But, some may ask, how could the slavery question have been amicably settled? Was not the Civil War inevitable? By no means. Great Britain, Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Holland and other countries each had the same problem. Russia had a similar one in the case of her serfs. Slavery in the British West Indies was abolished in 1838 at a cost of $100,000,000 cash compensation paid to the masters, and other European nations having colonial slaves had followed England’s example. Brazil and Cuba were both large slave-owning countries; in Cuba one-third of the population was at one time in slavery; a much larger proportion than in the United States, and yet in both countries emancipation was gradually and peaceably accomplished by legal methods. In Russia the serfs were freed without bloodshed. Nowhere except in the United States was it found necessary to make the country a shambles to accomplish such an inevitable reform. To say that the American people are so inferior in political capacity to the British, Russians, Spaniards and Brazilians as this miserable emancipative Civil War of ours would indicate is preposterous. That the Civil War was a politicians’ and not a people’s war was perfectly apparent at the time to all steady-minded folk. During its progress nothing was more frequent than to hear such people say that the politicians were responsible for it all. And this was true. Had the settlement of the matter been left to a committee of statesmen or business men the result would have been that under some system of gradual emancipation and payment to the owners the thing would have been quietly done, and with a great saving of money. The war cost at the lowest possible estimate twenty thousand millions of dollars. There were in this country say three millions of slaves which at the high figure of $500 each would have cost not more than fifteen hundred millions of dollars or less than a twelfth of the cost of the war in money, to say nothing of human lives. Even this cost would have been nominal, since the outlay would have been divided up amongst our own people and left the nation not a cent the poorer. But this plain and sensible course could not be adopted because under our mobocratic system the question was made one of politics rather than of statesmanship. And when the struggle was over were the politicians blamed or called to account; or was the system condemned which produced them and really brought about the American Civil War? Not at all. The same humbugs and schemers continued in control; once more they were seen on political platforms, greedy and brassy as ever, bellowing hypocritical praise of the victims of the fight and demanding and obtaining continued offices and salaries and perquisites for themselves; and so their course of public plundering was vigorously continued and their rule was strengthened year by year. With one hand deep in the public chest, they waved the banner with the