The American Civil War, which lasted four years, was both morally and politically absolutely unnecessary and therefore absolutely unjustifiable. It is difficult for an American to discuss the subject coolly even at this distance, when he realizes that this, the greatest calamity which ever befell the country, was perfectly avoidable and was due entirely to stupidity and mismanagement. It is time that the truth was told; the Civil War was caused, not by the difficulty of the questions to be dealt with but by a lack of statesmanship, by the dull selfishness and asininity of the politicians of the day and by the system of low politics which had long before been established among us. To say that the question between the free and the slave states was of a nature which required a settlement by the sword is absurd. In 1860 there were fifteen slave and eighteen free states. The constitutional right of the former to the ownership of their slaves could not be denied; and the vast majority of the people in the free states so believed and asserted. The question on which the country was divided was whether slavery could or should be established in the Territories and in the new states to be erected from the Territories. To assert that that question could not be settled peaceably is to assert either that the American people were fools and brutes, which is not true, or that their representatives having the matter in hand were incapables or worse, which is true. The war was entirely due to the conduct and misconduct of the politicians in power and they were placed there by manhood suffrage.

The American people North and South at that time were as harmless and peaceable a people as ever existed on the face of the earth. They did not want any war, least of all a civil war. Tens of thousands of inhabitants in each of the two sections had dear friends and relatives in the other section. Most people refused even to believe it possible until hostilities actually began that a civil war could possibly be forced upon the country. Neither side was in any way prepared either in men, officers, equipment, ships or money for even a small war. There was no desire for a conflict on either side, and no need of it; and yet it came; because the country was in the hands not of patriotic statesmen, but of a manhood suffrage politician President, and a manhood suffrage politician Congress, infused with a small, mean, manhood suffrage spirit, the spirit of humbug, of selfishness, of insincerity, and of moral cowardice. It came because for his own petty temporary purposes, each of the politicians, too dull and short sighted to see the danger of his own acts, had been for years nagging the people of his own district into dislikes, suspicions and hates towards the people of other districts and portions of the country.

We may concede the difficulties of the situation. The slavery question had been so mismanaged that as far back as 1844 it had become a delicate one needing to be handled with patriotic and enlightened statesmanship; but the men in public life qualified to so handle it were after 1828 becoming fewer and fewer. Of courageous and patriotic statesmen there was after 1852 scarcely one in public life, and it was finally left to the newspapers and the populace, who undertook to deal with it themselves in their own characteristic way. This of course was to hold public meetings, at which were made inflammatory and abusive speeches; to publish and circulate these speeches with furious newspaper comments; and to issue books and pamphlets denunciatory of everybody in public life. How does the ordinary manhood suffrage politician, the mediocrity who after obeying orders of vulgar bosses for years finds himself rewarded with a nomination for Congress; how does he deal with a question where both money and feeling are involved? He “side-steps”; he pussy-foots; he twists and dodges and sneaks in and out till one side or the other shows a decided preponderance of votes, and then he mounts the platform and rants defiance and insults at the minority. Such is his idea of statesmanship; and though it makes the judicious grieve it tickles the ears of the groundlings who are the majority of the organization followers. The newspaper files inform us and the reader can readily imagine how for years Northern and Southern orators hurled defiance at safe distances; how the holders of perfectly honest opinions on both sides were publicly insulted every day in the week as slave drivers; nigger lovers, dough-faces, etc. When the legal question of the rights of slavery in the territories came up, there was no one to decide it; it was a difference demanding for its settlement a courage which mere politicians never have; and requiring as well a statesmanship and tact which are qualities of trained thinkers; of men of wide vision; of experience in public affairs, and gifted with self-control; qualities in short which especially belong to the well-educated classes. It should have been dealt with by picked men; men of high prestige; uncontrolled by passion, and above a desire for the plaudits of the mob. Such men were not to be found in public life; and so it was left to the decision of what was called public opinion; which means in effect that it fell into the hands of demagogues, platform orators, second-rate politicians, extremists, visionaries and newspaper writers. Thousands of individuals honest and dishonest; fanatics, abolitionists and demagogues on the Northern side, and cranks, general humbugs and notoriety seekers on the Southern side, began to write and talk on the subject; and when they had succeeded in irritating everybody, and when a certain emotional and hysterical class was thoroughly inflamed, the manhood suffrage machine was put in operation and an election for president was had. The voters split into four parties; certainly not according to reason, which had long before been flung to the winds by most of them; but rather according to temperament; the more excitable and intolerant taking an extreme position; the others offering the customary political platitudes. The electoral college plan for the election of the president, which had been prescribed by the Constitution to obviate just such a catastrophe, had been long since foolishly discarded by the people in favor of a direct election by manhood suffrage. Lincoln, a then comparatively unknown man, who had been nominated in a roaring political convention, was elected President of the United States by a minority of the total vote. A few of the Southern states whose politicians were dissatisfied with the election promptly proposed to secede from the Union. They were permitted to do so and set up independent governments; the administration at Washington being as usual in the hands of men who had neither sufficient diplomacy, firmness, decision nor patriotism to deal with the situation, or with any other requiring the employment of honesty and courage.

