Perhaps this chapter is too long already. But I pray my reader to allow me to say a little more. We are upon the threshold of a new American era. Evidently because of our western coast we are to dominate the Pacific ocean commerce and to develop it into proportions so enormous as to be now almost inconceivable. That coast will soon outstrip the Atlantic in population and great cities. Our people, safe against wars on the continent, maintaining armies only of workers, taught better methods every year by practice and science, will soon be far in advance of their present enviable prosperity and comfort. Cheering as is the promise of their material progress, that of their progress in virtue and good government is still more cheering. Everywhere in the north--which was not impoverished, deprived of familiar modes of production, and paralyzed with a race question by the event of the brothers' war--the State electorates are rebelling successfully against the party machine, cashiering the boss, and subverting the corporation oligarchy. That in the last election the voters most intelligently split their tickets assures the early expulsion of spoilsmen, grafters, and public-service franchise-grabbers from the control of our politics, legislation, and administration of government, and the real and permanent elevation of the people to being their own absolute governors. In several States--one of these a southern--the vote was for the most democratic and anti-plutocratic president since Lincoln, while at the same time the anti-plutocratic State candidates, either of the other party or independent, were elected. Our population will soon outstrip all the world in average riches, comfort, virtue, and education. The special note to be made of this new American era now beginning is that we are to lead the nations into a war-abolishing United States of the world, which in the end will make and keep them our equals in solid welfare and happiness. With this prospect in view, the brighter and more enrapturing as I cannot keep from contrasting it with the black and hopeless future which settled around me at Appomattox, I would do all that I can to bring about that better understanding between north and south which befits the good time near at hand. CHAPTER II A BEGINNING MADE WITH SLAVERY As a distinguished southerner, familiar with the subject, says, slavery in the United States was "a stupendous anachronism."[11] It is almost incredible to the average northerner of to-day that the enlightened people of the south sank backwards in social development a thousand years or more, and hugged to their bosoms for several generations such a monstrous evil and peril. The co-operation of two facts fully explains the wonder just noted. Now let us try to understand this.