This study is an attempt to re-investigate the Republican party during the Reconstruction era in order to understand the degree and nature of the changes. The paper reviews the basis of the party at different points in its metamorphosis to demonstrate what happened to the organization.

An understanding of the development of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 from its beginnings in the Senate to its culmination in April necessitates a few brief statements concerning the condition of the nation and the relations between the President and Congress.

The West had to somehow solve its water deficit if that region were ever to overcome its retarded growth and development. Irrigation offered at least a partial solution if the rivers could be tapped, and this concept opened a whole new phase in the legislative, political, and economic development of the West and of the nation.

The Provincial Congress assumed the leadership of North Carolina at a time when, almost simultaneously, the seeds of the American Revolution were beginning to take root throughout the neighboring provinces. The task faced by that body was, therefore, not only one of reinstituting their own civil government, but also of providing for the protection of North Carolina and working, in union, for the defense of the entire continent.

Prosperity was the positive goal of America's postwar policy. For several years, the United States was successful in her attempt to be at the same time politically aloof and economically opportunistic. But politics and economics were radically intertwined in the reparation settlement, and when reparations interfered with the prosperity of the Atlantic community, it shattered as well America's resolve to "let Europe stew in her own juice," and caused American reinvolvement in European concerns. America's postwar settlement can be expressed in two words: disentanglement frustrated.

The affair of the Ukase of September, 1821, evokes such questions as these: What was its real purpose? Was Alexander guilty of aggression in North America or was he only attempting to solve a domestic problem, viz., smuggling in the Alaskan colony? Why did George Canning negotiate separately with Russia after he had expressed a desire to cooperate with the United States? Did he really believe that Russia would be more impressed by separate negotiations, as Harold Temperley has suggested? Did the tsar deliberately appease Britain in the hope of securing her aid in a Russo- Turkish war, as S. B. Okun and Hector Chevigny have contended, or did he follow a policy of expediency?

This thesis is an attempt to determine the extent of Burke's influence at the state and national level, and the effect of one man's personality on the revolutionary period in America.