of the South, and the Civil War were, after all, only an
episode in the course of American national development. The episode was
desperately serious. Like the acute illness of a strong man, it almost
killed its victim; and the crisis exposed certain weaknesses in our
political organism, in the absence of which the illness would never have
become acute. But the roots of our national vitality were apparently
untouched by the disease. When the crisis was over, the country resumed
with astonishing celerity the interrupted process of economic expansion.
The germs of a severe disease, to which the Fathers of the Republic had
given a place in the national Constitution, and which had been allowed
to flourish, because of the lack of wholesome cohesion in the body
politic--this alien growth had been cut out by a drastic surgical
operation, and the robust patient soon recovered something like his
normal health. Indeed, being in his own opinion even more robust than he
was before the crisis, he was more eager than ever to convert his good
health into the gold of satisfied desire. The ghost of slavery had been
banished from our national banquet: and, relieved of this terror, the
American people began to show, more aggressively than ever before, their
ability to provide and to consume a bountiful feast. They were no longer
children, grasping at the first fruits of a half-cultivated wilderness.
They were adults, beginning to plan the satisfaction of on appetite
which had been sharpened by self-denial, and made self-conscious by
maturity.

The North, after the war was over, did not have much time for serious
reflection upon its meaning and consequences. The Republican leaders did
just enough thinking to carry them through the crisis; but once the
rebellion was suppressed and the South partly de-nationalized in the
name of reconstruction, the need and desire was for action rather than
for thought. The anti-slavery agitation and the war had interrupted the
process, which from the public point of view, was described as the
economic development of the country, and which from an individual
standpoint meant the making of money. For many years Americans had been
unable, because of the ghost of slavery, to take full advantage of their
liberties and opportunities; and now that the specter was exorcised,
they gladly put aside any anxious political preoccupations. Politics
could be left to the politicians. It was about time to get down to
busines