AMERICAN ANNUAL CYCLOPÆDIA AND REGISTER OF IMPORTANT EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1867. EMBRACING POLITICAL, CIVIL, MILITARY, AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS; PUBLIC DOCU- VOLUME VII. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 90, 92 AND 94 GRAND STREET. 1869. Harvard College Library. Transferred from Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, By D. APPLETON & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. THE present volume of the ANNUAL CYCLOPEDIA, for the year 1867, contains the proceedings of Congress to secure a final settlement of the difficulties with the Southern States by a reconstruction of those States; the action of the President in the execution of these several measures of Congress; the administrations of the several commanders of the military districts thus created, and the action of the people of the "sub-districts," or States, in compliance with the laws and authority thus established, especially that portion of the colored race who have in a brief period passed from a condition of servitude to the active discharge of the duties of freemen at the ballot-box and in the Constitutional Convention. These are circumstances which, owing to the numbers of the colored people, are without a parallel in the previous history of mankind. They form the most important steps in the solution of a problem full of intense interest. Under this view, all the measures proposed or adopted by Congress in the work of reconstruction have been inserted in these pages, with the debates on these measures; the views of the Executive Department respecting them; the conflict of opinion between the President and Congress, and the numerous messages to the latter, and official letters to public officers, with legal instructions incident thereto; the gradual change in the social and industrial condition of the people of the Southern States, arising from their new political relations, together with all those events which illustrate the history of this national crisis. The details of the internal affairs of the United States embrace the financial condition of the Government, with the operation of its system of taxation and currency; the public debt; the banks; commerce and agriculture; the proceedings in the Southern States to complete the reorganization of their civil and social affairs; the position of the freedmen; the various political conventions of the year, both national and State; the acts of State Legislatures; the results of elections; the progress of educational and charitable institutions under the care |