Indeed, being in his own opinion even more robust than he was before the crisis, he was more eager than ever to convert his good health into the gold of satisfied desire.

The ghost of slavery had been banished from our national banquet: and, relieved of this terror, the American people began to show, more aggressively than ever before, their ability to provide and to consume a bountiful feast.

They were no longer children, grasping at the first fruits of a half-cultivated wilderness.
They were adults, beginning to plan the satisfaction of on appetite which had been sharpened by self-denial, and made self-conscious by maturity.
The North, after the war was over, did not have much time for serious reflection upon its meaning and consequences.

The Republican leaders did just enough thinking to carry them through the crisis; but once the rebellion was suppressed and the South partly de-nationalized in the name of reconstruction, the need and desire was for action rather than for thought.

The anti-slavery agitation and the war had interrupted the process, which from the public point of view, was described as the economic development of the country, and which from an individual standpoint meant the making of money.