The Gilded Age
The entire nation was watching the Grant presidency; an anti-slavery Grant with a pro-slavery VP, Jefferson Davis. The two seemed to be at quite a standstill when it came to the issue of slavery, but the issue didn't appear to have come often.
The first thing President Grant did was to make sure the Unitarian Party would have quite the image when he left, similar to how Van Buren did. So what was the first thing he did in office? He settled the city of Los Angeles in the new state of California, and sent out the S.S. Pinckney to the Pacific to find a group of islands to settle.
Grant didn't exactly know when the ship (or if, for that matter) would find any islands, but he was fairly confident there was something out there.
However, on foreign affairs, Grant was the president who had to undertake the duty of telling the American people the great nation of France had fallen. While the United States was much, much closer to Spain, it was a great loss to lose such a culturally important empire.
It was said that Spain had taken most of the former land of Spain, but that is just rumors as of late; there have been no maps bought from foreign lands in quite a few years.
President Grant worked to bolster the economy of the United States, and it went quite well. He renewed trades for resources in many countries, even improving them in some cases *cough* Spain *cough*.
On the actual economic income prospect it didn't seem to be looking quite well at first sight. Grantonomics was a new proposal set in place by President Grant where taxes on corporations were raised to pay for more spending on infrastructure, and taxes on the more wealthy Americans were raised as well. At first, the economy took a huge turn for the worse, but Grant had hope.
It didn't take very long, though, for Grantonomics to take a chokehold on the American system. It only took about a year for the economy to get back into shape from its initial setback, and culture and technology inside of the United States was thriving at its fastest point yet. This era of time starting under President Grant had come to become known as the Gilded Age.
Specifically, the United States officially finished their workings on their governmental system, becoming a true democracy. This ended what many historians see as the Renaissance, and the start of the Industrial Era.
Many American cities became more modernized, and production had become more rampant. President Grant was seen as being at the head of all of this, making him more of a celebrity than a president.
The city of Albuquerque hadn't done as well in the Gilded Age, though. The city had stored its food in old-fashioned grain silos, for some odd reason. The mayor excused his behavior saying its how his ancestors did it, and that would be the way he did it.
Grant grumbled, knowing he wouldn't be able to change the ways of the New Mexicans, so he let them have whatever happened to them. Of course, seeing as technology is no longer in the 18th century, rats and other vermin had gotten into the silos and eaten all of the food.
The governor of New Mexico came to President Grant pleading for a bailout and a stimulus package for his state to help the city of Albuquerque recover. President Grant, knowing it would hurt his image not to help, sent a small amount of gold to the city to get them more food and to update their food storage.
The people were starting to become quite suspicious of President Grant; one of his campaign promises was to declare war on Canada in accordance with the Canada Requisition Act, but he had failed to do so so far. Instead he piled up a mass of troops near the Canadian border between Boston and Halifax, making many Canadians anxious.
Many started to speculate the reason why Grant hadn't declared war so far. Some called him "Granny Grant", saying he was too weak and frail to declare war. Some called him "Gracious Grant", saying he was wise not to start a war and cause the destruction of many lives, jobs, and buildings. Some even went as far to say as he was being pulled by Vice President Davis to not declare war on Canada, because Davis had a secret agenda to keep Canada out and the South in.
These are all rumors of course, but President Grant, when questioned, didn't have an answer for any of the speculations.
The Gilded Age continued into the late 19th century with the rise of a great scientist in Chicago. The man's name was Arthur Compton, who claimed to have discovered something called "the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation". People didn't know what the heck he was talking about, but he seemed quite smart.
So instead of calling him a lunatic, they welcomed him into the city and proclaimed him a great scientist. They weren't quite sure what to do with him yet, though; they'd let Congress decide.
Just before President Grant left office in early 1886, news had gotten out to the public how his explorers in the Pacific had found a very habitable set of islands called Hawaii. There were already natives there, but we didn't care, so we founded Honolulu in the most habitable island.
There were quite a lot of resources in the local water and other islands, causing the city to flourish quite quickly. Heck, if Grant wasn't popular enough already, this put the final nail in the metaphorical coffin of his popularity. Wait, that doesn't quite make sense... wouldn't that say he isn't popular? Well, he was. As popular as a President who changes the economy, founds more states, sends America into a new era, and generates more culture can be.
Oh, did I say Grant only founded California and Hawaii? Well, with enough of the culture spreading, Grant decided to found the states of Idaho and Nevada.
