CHAPTER VIII. 



THE WAR OF THE REBELLION AND THE BUSINESS 

 AND WEALTH OF THE COUNTRY. 



time to time, within the past few years, 

 when some of our prominent politicians have 

 thought it necessary to offer some explanation of the 

 causes that have operated to produce the evil times 

 that have come upon us, society has bee^ invited to 

 accept some most remarkable conclusions. So mis- 

 leading have been these conclusions, so wanting in 

 every basis of fact and the simplest principles of logic, 

 and so often are they repeated, that it seems very 

 proper that some of them should be examined. 



A late Secretary of the Interior, in a speech at Cin- 

 cinnati, in September, 1878, said that " the real cause 

 of our distress ..... were great wars, resulting in 

 an immense destruction and waste of wealth ; large 

 industries ministering to the work of destruction in- 

 stead of producing additional wealth," etc. 



An able writer says of the war that " it destroyed 

 millions of property, actually wiped out of existence 

 this vast amount of wealth which it had taken years 

 to produce. It obliged us to run in debt." 



When so eminent and so able a man as Carl Schurz 

 164 



