al Grange. Thus by the end of 1871 the ways and means of
spreading the Grange had been devised. All that was now needed was some
impelling motive which should urge the farmers to enter and support the
organization.

CHAPTER II. THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST

The decade of the seventies witnessed the subsidence, if not the
solution, of a problem which had vexed American history for half a
century--the reconciliation of two incompatible social and economic
systems, the North and the South. It witnessed at the same time the
rise of another great problem, even yet unsolved--the preservation of
equality of opportunity, of democracy, economic as well as political,
in the face of the rising power and influence of great accumulations and
combinations of wealth. Almost before the battle smoke of the Civil
War had rolled away, dissatisfaction with prevailing conditions both
political and economic began to show itself.

The close of the war naturally found the Republican or Union party in
control throughout the North. Branded with the opprobrium of having
opposed the conduct of the war, the Democratic party remained impotent
for a number of years; and Ulysses S. Grant, the nation's greatest
military hero, was easily elected to the presidency on the Republican
ticket in 1868. In the latter part of Grant's first term, however,
hostility began to manifest itself among the Republicans themselves
toward the politicians in control at Washington. Several causes tended
to alienate from the President and his advisers the sympathies of many
of the less partisan and less prejudiced Republicans throughout the
North. Charges of corruption and maladministration were rife and had
much foundation in truth. Even if Grant himself was not consciously
dishonest in his application of the spoils system and in his willingness
to receive reward in return for political favors, he certainly can be
justly charged with the disposition to trust too blindly in his friends
and to choose men for public office rather because of his personal
preferences than because of their qualifications for positions of trust.

Grant's enemies declared, moreover, with considerable truth that the
man was a military autocrat, unfit for the highest civil position in a
democracy. His high-handed policy in respect to Reconstruction in the
South evoked opposition from those

Northern Republicans whose critical sense was not entirely blinded by
sectional prejudice and passion.