the
support of the party of the South.

The Republican Convention renominated Grant at Philadelphia without
opposition, refused Colfax a second term, and picked Henry Wilson for
Vice-President. Its platform, as in 1868, was retrospective, taking
pride in its great achievements and assuming full credit for the war,
reconstruction, and financial honor. It offered its ticket to all the
States for the first time since 1860, and elected Grant with ease. The
inharmonious Democrat-Liberal-Republican alliance increased the
Republican majority, but the returns from the South confirmed the
suspicion that home rule was in sight.

Restored completely to themselves, four years later, the Southern
Governments ceased to play much part in national affairs and continued
the economic rebuilding of their region. It was thirty years after the
war before the South, in population and business, had recovered from its
devastation, and even then it was far from subordinating its local
politics to national issues.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The writings of Rhodes and Dunning contain the best comprehensive
accounts of political reconstruction. For greater detail, the series of
doctoral dissertations on reconstruction in the several States, directed
by Professor Dunning and printed generally in the Columbia University
Studies, has great value. In W.L. Fleming, _Documentary History of
Reconstruction_ (2 vols., 1906), important selections from the sources
have been printed; the same writer's _Civil War and Reconstruction in
Alabama_ (1905) is the best account of the process in a single State.
J.A. Woodburn, _Thaddeus Stevens_, is useful. The old and new economic
systems of the South receive their keenest interpretation in the works
of U.B. Phillips and A.H. Stone. The _Annual Cyclopaedia_ continues
valuable; the Report of the Ku-Klux Committee is invaluable (42d
Congress, 2d Session, Senate Report, No. 41, 13 vols.). _Harper's
Weekly_, which supported Grant in 1872, was the most prominent journal
of the period. C.F. Adams, Jr., has contributed to the diplomatic
history of these years his _Charles Francis Adams_ (1900, in American
Statesmen Series), and his "Treaty of Washington" (in _Lee and
Appomattox_, 1902). Elaborate details of the arbitrations are in J.B.
Moore, _History and Digest of the International Arbitrations to which
the United States has been a Party_ (6 vols., 1898). An interesting
series of recollections of reconstruction events, b