‘That,’ I answered, ‘is known only to the Gods, whose ways are not the ways of mortals, but certainly they have made this enormous number of Americans and have not stopped yet.’ ‘No wonder so many of them come to Europe,’ said Lysis. ‘But listen,’ I said, ‘for the most extraordinary thing is yet to come. What will you think of such people when I tell you that they endeavour to live all under one government and to share one Assembly?’ ‘Socrates,’ said Lysis, sitting up and looking me straight in the face, ‘I do not believe you.’ BOOK II I then explained to them as well as I could about the forty-eight States that make up the United States, making it plain that each State had its own government, but that there was also the Federal Government, which had authority everywhere. And this they understood readily enough, for the notion of a federation of communities was familiar to them. I told them briefly of how originally there were North and South, and of the Civil War, which was fought to establish the ascendancy of the Federal Government, and I made it plain that that ascendancy had grown greater to this day and that the State Governments had become more and more unimportant. And I did not hide from them that the choosing of parties and policies for the central assembly became less and less a thing over which ordinary citizens had any control at all, and that nowhere else in the world did the members so chosen receive less respect or less truly represent the people electing them. ‘Yet,’ I said, ‘the Americans are extremely attached to their Central Government, far more than they are to the governments of their own States.’ Lysis pondered for some moments on these things, and then said: ‘Was this a great civil war?’ ‘Well,’ said Agathon, ‘we Greeks have a high standard for such wars, when Greek meets Greek. But for barbarians it was a stern struggle.’ ‘And terrible in its results,’ I said, ‘as you will agree if you are of my opinion that that Civil War was the most disastrous thing in the history of the Americans, if it fastened on their necks so great a mockery of popular government as is their central government.’ ‘Assuredly they would not have fought for it if they had foreknown the future,’ he said. ‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘most of them consider that it was the turning point in their history, and they have made their chief hero of the statesman who saved the Union.’ ‘Why?’ asked Phaelon.