good thing for both North and South, as we
have since found out.

But good and true Abraham Lincoln did not live to learn what the country
gained by the war, for just after it ended he was killed by a wicked and
foolish man, who thought he would avenge the South by shooting the
President.

It was a terrible deed. The whole country mourned for its noblest man,
slain in the hour of victory. The South as well as the North suffered by
his death, for he was too just a man to oppress those who had been
beaten in war, and in him all the people, North and South, lost their
best and ablest friend.

CHAPTER XXII

THE GREAT CIVIL WAR

I HAVE no doubt that some of the young folks who read this book will
want to hear the story of the great war that was spoken of in the last
chapter. Some of the boys will, at any rate. The girls do not care so
much about war, and I am glad of this, for I think the world would be
much better off if there were no wars.

Well, I suppose I shall have to tell the boys something about it. The
girls can skip it, if they wish. To tell the whole story of our Civil
War would take a book five times as large as this, so all I can do is to
draw a sort of outline map of it. A civil war, you should know, means a
war within a nation, where part of a people fight against the other
part. A war between two nations is called a foreign war.

When our Civil War broke out we had thirty-three states--we have more
than forty-five to-day. Eleven of these states tried to leave the Union
and twenty-two remained, so that the Union states were two to one
against the non-Union. But the Union states had more than twice the
people and had ten times the wealth, so that, as you may see, the war
was a one-sided affair. It was nearly all fought in the South, whose
people suffered greatly for their attempt to leave the Union. Many of
them lost all they had and became very poor.

There were three fields or regions in which this war took place. One of
these was a narrow region, lying between Washington and Richmond, the
two capital cities. But small as it was, here the greatest battles were
fought. Both sides were fighting fiercely to save their capitals.

The second region of the war was in the West. This was a vast region,
extending from Kentucky and Missouri down to the Gulf of Mexico. Here
there were many long, weary marches and much hard fighting and great
loss of life. The third region was on the ocean and rivers,