ABSTRACT
The onrush was too great. Americans after the midcentury were relieved that the nation had survived the great test of the Civil War, and that Reconstruction, even if not concluded to the satisfaction of many Northern Whites, had at least brought the former Confederate states back into the union. For Europeans who thought of the United States as a backward nation beset by civil war and the political scandals of the late 1860s and early 1870s, the fair announced the United States as a soon-to-be world power. The entrance of the United States onto the world stage came at a time when European powers held long-established colonies around the world. Mindful of the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence and the just-passed centennial celebrations, questioned whether dominance over colonial possessions signaled a fundamental hypocrisy in American international politics.
