n of these days, "our answer was that in
America, barring slavery, they were actually at work. There, the chief
of the state and the legislators were freely elected by the people.
There, the offices were open to everybody who had the capacity to fill
them. There was no army or navy, two great curses of humanity in all
ages. There was to be no war except war in self-defense.... In fact, we
did not doubt that in America at last the triumph of humanity over its
own weaknesses and superstitions was being achieved, and the dream of
Christendom was at last being realized."[182]

As a correspondent of the London _Daily News_ he went to the Crimea. The
scenes at Malakoff gave him a disgust for war which thenceforth he never
failed to express upon every opportunity. When a man of sixty-eight,
reckoning its cost in blood and treasure, he deemed the Crimean War
entirely unnecessary and very deplorable.[183] Godkin arrived in America
in November, 1856, and soon afterwards, with Olmsted's "Journey in the
Seaboard Slave States," the "Back Country," and "Texas," as guidebooks,
took a horseback journey through the South. Following closely Olmsted's
trail, and speaking therefore with knowledge, he has paid him one of the
highest compliments one traveler ever paid another. "Olmsted's work," he
wrote, "in vividness of description and in photographic minuteness far
surpasses Arthur Young's."[184] During this journey he wrote letters to
the London _Daily News_, and these were continued after his return to
New York City. For the last three years of our Civil War, he was its
regular correspondent, and, as no one denies that he was a powerful
advocate when his heart was enlisted, he rendered efficient service to
the cause of the North. The _News_ was strongly pro-Northern, and Godkin
furnished the facts which rendered its leaders sound and instructive as
well as sympathetic. All this while he was seeing socially the best
people in New York City, and making useful and desirable acquaintances
in Boston and Cambridge.

The interesting story of the foundation of _The Nation_ has been told a
number of times, and it will suffice for our purpose to say that there
were forty stockholders who contributed a capital of one hundred
thousand dollars, one half of which was raised in Boston, and one
quarter each in Philadelphia and New York. Godkin was the editor, and
next to him the chief promoters were James M. McKim of Philadelphia and
Charles Eliot Nort