150 
LONDON INTEENATIONAL 
rangements for a suitable representation of the products of the 
United States, ere the summer had passed, the Government, 
plunged deeper every month into new trials from which the 
way out seemed more difficult and uncertain, dispaired of suc¬ 
cess in a double test of its resources and powers, and therefore 
formally withdrew from the proposed competition at London. 
This withdrawal, of the national government was, of course, 
a voluntary relinquishment of the space applied for and duly 
assigned by the Koyal Commission. So that individual states 
which might have wished to be represented on their own ac¬ 
count were virtually cut off from so doing. But it so hap¬ 
pened that New York and some of the other states, alive to 
their industrial interests and to the honor of our common 
country, had already shipped many articles of importance and 
value, and were generally under such headway that this unex¬ 
pected act of the State Department, at Washington could not 
immediately stop them. And accordingly the Executive com¬ 
mittee of the Board of Home Commissioners authorized their 
veteran chairman, Hon. B. P. Johnson, of New York, to act 
as Commissioner, with J. E. Holmes, Esq., of Ohio, who had 
thus far acted as the U. S. Agent at New York, as Assistant 
Commissioner, and finally succeeded, through the cordial aid 
of Minister Adams, at London, in 'recovering authority from 
the Koyal Commission to occupy so much of the space origin¬ 
ally assigned to the United States, as had not been, since its 
relinquishment, assigned to other countries. 
As soon as possible. Assistant Commissioner Holmes, who 
had been constituted the agent of many of the exhibitors, 
went Torward to London, and, by grace of the British Com¬ 
missioners, who were exceedingly kind and obliging, engaged 
in the laborious undertaking of installing the American De¬ 
partment of the Great Exhibition, without a dollar from the 
Government, or other help than such as was generously ten¬ 
dered by a few patriotic citizens of the United States, tempo¬ 
rarily residing in London, reinforced, after the formal opening, 
by a less number of Commissioners who had been sent out in 
a, like beggarly manner, by several of the individual states. 
