Beyond this, the social consequences of wealth are manifold and important. To see this point clearly exemplified in a wide field, we have but to study the history of the wars waged by our own nation. At some point every one of these great struggles has been caused by a false relation to wealth. Just where we locate that false relation will depend somewhat upon our prejudices; but the dilemma in each case is such that we are driven to locate it somewhere. The French and Indian War was a military debate as to whether the English or the French should gather the furs in the region of the Upper Ohio and should secure the profits in the world's markets. In the settlement of that issue many lives were sacrificed. The War for Independence was caused by taxes--not, as many people suppose, by a tax on tea alone, but by a long series of taxes covering many years. If the English had a right to levy the tax and if the tax was just, then the colonists were greedy. If, on the other hand, the Americans refused to pay an unjust tax, inspired in their rebellion by a lofty spirit of liberty, then the English were the greedy party. The War of 1812 was caused by the seizure of our vessels on the French coast and related to freedom of commerce. The dilemma is the same as before. Some one was at fault in that commercial war. A wrong attitude toward property caused the long-drawn-out struggle. Our later wars show the same form of contest. Historians declare that the war with Mexico was occasioned by the desire to extend slavery territory; by the nation's lust for the enlargement of her borders; and by certain debts owed to citizens of the United States by citizens of Mexico. All of these motives touch somewhere on gold. The Civil War grew from the same "root of all evil." Northern men aided in bringing African slaves to this land in order to turn forced labor into money, while Southern men continued African slavery because it was deemed necessary for the production of cotton. The cry "Cotton is king" was not always spoken above a whisper, but as a slogan it caused some fierce struggling. Boston merchants helped to mob Garrison. The sentiment of England flowed against the North because it was thought that the abolishing of slavery would demoralize the markets of the world. The hooting crowds that Beecher faced in England were unconsciously influenced to their hostile attitude by a commercial argument. The whole struggle was broadened and heightened until words like "liberty" and "unity" put a moral passion into the fray. But, while the nature of the government and the question of human rights were to be settled, the primary occasion of the contest was commercial.