trieving their fortunes. The vacant place was at once taken in the Democratic camp by mercenaries, the number of whom naturally increased after the Democrats got the upper hand again; a good many scalawags who controlled the negroes in the Republican organizations went over to the enemy to "save civilization" threatened by the negroes, that is to say, to make more sure of the spoils. The general pacification and the marvellous economic transformation undergone by the South after the war only improved the chances of the professional politicians, by concentrating the vital forces of the country in industry and commerce, and by making its politico-social situation like that of the North. In order not to be disturbed in the enjoyment of the spoils which the Democratic politicians derived from State and municipal offices, and which the Republican politicians found in the federal offices (the federal executive had remained in the hands of the Republicans for twenty years without a break after the war), the politicians made the populations, in spite of the profound changes that had ensued, keep their respective positions, taken up during the troublous times which followed the war. They went on, the one side sounding the alarm against "negro domination," and the other "waving the bloody shirt" of the war waged against the "rebels," to get the faithful followers of the parties to vote at their behest with a sancta simplicitas. Having thus helped to create and maintain the "Solid South," the party Organization identified with it the whole Union: it forced people to take up the feud at every point of the territory where there were Republicans" and "Democrats." The Organization derived additional strength from this situation, as well as from several other effects of the war, which went far beyond the new state of things created in the South.

66

III

The war introduced profound changes into the whole national existence; it imparted a new character to its political, economical, and moral relations, by stamping them all with a common trait, which might be described by the term "inflation," applied specially to one of the effects of the war, the inordinate

extension of paper money. In fact, everything became "inflated," the political authority of the Union over the States, trade, manufactures, currency, patriotism, style of living, enthusiasm for the public weal, and exploitation of the public weal. While revealing itself in these manifold aspects, inflation, by a rebound, gave an extraordinary impulse to party organization.

The political life of the Union was marked by an excessive development of centralization. In the first place, the issue of the war, which in itself was a struggle between State rights, -between the right of the States to have such institutions as they liked,—and the sovereignty of the Union, was the triumph of the principle of centralization. The "imperial spirit" which the federal government continued to display after the war was over, and in particular the measures of "reconstruction" of the South under the military régime set up by the victors in the subdued States, converted the principle into a fact. The amendments of the Constitution, which enlarged the jurisdiction of Congress over the States, and the laws passed in pursuance of these amendments (as well as the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States), added the sanction of law to the reality of the fact. The development of the public services of the Union, caused by the new financial requirements and by the extension of the federal jurisdiction, gave the Washington government a number of new officials; distributed over the States, they linked them to the centre. Economic life exhibited a still greater concentration and fusion. The extension given to railroads and telegraphs made distances of no account, and did away with the comparative isolation in which the populations of the States had hitherto lived. The great industrial undertakings created by a colossal combination of small capital, and reaching from one end of the Union to the other, united the inhabitants of the different States in common interests. Thus, in public life and in the economic sphere, the citizen began to feel himself more and more a small part of a great whole; his personality was gradually dwindling. The military discipline enforced during the four years of a war which had been waged, not with a foreign enemy, but with an adverse political party, inflicted a no less serious blow on the individualism of the citizen. It

accustomed one set to passive obedience, the other to command, and, as it were, lent sanction in civil life to the ideas of Aaron Burr, the great protagonist of electoral organization, who held that voters should be drilled like soldiers in an army.

Side by side with the authoritative spirit and the centralization which penetrated into political life, and the concentration which pervaded the economic sphere, there took place in the latter an unprecedented expansion of forces and activities, which, in its turn, contributed to the moral decline of the citizen. Manufactures and commerce advanced by leaps and bounds on the establishment, for the requirements of the war, of high customs duties, which stimulated home production, and owing to abundant issues of paper currency, which caused an apparent plethora of money. Restored, after the close of hostilities, to peaceful avocations, the population plunged, with an ardour all the greater that it had long been restrained and impeded by the anxieties of the war, into the pursuit of wealth, of money-making. Taking advantage of the fluctuations in the value of paper money, speculation invaded everything; soon there was no limit to it. Money was made with surprising facility, and was spent still more easily. Tastes and appetites were freely indulged in. Everybody contracted expensive habits of living; people thought they could afford anything; the idea of the value of money was lost to a certain extent. And along with the common measure of material things, the notion of moral worth grew dim as well. or the craving for success, seemed to justify everything. Besides, people had no time to waste in scrutinizing acts and men from an ethical point of view; they were too much engrossed in the frantic race for wealth.

