President Harrison"s quadrennium was a milestone between two generations. Memorials on every hand to the heroes of the Civil War shocked one with the sense that they and the events they molded were already of the past. Logan, Arthur, Sheridan, and Hanc.o.c.k had died. In 1891 General Sherman and Admiral Porter fell within a day of each other.
General Joseph E. Johnston, who had been a pall-bearer at the funeral of each, rejoined them in a month.
This presidential term was pivotal in another way. The centennial anniversary of Washington"s inauguration as President fell on April 30, 1889. In observance of the occasion President Harrison followed the itinerary of one hundred years before, from the Governor"s mansion in New Jersey to the foot of Wall Street, in New York City, to old St.
Paul"s Church, on Broadway, and to the site where the first Chief Magistrate first took the oath of office. Three days devoted to the commemorative exercises were a round of naval, military, and industrial parades, with music, oratory, pageantry, and festivities. For this Centennial Whittier composed an ode. The venerable Rev. S. F. Smith, who had written "America" fifty-seven years before, was also inspired by the occasion to pen a Century Hymn, and to add to "America" the stanza:
"Our joyful hearts to-day, Their grateful tribute pay, Happy and free, After our toils and fears, After our blood and tears, Strong with our hundred years, O G.o.d, to Thee."
[Ill.u.s.tration: Parade.]
Washington Inaugural Celebration, 1889, New York.
Parade pa.s.sing Union Square on Broadway.
[1890]
At the opening of this its second century of existence the nation was confronted by entirely new issues. Bitterness between North and South, spite of its brief recrudescence during the pendency of the Force Bill, was fast dying out. At the unveiling of the n.o.ble monument to Robert E.
Lee at Richmond, in May, 1890, while, of course, Confederate leaders were warmly cheered and the Confederate flag was displayed, various circ.u.mstances made it clear that this zeal was not in derogation of the restored Union.
The last outbreaks of sectional animosity related to Jefferson Davis, in whom, both to the North and to the South, the ghost of the Lost Cause had become curiously personified. The question whether or not he was a traitor was for years zealously debated in Congress and outside. The general amnesty after the war had excepted Davis. When a bill was before Congress giving suitable pensions to Mexican War soldiers and sailors, an amendment was carried, amid much bitterness, excluding the ex-president of the Confederacy from the benefits thereof. Northerners naturally glorified their triumph in the war as a victory for the Const.i.tution, nor could they wholly withstand the inclination to question the motives of the secession leaders. Southerners, however loyal now to the Union, were equally bold in a.s.serting that, since in 1861 the question of the nature of the Union had not been settled, Mr.
Davis and the rest might attempt secession, not as foes of the Const.i.tution, but as, in their own thought, its most loyal friends and defenders.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Statue about three times life size on a 30 foot pedestal.]
Unveiling of the Equestrian Statue of Robert E. Lee, May 29. 1890.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
Henry W. Grady.
By 1890 the days were pa.s.sed when denunciation of Davis or of the South electrified the North, nor did the South on its part longer waste time in impotent resentments or regrets. The brilliant and fervid utterances on "The New South" by editor Henry W. Grady, of the Atlanta Const.i.tution, went home to the hearts of Northerners, doing much to allay sectional feeling. Grady died, untimely, in 1889, lamented nowhere more sincerely than at the North.
When Federal intervention occurred to put down the notorious Louisiana Lottery, the South in its grat.i.tude almost forgot that there had been a war. This lottery had been incorporated in 1868 for twenty-five years.
In 1890 it was estimated to receive a full third of the mail matter coming to New Orleans, with a business of $30,000 a day in postal notes and money orders. As the monster in 1890, approaching its charter-term, bestirred itself for a new lease of life, it found itself barred from the mails by Congress.
And this was, in effect, its banishment from the State and country. It could still ply its business through the express companies, provided Louisiana would abrogate the const.i.tutional prohibition of lotteries it had enacted to take effect in 1893. For a twenty-five year re-enfranchis.e.m.e.nt the impoverished State was offered the princely sum of a million and a quarter dollars a year. This tempting bait was supplemented by influences brought to bear upon the venal section of the press and of the legislature. A proposal for the necessary const.i.tutional change was vetoed by Governor Nicholls. Having pushed their bill once more through the House, the lottery lobby contended that a proposal for a const.i.tutional amendment did not require the governor"s signature, but only to be submitted to the people, a position which was affirmed by the State Supreme Court. A fierce battle followed in the State, the "anti" Democrats of the country parishes, in fusion with Farmers" Alliance men, fighting the "pro" Democrats of New Orleans. The "Antis" and the Alliance triumphed. Effort for a const.i.tutional amendment was given up, and Governor Foster was permitted to sign an act prohibiting, after December 31, 1893, all sale of lottery tickets and all lottery drawings or schemes throughout the State of Louisiana. In January, 1894, the Lottery Company betook itself to exile on the island of Cuanaja, in the Bay of Honduras, a seat which the Honduras Government had granted it, together with a monopoly of the lottery business for fifty years.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
Francis T. Nicholls.