The politicians in power at Washington, as they were incapable of properly dealing with slavery, so they were incapable of properly dealing with secession. As nothing timely was done to coerce the first seceding states they were in time joined by others; the demagogic rant and newspaper clamor and abuse continued unabated on both sides, but nothing practical was done to save the situation or to preserve the Union; the seceding states were allowed four months to consummate their plans; and were permitted without molestation or hindrance to seize one fort and arsenal after another, until the enterprise of rebellion, which, originating in a few hot heads could have been summarily suppressed in December 1860 had in April 1861 resulted in the establishment of a southern armed confederacy of eleven states. Meantime the Northern Democracy looked on complacently and did nothing till the South made the dramatic blunder of firing on Fort Sumter. Sluggishness and indifference in the North were now succeeded by indignation and fury; hostilities began and lasted four years; hundreds of thousands of lives and thousands of millions of property were uselessly sacrificed, and all because among the governing politicians of the United States there had not been enough patriotic statesmanship to undertake the task of devising and enforcing a peaceable arrangement. That there was no inherent difficulty in the case, insurmountable by diplomacy, is perfectly apparent to any intelligent mind; and is almost conclusively demonstrated by the conceded fact that even after four years’ bloody strife no hopeless division between North and South existed; that the defeated Southern rank and file and their leaders, officers and generals admitted that they had even then no insufferable grievance; that they really preferred the Union, even without slavery, to disunion; and that the Southerners immediately came back into their places as citizens of the Union and have ever since been and still are as true and loyal to the flag as the northern population. They never really disliked the Federal Union; they had in fact always loved it; but they had been crazed year after year in the course of one political campaign after another by the assaults and insults of Northern platform press and pulpit ranters, and had been deceived, misled and egged on to violence by their own demagogues. It was a case of the cumulative effect of years of repeated word provocations and word retorts on both sides; all delivered either to promote the sale of wicked and sensational newspapers or for electioneering purposes, or to capture the votes of a senseless rabble. The effect of this long-continued agitation was to derange the shallow judgment of the irresponsibles, a class which includes hot-headed youths, lovers of turmoil, improvident men with more sail than ballast; those who lack prudence both in politics and in business; who show the same poor judgment in giving a vote as in making a bargain; who are as willing to rush into a foolish war as into a foolish business enterprise; who are reckless because, never having much, they can never lose much; in short, that class who, though absolutely unable to manage their own affairs, are by our laws considered quite capable of attending to those of the community, and who whenever a storm arises lose their heads and do their best to wreck the ship. In a word, the course of conduct adopted by the politicians of the country which resulted in the war was intended to win the applause and the votes of a set of men most of whom should not have been allowed to vote at all. Had the business men and the propertied classes alone been consulted the civil war would never have broken out.

And it is to-day just as it was then. When any question capable of being made the subject of political discussion, and having an emotional or sympathetic aspect, is brought before the public, it is sure to be seized upon by fanatics and time servers who make it the subject of clamor and vociferation. These are in time joined by a lot of honest but inexperienced youth; emotional enthusiasts; sympathetic women more or less hysterical; people with grudges to pay off; political adventurers; platform ranters eager for an audience; demagogues out of a job and vain fools anxious for the lime light; empty heads who find society and excitement in political organizations and meetings. These classes of agitators and the followers of agitators exist and have always existed here as well as in Russia and elsewhere; and they are put in the front when they ought to be suppressed and sent to the rear or out of sight. They are apt to be abnormal in vanity, and stop at nothing to obtain notoriety. Those of them who are soft and emotional become crazed with mental dwelling on one subject, with the excitement of political speaking and the applause and criticism they receive; those of them who are cold of heart and head keep up the din to attract attention to themselves and to further their political fortunes; with them the end justifies the means; exaggerations, dishonest equivocations, lies and even slanders are to their small minds justified by the object to be attained. We have, for instance, recently seen some of the women suffragists both in England, and to a less extent here, in what they call their militant campaigns act on the principle that there are no morals in politics. In England they resorted to open and violent misconduct and even to crime to keep up the agitation. Their avowed purpose in doing this was to keep their cause before the public, and as to some of them incidentally to earn the salaries paid by their associations for this vile work. They believed, and with good reason, that under a system of manhood suffrage mere arguments are insufficient; the unthinking rabble had to be won over; and their foolish ears must be filled with noise in order to gain and keep their attention.

A similar process was used by the politicians and agitator’s on both sides of the negro slavery question. There was the unreasoning vote to be captured. Each candidate for Congress, instead of desiring the matter amicably settled, wished rather to use the dispute as a means for his own election. Now, it is a fact well known to politicians that it is impossible to get all the voters to the polls at any election. Besides securing the floaters by means of agents with cash and shrewdness, the best way to induce the remaining nondescripts and light weights to take the trouble to vote, is to create artificial excitement by means of meetings, processions, bands of music and inflammatory oratory. The opposite side and their leaders must be denounced as fools, humbugs, liars, scamps, thieves and traitors. The wisest are repelled by this course, but they are a minority in every community. Besides, some of the men who know better than to believe an unscrupulous demagogue, will vote for him, partly out of gratitude because he has amused them by his attacks on his opponents, partly because he is the party candidate, and partly as the result of a sort of mental contagion. Now, it was this campaign of inflammatory denunciation; this output of lies, slanders and vilification indulged in by the platform talkers on all sides in the political campaigns of 1856, 1858 and 1860 that brought on the Civil War. This is well known; but what is not known and never will be known is just how much of this rascally oratory was hired and paid for in cold cash contributed by that class of people who always contribute to election funds. And this brutal and stupid process is the natural and inevitable result of an attempt to decide important political questions by manhood suffrage, that is by a public agitation undertaken to obtain the votes of the most thoughtless, careless, dull and unreasonable men of the country.

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 other, and the years immediately succeeding the Civil War were perhaps richer in patriotic platform oratory and in political corruption than any the country has ever seen.