fear that the dying curse of the red man, outcast and homeless by our fault, will bring barrenness upon the soil that once was his, or dry the streams of the beautiful land that, through so much of evil and of good, has become our patrimony ; but surely we shall be clearer in our lives, and freer to meet the glances of our sons and grandsons, if in our generation we do justice and show mercy to a race which has been impoverished that we might be made rich.” He elevated the treatment of the natives to be one of the great issues of the time: “The United States will be judged at the bar of history according to what they shall have done in two respects, -by their disposition of negro slavery, and by their treatment of the Indians.” Other engagements 1876 was a busy year for Walker. Henry Brooks Adams sought to recruit Walker to be the editor-in-chief of his Boston Post after failing to recruit Horace White and Charles Nordhoff for the position. That spring, Walker was nominated to run for the Secretary of the State of Connecticut, running on a platform that would later be embodied by the "Mugwump" movement, but ultimately lost to Marvin H. Sanger by a margin of 7,200 votes out of 99,000 cast. In the summer, the faculty of Amherst attempted to recruit him to become the President, but the position went instead to the Rev. Julius Hawley Seelye to appease the more conservative trustees. Walker's rise to prominence was further accelerated by his appointment by Charles Francis Adams, Jr. as the chief of the Bureau of Awards at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Previous world expositions in Europe were fraught with national factionalism and a superabundance of awards. Walker imposed a much leaner operation replacing juries with judges and being more selective in awarding prizes. Walker won formal international recognition when he was named a "Knight Commander" by Sweden and Norway and a "Comendador" by Spain. He was also invited to serve as Assistant Commissioner General for the 1878 Paris Exposition. The Centennial Exposition affected Walker's later career by greatly increasing his interest in technical education as well as introducing him to MIT President John D. Runkle and Treasurer John C. Cummings. 1880 Census Walker accepted a re-appointment as the superintendent of the 1880 Census because a new law,