er
the Civil War gradually evolved a New South, unlike the contemporary
North, and differing still more, if possible, from ante-bellum Dixie. By
1900 this interesting situation had become quite pronounced. The picture
here given is but an enlargement of that presented earlier--few features
new, but many of them more salient, and the whole effect more
impressive.

Harmony and good feeling between the capital sections of our country
continued to manifest itself in striking ways, as by the dedication of a
Confederate monument at Chicago, the gathering of the Grand Army of the
Republic at Louisville, Ky., and the cordial fraternizing of Gray and
Blue at the consecration of the Chickamauga-Chat-tanooga Military Park,
on the spot where had occurred, perhaps, the fiercest fighting which
ever shook United States ground.

[Illustration: Several stone monuments.]
The Chickamauga National Military Park.
Group of monuments on knoll southwest of Snodgrass Hill.

The Atlanta Exposition, opening on September 18, 1895, epitomized the
Newest South. The touch of an electric button by President Cleveland's
little daughter, Marian, at his home on Buzzard's Bay, Mass., opened the
gates and set the machinery awhirl. Atlanta was a city of but 100,000,
hardly more than 60,000 of them whites, yet her Fair not only excelled
the Atlanta Exposition of 1881, that at Louisville in 1883, and the New
Orleans World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition of 1884-5,
all which were highly successful, but in many features outdid even the
Centennial at Philadelphia. The Tennessee Centennial and International
Exposition at Nashville, in 1897, was another revelation. Its total
expenditures, fully covered by receipts, were $1,087,227.85; its total
admissions 1,886,714. On J. W. Thomas Day the attendance was within a
few of 100,000. The exhibits were ample, and many of them strikingly
unique. Few, even at the South, believed that the Southern States could
set forth such displays. The fact that this was possible so soon after a
devastating war, which had left the section in abject poverty, was a
speaking compliment to the land and to the energy of those developing
it.

The progress of most Southern communities was extraordinary.
Agriculture, still too backward in methods and variety, gradually
improved, gaining marked impetus and direction from the agricultural
colleges planted in the several States by the aid of United States funds
conveyed under