[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 the "Morrill" acts. The abominable system of store credit kept the majority of farmers, black and white, in servitude, but was giving way, partly to regular bank credit--a great improvement--and partly to cash transactions. [Illustration: Men tending trees.] A grove of oranges and palmettoes near Ormond, Florida. Florida came to the front as a lavish producer of tropical fruits. Winter was rarely known there. If it paid a visit now and then the State's sugar industry made up for the losses which frost inflicted upon her orange crop. The rich South Carolina rice plantations bade fair to be left behind by the new rice belt in Louisiana and Texas, a strip averaging thirty miles in width and extending from the Mississippi to beyond the Brazos, 400 miles. Improved methods of rice farming had transformed this region, earlier almost a waste, into one of the most productive areas in the country, attracting to it settlers from various parts of the North and West, and even from Scandinavia. Dairying, fruit and cattle-raising and market-gardening for northern markets, other new lines of enterprise, created wealth for multitudes. King Cotton was not dethroned to make way for these rivals, but increased his domain each decade.