office the Confederate leaders—­driving from the work of reconstruction the finest talents of the South.  As if to add bitterness to gall and wormwood, the fourteenth amendment forbade the United States or any state to pay any debts incurred in aid of the Confederacy or in the emancipation of the slaves—­plunging into utter bankruptcy the Southern financiers who had stripped their section of capital to support their cause.  So the Southern planters found themselves excluded from public office and ruled over by their former bondmen under the tutelage of Republican leaders.  Their labor system was wrecked and their money and bonds were as worthless as waste paper.  The South was subject to the North.  That which neither the Federalists nor the Whigs had been able to accomplish in the realm of statecraft was accomplished on the field of battle.

=The Triumph of Industry.=—­The wreck of the planting system was accompanied by a mighty upswing of Northern industry which made the old Whigs of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania stare in wonderment.  The demands of the federal government for manufactured goods at unrestricted prices gave a stimulus to business which more than replaced the lost markets of the South.  Between 1860 and 1870 the number of manufacturing establishments increased 79.6 per cent as against 14.2 for the previous decade; while the number of persons employed almost doubled.  There was no doubt about the future of American industry.

=The Victory for the Protective Tariff.=—­Moreover, it was henceforth to be well protected.  For many years before the war the friends of protection had been on the defensive.  The tariff act of 1857 imposed duties so low as to presage a tariff for revenue only.  The war changed all that.  The extraordinary military expenditures, requiring heavy taxes on all sources, justified tariffs so high that a follower of Clay or Webster might well have gasped with astonishment.  After the war was over the debt remained and both interest and principal had to be paid.  Protective arguments based on economic reasoning were supported by a plain necessity for revenue which admitted no dispute.

=A Liberal Immigration Policy.=—­Linked with industry was the labor supply.  The problem of manning industries became a pressing matter, and Republican leaders grappled with it.  In the platform of the Union party adopted in 1864 it was declared “that foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, the development of resources, and the increase of power to this nation—­the asylum of the oppressed of all nations—­should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy.”  In that very year Congress, recognizing the importance of the problem, passed a measure of high significance, creating a bureau of immigration, and authorizing a modified form of indentured labor, by making it legal for immigrants to pledge their wages in advance to pay their passage over.  Though the bill was soon repealed, the practice authorized by it was long continued.  The cheapness of the passage shortened the term of service; but the principle was older than the days of William Penn.