Matters in the West drew attention. The pressure of white population, rude and resistless as a glacier, everywhere forcing the barriers of Indian reservations, now concentrated upon the part of Indian territory known as Oklahoma. This large tract the Seminole Indians had sold to the Government, to be exclusively colonized by Indians and freedmen. In 1888-89, as it had become clearly impossible to shut out white settlers, Congress appropriated $4,000,000 to extinguish the trust upon which the land was held. By December the newly opened territory boasted 60,000 denizens, eleven schools, nine churches, and three daily and five weekly newspapers. In a few years it was vying for statehood with Arizona and New Mexico.
[Ill.u.s.tration: About twenty-five tents.]
A general view of the town on April 24, 1889, the second day after the opening.
[Ill.u.s.tration: About 25 one-story buildings.]
A view along Oklahoma Avenue on May 10, 1889.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Several two story buildings on a crowded street.]
Oklahoma Avenue as it appeared on May 10, 1893, during Governor n.o.ble"s visit.
THE BUILDING OF A WESTERN TOWN, GUTHRIE, OKLAHOMA.
In addition to the prospect of thus losing all their lands, the Indians were, in the winter of 1890, famine-stricken through failure of Government rations. With little hope of justice or revenge in their own strength, the aggrieved savages sought supernatural solace. The so-called "Messiah Craze" seized upon Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Osages, Missouris, and Seminoles. Ordinarily at feud with one another, these tribes all now united in ghost dances, looking for the Great Spirit or his Representative to appear with a high hand and an outstretched arm to bury the white and their works deep underground, when the prairie should once more thunder with the gallop of buffalo and wild horses. Southern negroes caught the infection. Even the scattered Aztecs of Mexico gathered around the ruins of their ancient temple at Cholula and waited a Messiah who should pour floods of lava from Popocatapetl, inundating all mortals not of Aztec race.
[1892]
While frontiersmen trembled lest ma.s.sacres should follow these Indian orgies, people in the East were shuddering over the particulars of a real catastrophe indescribably awful in nature. On a level some two hundred and seventy-five feet lower than a certain ma.s.sive reservoir, lay the city of Johnstown, Pa. The last of May, 1889, heavy rains having fallen, the reservoir dam burst, letting a veritable mountain of water rush down upon the town, destroying houses, factories, bridges, and thousands of lives. Relief work, begun at once and liberally supplied with money from nearly every city in the Union and from many foreign contributors, repaired as far as might be the immediate consequences of the disaster.
Along with the Johnstown Flood will be remembered in the annals of Pennsylvania the Homestead strike, in 1892, against the Carnegie Steel Company, occasioned by a cut in wages. The Amalgamated Steel and Iron Workers sought to intercede against the reduction, but were refused recognition. Preparing to supplant the disaffected workmen with non-union men, a force of Pinkerton detectives was brought up the river in armored barges. Fierce fighting ensued. Bullets and cannon-b.a.l.l.s rained upon the barges, and receptacles full of burning oil were floated down stream. The a.s.sailants wished to withdraw, repeatedly raising the white flag, but it was each time shot down. Eleven strikers were killed; of the attacking party from thirty to forty fell, seven dead. When at last the Pinkertons were forced to give up their arms and ammunition and retire, a bodyguard of strikers sought to shield them, but so violent was the rage which they had provoked that, spite of their escort, the mob brutally attacked them. Order was restored only when the militia appeared.
[Ill.u.s.tration: City street piled with debris several feet thick.]
Main Street, Johnstown, after the flood.
[Ill.u.s.tration: River front, factories in the background, fires in the foreground.]
Burning of Barges during Homestead Strike.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Man standing behind a large curved steel plate.]
The Carnegie Steel Works. Showing the shield used by the strikers when firing the cannon and watching the Pinkerton men. Homestead strike.
This bloodshed was not wholly in vain. Congress made the private militia system, the evil consequences of which were so manifest in these tragedies, a subject of investigation, while public sentiment more strongly than ever reprobated, on the one hand, violence by strikers or strike sympathizers, and, on the other, the employment of armed men, not officers of the law, to defend property.
That, however, other causes than these might endanger the peace was shown about the same time at certain Tennessee mines where prevailed the bad system of farming out convicts to compete with citizen-miners.
Business being slack, deserving workmen were put on short time.
Resenting this, miners at Tracy City, Inman, and Oliver Springs summarily removed convicts from the mines, several of these escaping. At Coal Creek the rioters were resisted by Colonel Anderson and a small force. They raised a flag of truce, answering which in person, Colonel Anderson was commanded, on threat of death, to order a surrender. He refused. A larger force soon arrived, routed the rioters, and rescued the colonel.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Several hundred men.]
Inciting miners to attack Fort Anderson.
The grove between Briceville and Coal Creek.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Train.]
State troops and miners at Briceville, Tenn.
[1891]
The year 1891 formed a crisis in the history of Mormonism in America.