VIEW ON THE GREENE RIVER AT THE CROSSING OF THE U. P. R. R., WYOMING. In the spring of 1871 Congress passed a measure known as the " Enforcement Act," or the "Kuklux Act of 1871," which gave to the Federal officials absolute power over the liberties of the citizens of the States in which these troubles occurred. The President carried out the terms of the act with promptness, and on the seventeenth of Octo government as understood in this country. A free people cannot too jealously guard their liberties. On the thirty-first of January, 1871, Con gress repealed the test oath law, which required all applicants for civil offices to swear that they had not participated in the secession movement. As few Southern men contracted prior to the passage of tnat act. As this decision had been given by a majority of but one justice, Mr. Hoar, the AttorneyGeneral, moved to reconsider it. The case was heard again, and the decision of the court was reversed by a vote of five to four, on the eighteenth of January, 1871. Thus the constitutionality of the legaltender act was affirmed. In 1870 died Admiral David G. Farragut, on the fourteenth of August, aged sixty-nine; General George H. Thomas, "the Rock of Chickamauga," and the defender of Nashville, on the twenty-eighth of December, aged fifty-three, and General Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate army of Northern Virginia during the civil war, on the twelfth of October, aged sixty-three. On the twenty-sixth of January, 1871, Congress repealed the income tax. It had been retained long after the necessity for it had passed away and had become odious to the nation, which had only submitted to it at first because of the urgency of the need for it. Immediately upon the opening of President Lincoln's second term of office, Mr. Charles Francis Adams, the American minister at the court of St. James, was instructed to call PRESIDENT GRANT ON HIS WAY TO THE INAUGURATION. the attention of the British Govern of this law by Congress restored the control of the Southern States to the legitimate citizens and tax-payers thereof. In 1870 the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the act of Congress making "greenbacks," or the notes of the Federal treasury, a legal tender, was unconstitutional as regarded the payment of debts ment to the depredations committed upon American commerce by Confederate cruisers, built, equipped and manned in England, and to insist upon the responsibility of Great Britain for the losses thus incurred by American ship-owners. Mr. Adams discharged this duty in a communication addressed to the British Government, on the seventh of April, 1865. This led to a correspondence which continued through the | Alabama claims, but of all other questions summer of that year. Great Britain refused to admit the validity of the American claim, or to submit the question to the arbitration of any foreign government. at issue between the United States and Great Britain. The Alabama claims were referred by the treaty of Washington to a board of arbitration composed of five commissioners selected from the neutral nations. This board met. at Geneva, in Switzerland, on the fifteenth of April, 1872, and the American and English representatives presented to it their respective cases, which had been prepared by the most. The" Alabama question" remained unsettled for several years, and occasioned a considerable amount of ill-feeling between the two countries. Both governments regarded it as full of danger, but to Great Britain it was especially so, as in the event of a war between that country and any foreign power, I learned counsel in both countries. On the ish Government in 1869, but this arrange- | twenty-seventh of June the board announced ment was unsatisfactory to the Senate, which body refused to ratify it. Two years later the matter was revived, and in 1871 a joint high commission, composed of a number of distinguished public men, appointed by the American and British Governments, met at Washington, and arranged a settlement known as the treaty of Washington, which was ratified by both Governments. This treaty was ratified by the Senate on the twenty-fourth of May, and provided for the settlement not only of the its decision. The claims of the United States were admitted, and the damages awarded to that Government were $16,250,000. These were paid in due time. In our account of the administration of Mr. Buchanan we have related the dispute between the United States and Great Britain. concerning the possession of the Island of San Juan, growing out of the uncertainty as to the true course of the northwestern boundary of the Union. This had been an open question all through the civil war. By the thirty-fourth article of the treaty of Washing- | Measures were introduced into Congress for CHEYENNE INDIANS RECONNOITERING THE FIRST TRAIN ON THE PACIFIC RAILROAD. ily adjusted by peaceful methods, and not by the sword. In 1870 the republic of St. Domingo, comprising a large part of the island of Hayti, applied for annexation to the United States. President Grant was very anxious to secure the annexation of this island, and to accomplish it went to the very verge of his constitutional powers going farther, indeed, than many of his friends believed he had the right. a fire broke out in the city of Chicago, and raged with tremendous violence for two days, laying the greater part of the city in ashes. It was the most destructive conflagration of modern times. The total area of the city burned over was two thousand one hundred and twenty-four acres, or very nearly three and one-third square miles. The number of buildings destroyed was seventeen thousand four hundred and fifty. About two hundred |