f
Greece dreaded the rise of Athens to dominant commercial importance, and
in the conflict between the Corinthian brass and the Attic clay, the
clay was shattered. Corinth does not show her hand much in the
Peloponnesian war. She figures at the beginning, and then disappears.
But the old mole is at work the whole time, and what the Peloponnesians
called the Attic war, and the Attics the Peloponnesian war, might have
been called the Corinthian war. The exchange, the banking-house, were
important factors then as now. "Sinews of war" is a classical
expression. The popular cry of "Persian gold" was heard in the
Peloponnesian war as the popular cry of "British gold" is heard now.

True, there was no slavery question in the Peloponnesian war, for
antique civilization without slavery is hardly thinkable; but after all,
the slavery question belongs ultimately to the sphere of economics. The
humanitarian spirit, set free by the French Revolution, was at work in
the Southern States as in the Northern States, but it was hampered by
economic considerations. Virginia, as every one knows, was on the verge
of becoming a free State. Colonization flourished in my boyhood. A
friend of my father's left him trustee for his "servants," as we called
them. They were quartered opposite our house in Charleston, and the
pickaninnies were objects of profound interest to the children of the
neighborhood. One or two letters came from the emigrants after they
reached Liberia. Then silence fell on the African farm.

Some of the most effective anti-slavery reformers were Charlestonians by
birth and breeding. I cannot say that Grimke was a popular name, but
homage was paid to the talent of Frederick, as I remember only too well,
for I had to learn a speech of his by heart, as a schoolboy exercise.
But the economic conditions of the South were not favorable to the
spread of the ideas represented by the Grimkes. The slavery question
kept alive the spirit that manifested itself in the tariff question.
State rights were not suffered to slumber. The Southerner resented
Northern dictation as Pericles resented Lacedaemonian dictation, and our
Peloponnesian war began.

III

The processes of the two wars, then, were the same,--killing, wounding,
frightening. The causes of the two wars resolved themselves into the
elements of hatred. The details of the two wars meet at many points;
only one must be on one's guard against merely fanciful, merely external
r