Success,

To this coarse materialism was added the unbounded enthusiasm aroused by the war. Enormous sacrifices had been made to save the Union, millions of slaves had been given their liberty, blood had been "shed like water" without hesitation; people were conscious of this, they prided themselves on it; they got drunk with patriotism all the more readily and sincerely because it better concealed the decline of the national character. And to turn this patriotism to account, the feelings which it inspired were invested, so to speak, in the party of the Union, -the Republican party,—like a

capital to be kept intact and left to fructify; all the moral enthusiasm accumulated in the struggle was deposited with the party, and party feeling increased in volume. Powerful enough before the war, it was already almost a superstition; now it became a passion. Engendered by conventionality and selfish rivalries, it cast off its impurities in the crucible of civil war and appeared in a sort of ideal glow. It burned with a flame which was unceasingly rekindled on both sides by the blast of the Solid South. The Republican party became holy in the eyes of its adherents, like a living image of the country; all who were not traitors to the Union and to humanity were bound to be with it. The Democratic party became all the more endeared to its followers. This inflation of party feeling, far from making up for the civic shrinkage produced by the manifold currents of centralization and by industrial expansion, which had created a pernicious moral atmosphere and absorbed individual energies, only delivered the citizen more effectually, bound hand and foot, into the power of the party embodied in its Organization. The latter could exploit the civic indolence, as well as trade on party fanaticism, in a way it had never been able to do before.

While the moral sources of its influence got extended, the Organization secured improvements in its machinery in the direction of centralization, which increased its material hold on the mass of voters. About the year 1866 a central committee was created at Washington, to control throughout the Union the elections to the House of Representatives, which had hitherto been left to the local organizations. It was composed of members of Congress appointed by their colleagues of the same party (in the proportion of one member to each State), and in this way it revived to a certain extent the old congressional Caucus, which, however, only looked after the presidential elections. The new central organ, called the Congressional Campaign Committee, in watching the electoral situation in the congressional districts, penetrated more deeply and more continuously into local political life than could be done by the permanent committee of the national convention, which made its appearance on the eve of, and solely in view of, the presidential election. Again, in the States the local permanent Organization, represented by standing committees.

appointed by the conventions, evolved small executive committees, which absorbed all the election work to such an extent that the rôle of the large committees became a purely nominal one. Finally, in the very large cities, like New York and Philadelphia, the ties which bound the followers of the party were drawn closer by means of permanent associations. Before this the Organization of the party called the voters together for the special occasion only, for the election of delegates to the convention, but when this duty was accomplished, the members of the primaries melted away into the mass of citizens, like their delegates to the conventions, which in fact were only temporary gatherings of the adherents of the party. The growth of the population in the large centres, stimulated by the industrial expansion, and the eminently fluctuating character of this population, made it more and more difficult to keep up party ties there. By regularly enrolling their adherents in associations, in great political clubs, the Organization got the elements of the primaries and the conventions ready to hand, as well as the voters who were to vote on election day for the candidates adopted at those conventions. Elsewhere the first grade of the Organization was also put on a more solid footing, owing to the very centralization which, favoured by the exceptional extension of railroads and the telegraph, knit all the parts of the Organization more strongly together. While becoming more than ever the groundwork of the system, the primary meetings remained, none the less, more than ever devoid of spontaneous and genuine life. The absolute power of the small cliques of managers, who settled everything behind the scenes, was such a common thing with them, that the old appellation of Caucus, in the sense of secret meeting, of cabal, was revived and applied in everyday language to the primaries, either term being used indifferently, and finally extended to the whole system of the representative party organization, of which the primaries were the basis, under the name of "caucus system." The professional politicians, who filled the Organization at all its stages, executed their movements, under the direction of the managers and the wirepullers, with such uniformity and with such indifference or insensibility to right and wrong, and operated with such unerring certainty on the electorate, that they evoked the idea