education and equally honored early in life by their fellow-citizens, lost their hold upon public favor after a while, because they endeavored to please everybody, but when Henry Wilson settled himself in living convictions of right they became the established laws of his moral being. This was especially demonstrated when, after having solemnly pledged himself to the Native American Order, he found that slavery had obtained control of its national organization, and at once began to destroy the party which he had sworn to sustain, for no allurements could seduce him from his hostility to slavery. Strong in the warmth and purity of his own feelings, he would not announce himself in any way hostile to eman. cipation.

CHAPTER XIX.

MEETING OF THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS-THE CENTENNIAL YEAR-NATIONAL PROGRESS-FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC AFFAIRS-SECRET INVESTIGATIONS BY THE HOUSE A THIRD TERM MENTIONED-GENERAL GRANT'S VIEWS ON IT-OPINION OF GENERAL BUTLER-NEW YEAR'S RECEPTION AT THE WHITE HOUSE-DISTINGUISHED PERSONS PRESENT.

HE Forty-fourth Congress commenced its labors

TH

on Monday the 6th of December, 1875. Senator Thomas W. Ferry, of Michigan, who had been elected at the special session in March President pro tempore, became, by the death of Vice-President Wilson, the presiding officer of the Senate. The House of Representatives elected as its Speaker Michael W. Kerr, of Indiana, who received one hundred and seventythree votes against one hundred and six for Mr. Blaine.

It was Centennial year, and General Grant began his annual message by a reference "to the advancement. that has been made from the time of the colonies, one hundred years ago. We were then a people numbering only three millions. Now we number more than forty millions. Then industries were confined almost exclusively to the tillage of the soil. Now manufactories absorb much of the labor of the country. Our liberties remain unimpaired; the bondmen have been freed from slavery; we have become possessed of the respect, if not the friendship, of all civilized nations. Our progress has been great in all the arts, in science, agriculture, commerce, navigation, mining, mechanics, law, medicine,

etc., and in general education the progress is likewise encouraging. Our thirteen States have become thirtyeight, including Colorado (which has taken initiatory steps to become a State), and eight Territories, including the Indian Territory and Alaska, and excluding Colorado, making a territory extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On the south we have extended to the Gulf of Mexico, and in the west from the Mississippi to the Pacific."

"One hundred years ago," General Grant went on to say, "the cotton-gin, the steamship, the railroad, the telegraph, the reaping, sewing, and modern printing machines, and numerous other inventions of scarcely less value to our business and happiness were entirely unknown. In 1776 manufactories scarcely existed, even in name, in all this vast territory; in 1870 more than two millions of persons were employed in manufactories, producing more than two billions one hundred millions of dollars of products in amount annually—nearly equal to our national debt. From nearly the whole of the population of 1776 being engaged in the one occupation of agriculture, in 1870 so numerous and diversified had become the occupations of our people that less than six millions out of more than forty millions were so engaged. The extraordinary effect produced in our country by a resort to diversified occupations has built a market for the products of fertile lands distant from the seaboard and the markets of the world."

After complimenting the ingenuity and skill of American mechanics, the value of our miners' work, the enterprise and the sagacity of our merchants, and our progress in all the learned professions, General Grant said: “As we are now about to enter upon our second centennial -commencing our manhood as a nation-it is well

to look back upon the past and study what will be best to preserve and advance our future greatness. From the fall of Adam for his transgression to the present day no nation has ever been free from threatened danger to its prosperity and happiness. We should look to the dangers threatening us and remedy them so far as lies in our power. We are a republic whereof one man is as good as another before the law. Under such a form of government it is of the greatest importance that all should be possessed of education and intelligence enough to cast a vote with a right understanding of its meaning. A large association of ignorant men cannot, for any considerable period, oppose a successful resistance to tyranny and oppression from the educated few, but will inevitably sink into acquiescence to the will of intelligence, whether directed by the demagogue or by priestcraft. Hence the education of the masses becomes of the first necessity for the preservation of our institutions. They are worth preserving, because they have secured the greatest good to the greatest proportion of the population of any form of government yet devised. All other forms of government approach it just in proportion to the general diffusion of education and independence of thought and action. As the primary step, therefore, to our advancement in all that has marked our progress in the past century, I suggest for your earnest consideration, and most earnestly recommend it, that a constitutional amendment be submitted to the legislatures of the several States for ratification, making it the duty of each of the several States to establish and forever maintain free public schools adequate to the education of all the children in the rudimentary branches within their respective limits, irrespective of sex, color, birthplace, or religion; forbidding the teaching in said schools