Among the white people loyalty to the old flag increased with the days. Of course none of them would ever confess regret at having drawn the sword, or cease to think of the lost cause with a sigh. At the same time a rational conviction settled down upon all its most thoughtful minds that in secession the South had been misguided. Universal was the admission that at least for the dominant race the death of slavery was a blessing. Northern people and intelligent immigrants from Europe thronged in. Coolly received at first, and in some cases maltreated if freely expressing opinions which traversed those prevalent in the section, in the end they were tolerated and even welcomed. The multiplication of railways facilitated the acquaintance of southern with northern people far beyond what had been possible before the war. Travelling salesmen from the North penetrated the remotest hamlets at the South, inclined from every consideration to produce the most favorable impression possible. The selection of southerners for important national offices by Presidents Grant, Hayes, Arthur, and Cleveland, the election of the last-named, a Democrat, as President in 1884 and 1892, and the existence of a democratic majority in the House of Representatives almost constantly from 1874, all felicitously combined to beget in the people of the South a conviction that they were really and truly citizens of the Union again. The rise in several southern States of a strong republican organization among the whites wrought in the same direction. Nor must we overlook as another cementing influence the fraternizing of northern and southern soldiers in great reunions such as occurred at Gettysburg, Richmond, and Chickamauga. The South's material prosperity kept pace with her political advance. It had always been said that cotton was to be produced only by slave labor. Nothing could have been more false. The largest cotton crop under slavery, that of 1860, reached 4,669,770 bales. In 1871, 1876, and 1877 each, notwithstanding the economic chaos and the infinite destruction of capital occasioned by the war, those figures were almost equalled; in 1878 they were surpassed; in 1879 and 1880 each, over 5,000,000 bales were raised; in 1881, 1883, and 1886 each, over 6,000,000, the exact figure for the year last named being 6,550,215. In 1890, 7,472,511 bales were produced.