This text is part of:
“
[93]
The evil done by that war to public and private morality was almost irremediable.
Its effects were seen upon Congress, upon politics, upon reconstruction, upon business, upon society, and upon the habits of the people.”
One of the worst results of the Civil War was the resuscitation of the spirit of war and imperialism.
Is it a wonder that children brought up in an atmosphere of hate and bloodshed should have had the spirit of hate and bloodshed infused into their hearts?
The seed sown then duly bore its crop, and the battle-cry, “Remember the Maine!”
(a vessel which all the world but America believes to have been destroyed by accident) was the direct offspring of “The Union forever!”
The Cuban War, waged for the independence of Cuba (which could have been obtained, according to our Secretary of State and our Minister to Spain, without a shot), and the Philippine War, waged for the purpose of depriving a brave people of their freedom, are the legitimate twin offspring of the Civil War, which in their turn may have their accursed progeny a generation hence.
The speculation caused by the interruption of commerce and the derangement of the currency during our war laid the foundations of the new plutocracy.
Money was needed to pay the enormous expenses of destruction, and the tariff began to grow, and behind it
Chicago: the Public Publishing Company, 1905.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.