ss--throughout
the first year of the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes, there
were brought prominently before the public mind the questions of
reconstruction, economic, social, and political, in the North and West
as well as in the South. The exploitation of the public domain in the
West, the development of transcontinental railroads and other means of
communication, the plea for sound money, the economic regeneration of
the South, the proper adjustment of the social relations between the
two races living in that section, and the readjustment of political
control in the former Confederate States were the great issues upon
which, during this period, the attention of the nation was focused.

In the solution of some of these problems the Negro was intimately
involved. What was to be his place in the scheme of social adjustment
in the South? What part was he to play in the economic regeneration of
that section? How and to what extent should he maintain the political
power delegated to him by the war amendments? Indeed, of utmost
importance to the Negro was the proper solution of three perplexing
problems: first, to secure to themselves the civil rights so freely
exercised by other groups in the nation; second, to obtain national
funds to aid education; third, to determine whether their former
masters should be relieved of their political disabilities. It was to
the solution of these problems, therefore, that the Negro Congressmen
of that period especially addressed themselves.

The problem of civil rights, however, did not immediately take
precedence. With the passage by Congress, in 1875, of a measure known
as the Civil Rights Bill, which was supplementary to measures of the
same sort previously enacted, the Negroes of the country were accorded
the rights granted by the Constitution to all other citizens of the
United States. The subsequent approval of this bill by the president,
and the well-known policy toward the Southern States then adopted,
served to remove from the fore of American politics the various issues
arising from the larger problems of the social and political
reconstruction of the South.

Economic questions then had more opportunity for consideration. A new
era in the nation's development was ushered in, and with it came new
issues and new policies. The question of the exploitation of the
public domain in the West and that of transcontinental railway
construction had long been before the nation and s