But the war went on more fiercely than ever, and it was not until April, 1865, that it came to an end. The South was not able to fight any longer and had to give up, and the Union was saved. It was saved without slavery, which was a very 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.