State debts and
a three-year war (costing us $66,000,000) with Mexico, who claimed
her for a runaway from Mexican jurisdiction. This was a bargain that
out-yankeed the Yankees, but the South insisted on it and the North
submitted. After conquering all the territory now embraced in New
Mexico, a part of Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California, we
paid Mexico $25,000,000 for it--$15,000,000 for the greater part of it
and $10,000,000 for another slice, known as the "Gadsden purchase."
In 1867 we bought Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000. All the several
amounts above named were paid long ago. As for all the rest of our
landed possessions, we took them with us when we cut loose from mother
Britain's apron string, but did not get a clear title until we had
fought ten years for it--first in the Revolutionary War, costing us in
killed 7,343 reported--besides the unreported killed--and over 15,000
wounded, and $135,193,103 in money; afterward in the War of 1812-15,
costing us in killed 1,877, in wounded 3,737, in money $107,159,003.
We have paid everybody but the Indians, the only real owners, and,
thanks to gunpowder, sword, bayonet, bad whisky, small-pox, cholera
and other weapons of civilization, there are not many of them left to
complain. Besides all the beads, earrings, blankets, pots, kettles,
brass buttons, etc., given them for land titles in the olden times, we
paid them, or the Indian agents, in one way and another, in the ninety
years from 1791 to 1881, inclusive, $193,672,697.31, to say nothing
of the thousands of lives sacrificed and many millions spent in Indian
wars, from the war of King Philip to the last fight with the Apaches.

ILLUSTRIOUS MEN AND WOMEN.--It is not likely that any two persons would
agree as to who are entitled to the first fifty places on the roll of
great men and great women. Using "great" in the sense of eminence in
their professions, of great military commanders the following are among
the chief: Sesostris, the Egyptian conqueror, who is represented as
having subdued all Asia to the Oxus and the Ganges, Ethiopia, and a part
of Europe; Cyrus the Great; Alexander the Great; Hannibal; Che-Hwanti,
who reduced all the kingdoms of China and Indo-China to one empire, and
constructed the Great Wall; Caesar; Genghis Khan, the Tartar chief, who
overran all Asia and a considerable part of Europe; Napoleon Bonaparte;
Ulysses S. Grant, and General Von Moltke. Among the most illustrious
benefact