y as it had begun.

The Exposition at Philadelphia this year was a revelation to the United
States. Though far surpassed by later "world's fairs," it displayed the
wide resources of the United States and brought home the difference
between American and European civilization. The foreign exhibits first
had a chastening influence upon American exuberance, and then stimulated
the development of higher artistic standards. In ingenuity the American
mind held its own against all competition. But few Americans had
traveled, the cheap processes of illustration were yet unknown, and in
the resulting ignorance the United States had been left to its
assumption of a superiority unjustified by the facts. From the
centennial year may be dated the closer approach of American standards
to those of the better classes of Europe.

In the summer of 1876 the thirty-eighth State, Colorado, was added to
the Union. It had been seventeen years since the miners thronged the
Kansas and Nebraska plains, bound for "Pike's Peak or Bust!" In the
interval the mining camps had become permanent communities. Authorized
in 1864 to form a State, they had declined to accept the responsibility
and had lingered for many years with only a handful of inhabitants. Now
and then entirely isolated from the United States by Indian wars, they
had prayed for the continental railroad, only to be disappointed when
the Union Pacific went through Cheyenne instead of Denver. One of the
branches of the Union Pacific was extended to Denver in 1870, and
thereafter Colorado grew in spite of the panic of 1873. Grant began to
urge its admission in his first Administration, and signed a
proclamation admitting it in 1876. It came in in time to cast three
Republican electoral votes in the most troublesome presidential contest
the United States had seen.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Among the more valuable books of biography and reminiscence for this
period are R. Ogden, _Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin_ (2
vols., 1907); H.E. Scudder, _James Russell Lowell_ (2 vols., 1901); C.E.
Norton, ed., _Letters of J.R. Lowell_ (1894); _Reminiscences of James B.
Angell_ (1912); J. T. Austen, _Moses Coit Tyler, 1835-1900_ (1911); J.G.
Blaine, _Twenty Years of Congress_; E.P. Oberholtzer, _Jay Cooke_; and
A.B. Paine, _Th. Nast_ (1904). The Credit Mobilier may best be studied
in Rhodes, in J.B. Crawford, _Credit Mobilier of America_ (1880), and in
the reports of the committees of Congres