific observation, reaching a point nearer to the
pole than had ever before been attained. The whole world admired the
daring and sympathized with the sufferings of these gallant explorers,
several of whom perished of cold and hunger before relief reached them,
the others rescued barely in season to save them from like fate.

The revision of King James's version of our English Bible, New Testament
finished in 1881, Old Testament in 1885, was an eminent historical event
falling in this period. American divines took prominent part in it,
though of course not under any commission from our Government.

Being the most trying crisis ever successfully met by a self-governed
people, the war lent powerful stimulus and tonic to the cause of free
institut