two
million and a half of soldiers lost their lives in battle, and the
country was impoverished to the extent of six billions eight hundred
and fifty millions of dollars, while three millions of soldiers have
perished in war since 1850. England's national debt was increased
by the war of 1792 to nearly one billion and a half, and during the
Napoleonic wars to the amount of one billion six hundred thousand
dollars.

During the last seventy years Russia has expended for war measures the
sum of one billion six hundred and seventy million dollars, and lost
seven hundred thousand soldiers. It cost England, France, and Russia,
in the Crimean war of little more than a year's duration, one billion
five hundred million dollars, and five hundred thousand lives lost by
the four combined nations engaged.

But all this loss, in some cases lasting for years, is but a bagatelle
in comparison to the loss in men and treasure during the four years of
our Civil War.

According to the records in Washington, the North spent, for the
equipment and support of its armies during the four years of actual
hostilities, four billion eight hundred million in money, outside of
the millions expended in the maintenance of its armies during the days
of Reconstruction, and lost four hundred and ten thousand two hundred
and fifty-seven men. The war cost the South, in actual money on a gold
basis, two billion three hundred million, to say nothing of the tax in
kind paid by the farmers of the South for the support of the army. The
destruction and loss in public and private property, outside of the
slaves, is simply appalling. The approximate loss in soldiers is
computed at two hundred and nineteen thousand.

The actual cost of the war on both sides, in dollars and cents, and
the many millions paid to soldiers as pensions since the war, would be
a sum sufficient to have paid for all the negroes in the South several
times over, and paid the national debt and perhaps the debts of most
of the Southern States at the commencement of the war.

This enormous loss in blood and treasure on the part of the South was
not spent in the attempts at conquest, the subversion of the Union, or
the protection of the slave property, but simply the maintenance of
a single principle--the principle of States Rights, guaranteed by the
Federal Constitution.

* * * * *

THE CONFEDERATE DEAD--THE BATTLEFIELDS OF THE CIVIL WAR--THE TWO
CIVILIZ