"Sinews of war" is a classical expression. The popular cry of "Persian gold" was heard in the Peloponnesian war as the popular cry of "British gold" is heard now. True, there was no slavery question in the Peloponnesian war, for antique civilization without slavery is hardly thinkable; but after all, the slavery question belongs ultimately to the sphere of economics. The humanitarian spirit, set free by the French Revolution, was at work in the Southern States as in the Northern States, but it was hampered by economic considerations. Virginia, as every one knows, was on the verge of becoming a free State. Colonization flourished in my boyhood. A friend of my father's left him trustee for his "servants," as we called them. They were quartered opposite our house in Charleston, and the pickaninnies were objects of profound interest to the children of the neighborhood. One or two letters came from the emigrants after they reached Liberia. Then silence fell on the African farm. Some of the most effective anti-slavery reformers were Charlestonians by birth and breeding. I cannot say that Grimke was a popular name, but homage was paid to the talent of Frederick, as I remember only too well, for I had to learn a speech of his by heart, as a schoolboy exercise. But the economic conditions of the South were not favorable to the spread of the ideas represented by the Grimkes. The slavery question kept alive the spirit that manifested itself in the tariff question. State rights were not suffered to slumber. The Southerner resented Northern dictation as Pericles resented Lacedaemonian dictation, and our Peloponnesian war began. III The processes of the two wars, then, were the same,--killing, wounding, frightening. The causes of the two wars resolved themselves into the elements of hatred. The details of the two wars meet at many points; only one must be on one's guard against merely fanciful, merely external resemblances. In 1860 I spent a few days in Holland, and among my various excursions in that fascinating country I took a solitary trip on a _treckschuit_ from Amsterdam to Delft. Holland was so true to Dutch pictures that there was a retrospective delight in the houses and in the people. There was a charm in the very signs, in the names of the villas; for my knowledge of Dutch had not passed beyond the stage at which the Netherlandish tongue seems to be an English-German Dictionary, disguised in strong waters. But the thing that struck me most was the general aspect of the country. Everywhere gates. Nowhere fences. The gates guarded the bridges and the canals were the fences, but the canals and the low bridges were not to be seen at a distance, and the visual effect was that of isolated gates. It was an absurd landscape even after the brain had made the necessary corrections.