‘But it was impossible to save the Great Republic.

She was rotten to the heart.

Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home; multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people's liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake in their own persons.

The government was irrevocably in the hands of the prodigiously rich & their hangers-on; the suffrage was become a mere machine, which they used as they chose.

There was no principle but commercialism, no patriotism but of the pocket.’

Mark Twain