triumphs of the war as their own. They emerged from the struggle
with the enormous prestige of a party triumphant and with
"Saviors of the Union" inscribed on their banners.

The death of their wise and great leader opened the door to a
violent partizan orgy. President Andrew Johnson could not check
the fury of the radical reconstructionists; and a new political
era began in a riot of dogmatic and insolent dictatorship, which
was intensified by the mob of carpetbaggers, scalawags, and
freedmen in the South, and not abated by the lawless promptings
of the Ku-Klux to regain patrician leadership in the home of
secession nor by the baneful resentment of the North. The soldier
was made a political asset. For a generation the "bloody shirt"
was waved before the eyes of the Northern voter; and the evils,
both grotesque and gruesome, of an unnatural reconstruction are
not yet forgotten in the South.

A second opportunity of the politician was found in the rapid
economic expansion that followed the war. The feeling of security
in the North caused by the success of the Union arms buoyed an
unbounded optimism which made it easy to enlist capital in new
enterprises, and the protective tariff and liberal banking law
stimulated industry. Exports of raw material and food products
stimulated mining, grazing, and farming. European capital sought
investments in American railroads, mines, and industrial under-
takings. In the decade following the war the output of pig iron
doubled, that of coal multiplied by five, and that of steel by
one hundred. Superior iron and copper, Pennsylvania coal and oil,
Nevada and California gold and silver, all yielded their enormous
values to this new call of enterprise. Inventions and